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Pleasant, but ultimately forgettable.

Homework Salesman is a pleasant enough game. It is attractively rendered, with maps of lush countryside locales, a quaint little town and labyrinthine caves to explore and plunder.

But that is perhaps my problem with it: it is sweet and pretty - but after a while it feels quite shallow. This is definitely my bias, though, as I don't typically play or enjoy these types of games (and with that in mind, I'll try to be as objective as possible).

Gameplay:
The crafting system, while smooth and without any obvious problems, was not overly compelling. There is plenty of time, given the game's structure, to find resources and make item after item, as from what I gather there is no real limit to the number of in-game days you can play for. But I found this to be tedious, and I probably would have preferred a stricter system (so this is definitely my problem, and not the game's).

I did like the concept of having a small town to rest and work in, and a large dungeon to explore. I didn't get much deeper than maybe the third floor, but I liked the inclusion of breakable weapons and the ability to, with the right item, sleep in the dungeon to restore health and replenish Reniat's ability points. It was fun planning out what items and equipment to bring along with you to the dungeon, and how much money to bring in case you ran into certain recruitable characters along the way.

I'll address the friendship/gift system below more thoroughly, but often the side-quests just felt like an effort to get you to give items to a given NPC as a gentle reminder that this system was in place.

Some of the side-quests were meatier, but still repeated themselves over and over, with requests for a different set of items each time, or a different monster to kill. I found these to be pretty banal, and they felt more like padding than something that enriched the game.

Visuals:
This game looks very nice. It is peppered with cute art, and contains many nicely mapped areas for you to wander around in. The visual design sets the tone of the game well.

Audio:
Nothing sticks out in a good or bad way; the music was serviceable, but hardly memorable. Nothing conflicted with the given setting or situation, though, so I don't have any real issue here.

Sound effects were adequate in that I don't remember anything being annoying or out of place.

Story/characters:
I'm assuming it wasn't the creators' intention to make this a plot-driven game, or one with strong characterisation, and while emphasis is supposedly on befriending the townspeople, I found most of these characters to be weak and uninteresting, and they certainly were not compelling enough for me to see the game through to the end. The two I had the most issue with were Reniat's father and brother. I felt her interactions with these two to be lacking in any kind of familial affection or understanding. Granted, Reniat hadn't lived with them for years. I just thought there was no basis of friendship between any of them, really, and it irked me.

The friendship system, in which you give people gifts in order to improve your relationship with them and get bonuses, was not engaging enough for me to want to invest much time into it. Having to read the same conversation between Reniat and her bro day after day was pretty annoying. I think this would have worked better if there was a shorter time frame in place, so that the characters' replies and reactions to Reniat differed more quickly. Having people repeat the same NPC speech over and over was a bit jarring.

This game definitely is not for me, but I appreciate the lovely art, map designs and mechanics it offers; ultimately, they were not enough to make me want to continue on, and the game seemed endless (which to many will not be a bad thing!), so I gave up.

Homework Salesman is ideal for players who have more fun roaming dungeons and collecting resources than engaging with a game's plot and characters. I believe this was the intention anyway, and for many people this will not be a problem.

It's cute, a little charming, but not something I'll return to.