Game: Heian City Story
Genre: Simulation, Adventure, Strategy
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on iOS and Android, coming soon to Steam)
Developer | Publisher: Kairosoft
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $12.00 | UK £ 10.79 | EU € 12,00
Release Date: December 5th, 2024 (US). Coming soon in Europe.
A review code was used, and many thanks to Kairosoft.
Heian City Story shares a style similar to that of the other Kairosoft management simulation games, and we’ve reviewed quite a few of them on LadiesGamers.
Heian means ‘peace’ in Japanese and represents the golden age of classical Japanese culture. Will Heian City Story capture that essence?
Humble Beginning in Heian City Story
When you start Heian City Story, you have to build your city in the Yamashiro Region. The other two regions will unlock once the first has been cleared (after 12 years of in-game play). The Yamashiro Region is flat, with forests and rivers bounding the city walls. The other regions have mountains and lakes to build around.
Minako Fukuhara is your guide in Heian City Story and will direct you to build more houses, as this will encourage more adorable, pixelated characters to become residents. With a starting budget of 3000g, you can build several new houses. Minako Fukuhara will also explain how to carry out research, and you have enough research points to gain access to either a temple or a bathhouse.
Over the next couple of months, Minako Fukuhara will explain various aspects of Heian City Story life. Planting trees will increase the land value, and taxes are collected every year in March. Pumpkin Products will sell items that can increase the stats of both residents and buildings. Then, after 3 months and gaining 5 residents, you will get to build the large and imposing government building, the Bureau. This will allow resident and tourist requests to be dealt with, and it is home to the guardian spirits. Eventually, it will allow special items to be crafted.
You then keep researching, building and recruiting to make Heian City Story come to life!
Heian City Story Characters
When a resident moves into your city, they will start as a farmer. Once they have mastered that job, they will gain points in one or two of their attributes. In order to keep increasing their attributes, you can change the resident’s job, use items on them or research one-time events. The attributes affect how long residents use facilities for, how hard they work and how much gold or research points they earn.
Attributes are key in the mini-game tournaments. There are four tournaments in Heian City Story: sumo; poetry; horse racing; and kickball. Winning the tournament rewards you with gold and land value increase seeds. However, in order to win, the residents selected to participate need to have high points in the relevant attributes.
Building in Heian City Story
There are numerous buildings and structures to use in Heian City Story. Apart from being places where your residents and tourists can spend their money (adding to your funds), they also form the basis for the two rating systems. Every year, at the end of month 3, there is a star rating, which calculates a score based on the four areas: food; lifestyle; leisure; and culture. The aim is to get a score of 500 in each area and achieve five stars.
Then, at the end of each month 10, there is a ranking score based on the building with the highest land value. Land value can be increased in several ways: using items on the building, placing trees nearby, remodelling when the building becomes more popular with your residents and tourists, or positioning the building in street combos. There are many street combos, although you are only given the details for 8 of them. Finding the rest is trial and error.
The Guardian Spirits of Heian City Story
Unfortunately, life is not always peaceful in Heian City Story. Some of the residents experience problems with baddies – ghosts, robbers or demon creatures. Researching these problems will start a spirit battle. The baddies will enter the city at any location not blocked by a building, generally near the city gates. They will then make their way to the Bureau. You can summon guardian spirits to fight these enemies. Although the fighting is automatic, the skill is positioning the guardians where they will be most effective at defeating the baddies.
As you upgrade the Bureau, you will gain access to more guardian spirits. Each of which can be trained, which increases their attack, defence and stamina levels. In addition to spirit battles via the requests, you can also participate in practice battles, which have some useful rewards.
Heian City Story New Game+
The high score is calculated at the start of year 12, month 4 (about 10 real-time hours). The calculation is based on numerous aspects, including how much gold you have, the city progress level, the number of residents and tourists, the number of jobs mastered and tournaments won. After clearing the game, you can continue playing or create a new game+, which carries over certain aspects, like street combos, plants gained from requests and a couple of the buildings.
However, one thing Heian City Story doesn’t tell you is how many residents, tourists, jobs, and street combos there are to unlock. Personally, I don’t like this uncertainty, I like to know when I’ve collected everything!
It took me 22 in-game years to achieve five stars, around 18 real-time hours. This included a major overhaul of the city layout, and completing most of the requests and tournaments.
Gameplay
The game works really well in either docked or handheld mode, and there is excellent use of the touchscreen functionality. The font is large enough to read on the small screen.
As with several of the Kairosoft games, moving around the menu can be a little annoying, as ‘back’ takes you to the game rather than the previous menu level.
The game autosaves at the start of each new month, with a manual save available as well. In Heian City Story you have three instances of game per user.
The music is soothing but somewhat repetitive and the colours are muted rather than vibrant. This makes Heian City Story less busy and less addictive to watch.
The in-game year is split into 12 months, each with 4 weeks. Each week takes about 14 real-time seconds, although once you’ve cleared the game, the ‘fast’ option is available, which halves the time.
Conclusion
Heian City Story lives up to its ‘peaceful’ name. It has a slower pace than other Kairosoft games, possibly due to the more muted colours and meditative music. The tournament mini-games and guardian spirit battles break the hypnotic rhythm and allow for more interaction. Overall, it’s a pleasant experience.
Final Verdict: I Like it 
Do you like our content? Support LadiesGamers on Patreon!
Check out our Tiers and Benefits and join us.