Hello, and welcome to Province!
Province is a town in a fantasy world where our protagonist Kyme is going to live, owning just a shack and his sword. Oh wait, and he also has a huge debt contracted with the powerful Mr. Roof, a debt he has to pay, of course! But luckily Province is a land of many opportunities.

Notes From Province is an odd game: while it starts as a classical fantasy adventure, with a young and pennyless swordsman arriving in a new territory, but the world does not seem to be in danger! Repaying your debts it's not exactly an epic quest: the game is more or less a fantasy version of Stardew Valley... but instead of a farmer you play as an adventurer/explorer/treasure hunter and problem solver. As you can expect you have to deal with bandits, thieves and monsters too (or just protect a chicken from some snakes!), and recover items or people for some citizens, but this is just half of the game!

Anyway let's speak about exploration: apparently this looks like a classical RPG Maker VX Ace adventure (even if the world has a dynamic day/night/weather cycle!) but this time your character can also jump and this is an important skill (Kyme will jump around A LOT) both to find hidden loot and reach some areas (besides solving some puzzles). There's a lot to do when exploring: pushing boulders to open caves, jumping quickly on water lilies to cross and avoiding geysers, exploring the world is in fact a whole puzzle!


Meet Kyme, our protagonist and alter ego. You will soon need a party of characters to adventure and survive in the wilderness, so start making friends!

But then there is a lot of extra content and many secondary activities, like fishing, playing piano, crafting, dancing, and do not forget decorating home: Mr. Roof and his goons are just some of those who can help to transform your starting shack into a cozy home, both inside and outside. There's a lot of customization that lets you choose from different layouts, buy forniture (there's even a VIP section for very expensive items like a throne or a pipe organ) and place it where you want (see below my creation!). You also get a score for your house, but some special and unique items are only available if you perform quests, visit dungeons or win minigames.

Take for example the coliseum: it's not just the classical place where you play random battles, but it involves different challenges (some extremely hard to impossible, in the beginning of course) but let you get some points used to buy some unique equipment and fortuniture.
In the beginning in fact there will be scarce availability of gear (while consumables abound and are easy to find or buy) and only progressing in the game and exploring new places it will be possible to find better gear.

In Notes From Province gear isn't important. It's EXTREMELY important! Take the shields: you will seeon get three of them, a small one, a medium one and a big one. Which is better? Well... it depends from the situation! Each one can be equipped by Kyme, letting him use a different ability, for example the small one (and only that one) lets him use the "Shield Bash" skill to hit hard the enemy and stun him/re, while the other two have more protective ablities. And the same goes from accessories that may provide permanent bonus or even magical attacks and skills (like reflect magic) to the character that equips them. So a good party setup is extremely important especially against tougher enemies and bosses.


It took me some time but I was able to turn my shack into a real house! Small but cozy, home sweet home!
(Not only you can choose the layout but you also have to buy and place forniture, and I guess I did a good job, what do you think?)

But let's speak about characters: there are seven different heroes you can meet and each one not only can get stronger and learn new skills levelling up, but they also work differently: the priest for example has powerful attacks that have a cooldown and he can equip less accessories than the others but he has some unique relics slots that may be filled with relics that improve his characteristics. The martial artists instead has a cool combo system that let you organize her attacks selecting them, she isn't powerful but she is fast, attacking several times in the same round. Oh and both her and Kyme have a sort of "recovery ability" usable during combat that made me spare the consumables for the hardest battles. Because at first the enemies will pushovers, but later... not so much! And speaking about the gun... no ok I already spoiled too many characters!
So here's a last thing: there are many party-banter dialogues that are optional and can be shown when you notice a (!) in your inventory. This is more or less what happens in the "Tales of" (Symphonia, Berseria, etc) series when you walk on the map and you may show these optionals interactions between the party members. Nice addition that makes the characters even more interesting!

