Community Pom

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen an action game crossed with a town-builder, I'd have quite a few nickels because that's a surprisingly common genre-blend. Actraiser, Cult Of The Lamb, Recettear, Sakuna: Of Rise And Ruin, Rune Factory, even the Slime Mori Mori games to a lesser extent. It makes sense though, the gameplay loop of scavenging for material that you can use to build your town, which then feeds back into questing feels tailor-made for an addictive experience. So here's another one those that you probably haven't heard of before: Community Pom.

Released in 1997 for the PS1 in Japan only, Community Pom is a Zelda-inspired action RPG crossed with a animal/town raising sim developed by Fill In Cafe. This was a small game dev team that released a fair amount of great cult classics like Asuka 120%, Mad Stalker, and Panzer Bandit, but Community Pom is probably my favorite work of theirs. As you'd expect, Community Pom eventually got a fan translation by LIPEMCO, a very prolific group whose members have dipped their fingers in a ton of different incredible fantrans and hacks like Madou Monogatari, Idol Hakkenden, the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna games, Layla: The Iris Missions, and even the Mega Man World 2 music fix. The Commuity Pom fantran in particular even comes with a translation of the game's official guidebook, which is just so cool (and as you'll see later, exceptionally helpful).

Community Pom is centered around the titular Poms, cute little bunny-like creatures who the town believes are attacking them. You play as a little witch named Lulu who staunchly believes that the Poms are being falsely accused, so she sets out to find all the Poms and form a community for them to prove their docility. And as per the usual, there's a larger plot involving a villainous wizard trying to use the Poms for his own schemes. The main gameplay loop is split into the Action RPG parts and the Town Sim parts. The Action RPG segments have you go out into the world in search of Poms, collecting materials you can use to help build the town along the way. These will have towns, dungeons, bosses, all the usual adventure game fare. The Town Sim segments have you raise the Poms to help you build a community for them, from buildings that improve their stats, to qualities of life like a Clinic or a Church, to growing even more food to feed the Poms. I'd say this gameplay loop works pretty well, as both halves of the game feed into each other really naturally. Exploring helps you build the town, which in turn makes exploring easier. You have a lot of freedom in terms of how much time you want to dedicate to each half of the game, as you can really expand your town however much or however little you want. If you want to take your time and make your town into something you can feel proud of, you can. But if you only want to build the bare necessities and focus on adventuring, that's an option as well.

The Action RPG parts of Community Pom are absolutely incredible too, especially in terms of the controls and gameplay. Running around as Lulu feels buttery smooth, and I adore the way dashing works. You can double-tap a direction to start a dash that can last as long as you want, and you can even attack in mid-air and maintain your momentum. The flow of starting a run and slashing through enemies with mid-air attacks feels truly incredible, I genuinely think Community Pom plays better than most actual top-down Action RPGs. The overworld is fun to explore, constantly showing you chests just out of your reach encouraging you to go back with new abilities, and it's all centered around your Pom community making it easy to navigate. There's legit dungeons too, with maps, puzzles, locks-and-keys, big boss fights, spatial reasoning, varied locals, and they're a ton of fun. The pacing remains pretty brisk overall too since you're constantly acquiring new abilities and unlocking new areas, and once again, you have full control over how quickly you can progress the story and open up the world. There's minigames, a solid customization element in picking your party of Poms to bring on adventures, and a ton of collectibles to find from rare items to magic upgrades. Everything just works here, genuinely this is one of the best Zelda-likes prior to Ocarina Of Time that I've ever played.

Sadly, the town sim parts are a bit more flawed. Not bad, just flawed. For starters, the game does a godawful job at tutorializing you about how it all works. Thank goodness for that translated guidebook because I really wouldn't have figured it out otherwise. So, the way building your town works in Community Pom is that you need to feed your Poms the food that you collect on your expeditions by tossing the food to them. Depending on what you feed your Poms, they'll perform a variety of actions from building structures, to farming, to studying. Farming allows you to get more food quicker, while the buildings and studying allow you to increase the stats of your Poms to make them more powerful in the field. While I can't say the town sim elements feel as consequential as I would've hoped, there's a decent amount of depth and customization here in terms of how you build up your squad of Poms which does give the package as a whole a bit of extra spice. There are also a few annoying mechanics involved with the town, like the fact that Poms sleep at night so you kinda just have to wait until day for them to do something, or the occasional moments that monsters attack your town during which they'll almost always destroy at least one of your buildings. That being said, I do like the addition of the town overall because of the element of customization it adds, even if it is the weaker half compared to the sublime Action RPG portion.

In terms of the presentation, Community Pom is absolutely gorgeous. Like many 2D games from 1997, Community Pom has some of the best spritework I've ever seen, with the whole game boasting this lovely pastel vibe. The characters are cute and expressive, especially the Poms, and I love how all the menus look like sketchbooks. It reminds me a lot of Kirby's Dream Land 3, which is probably the highest praise I could possibly give it. While the story isn't anything super remarkable, the actual dialogue is flat-out hilarious. Lulu in particular is a very charming protagonist with a surprisingly snark and crass sense of humor. I'm not too sure if that was a fantran addition or if the game was already this witty to begin with, but I love it regardless. The soundtrack is also surprisingly really good, being primarily done by Katamari co-composer Hideki Tobeta. It's hard to really describe the music of Community Pom, it's got such a quirky sound to it, very poppy and frenetic. Some of the tracks even have a muffled sound to them, as if they're being played through a radio which sounds totally unfitting for a fantasy adventure game but it really fits with Community Pom's cutesy, cheeky vibe. My only gripe is that the loops are quite short and I wish most of the tracks had a bit more to them, but they're still catchy enough that they never became too grating. Also, props to the track Ganda's House for sounding way too much like September by Earth, Wind, And Fire.

Overall, Community Pom is an absolute joy of an action-adventure game that nails the fundamentals impressively well for the time. It controls like an absolute dream, the exploration is engaging, the dungeons are impeccably designed, the bosses are mostly a ton of fun to fight, the writing is charming, the graphics are gorgeous, the soundtrack is a bop, and the addition of RPG, pet raising, and town building adds enough depth, customization, and identity to Community Pom to help it stand out even if the execution wasn't spot-on. Community Pom is such a joyous, charming, inventive, and scrappy little gem that shows exactly why I love playing games to begin with.

4.5/5 Stars