Let's instead speak of the activities and dungeons (that are mercifully not very long, but with some avoidable enemies and puzzles to make you entertained): the game more or less lets you roam everywhere, but as you can probably expect some areas will be locked until you completed some quests, often related. To open the path to the mountains for example you have to help the guard to deal with some troubles in town.


Do you know what I was sure to find in a game full of puzzles and minigames? A classic fishing minigame of course!
Grab your fishing pole and start earning prizes, you just need patience and luck (exactly like the real thing)!

Often a quest leads to another, but it's easily possible to amass a ton of different objectives that luckily are listed together with a series of important notes in the menu. The game is really player friendly, offering many written tutorials, anyway the sheer amount of content that you can easily collect at first may be a little intimidating for those who are used to classical jrpg.
And it happened to me not only to find some kind of temporarily impassable obstacle, but also encounters wher I had absolutely no chance to win!
But I survived nonenthless...
Yes, the game lets you escape from most combat encounters (even those that are some kind of bosses, like the Spider Queen) just selecting the option, other enemies won't even attack you if you are too weak (like the dragon that found me "unworthy"), but even if you are killed you do not die, but the whole party is revived with 1 Hp, so go to sleep and come back another day, ok?

Unfortunately there are some rare encounters that are luckily preceded by an autosave (the game also autosaves whenever you enter a new area, still you can save anywhere) against some dangerous foes that will kill you if they win. Lie Zario, one guy that you will encounter more than once.
But the world of Province is full of villains, from the lowly brigands to the incredibile thief that can steal the voice from a singer, mysterious assassins, a terrible Lamia, Death incarnate, and much more.

No, it's not a quiet life at all for Kyme and friends, but some time can be spent fishing or playing games with a friendly slime, or a sort of three-cards-game (three-chests-game in this case) if you prefer. And then solving puzzles, lots of them, before goinf home. Home sweet home...


Pay attention to the *deadly encounters*! These are the only situations in which you can get a Game Over (mercifully the game autosaves before them!), unlike even some boss encounters!


Final Verdict
Notes From Province is a game with an amazing quantity of content: don't be fooled by the apparently unoriginal graphics and music (even if I noticed some facesets and charsets that are surely edits, but they merge very well with those of the Rtps), this game is a rather open rpg with tons of puzzles and minigames, some of those are really clever and require smart thinking (like for example the one that combines the boulder pushing with filling/emptying a pool where are some wooden pieces of a bridge... or the one that involves giant spiders).

Mapping is ok, I only found a couple of errors, for example in the Lamia lair I entered a room standing on a wall! Luckily the jumping ability avoided being stuck there! But for the rest the game looks really pretty, it's colorful and the visual effects for the weather are simply perfect and really enhance the atmosphere of the game!

This game was an ambitious experiment and for what I see, it's a success: the place seems alive, as the time pass the characters close their shops and go home, you actually even see them walking back to their houses! As time pass you can find them in different places and also new creatures roaming the various locations only at night! And what about the simple but nice feature of decorating home? It's pretty cool!

Notes From Province is very good, only it can be a little intimidating (there will be many NOTES to take while exploring Province, trust me) with all these simultaneous quests and notes and collectibles... yeah there's a lot and also there's more that is hinted but not accessible until you perform some tasks. Also it can be overlooked due to the use of graphics that you probably saw one thousand times in games that aren't as detailed as this one, that isn't just a story but an experience.
No, I've not completed the game yet (I'm also finding something new to do, also some tasks like fishing require patience and luck! Also I dunno why but during the piano quicktime event the C does not seem to work, maybe it's a problem of my keyboard?), but I played for hours and hours, and I am still playing it now! It's really amazing that I'd have a lot more to say, anyway... just play it!

Not your usual Rpgmaker jrpg, really recommended if you like the genre! Note From Province is *The* RPG Maker VX Ace Open World game!


GAME NOMINABLE FOR THE FOLLOWING MISAOS CATEGORIES:
- Not Dead Yet Award
- "Everlasting Journey" Award
- The "How the Hell Did They Do That?" Award