Boy, kids were definitely built differently in Japan during 1999. Back then I was an annoying seven-year-old who could barely tie his shoes. But here? Milano is doing everything from making pastries to milking flying cows at the ripe old age of eleven. I will admit there was something incredibly charming and off putting about the overall set up for this game. It starts with a really quick animation of Milano being told very suddenly by her parents that they're not going to be around for a while. I don't even think the game explains why Milano's mom needs to go to the hospital. If it wasn't for the incredibly upbeat music and quirky voice acting, you would generally think something darker would restrain somebody to the hospital for about forty days. But that's the kind of zanniness that this game is operating on.

If there's one thing I can definitely give Milano's Odd Job Collection credit for, it's the overall aesthetic and presentation. Milano has a really appealing character design, and the voice acting feels like it was ripped right from a nineties anime in the best way despite the fact that it was dubbed with a modern day cast. Apparently, this game series never had a western release, so this is the first time it's getting the localization treatment. I do have a soft spot for companies that will dub an older series in a way that pays respect to the original while also making it feel like it did just come out of that time. There's a certain texture to the sound quality as well that feels distinctly retro. The soundtrack is limited yet charming, and the color palette is very bright.

Honestly, I love the sprite work for this game. When Milano was doing odd jobs, the character animations definitely leaned towards the more quick and over the top reactions, like you're playing through a typical anime scenario. Milano jumps up whenever she drops a plate or touches a bug or gets knocked over by a creature. But when she's at home, things reasonably slow down, and kudos to the animation team, because they actually gave Milano a lot of extra frames of animation so doing something as simple as vacuuming or preparing meals has a lot of really smooth movement to it. It also helps that these “at home” moments are where the game looks at its best. It is a shame that the sprite work on its own is so good yet the visual presentation on the PlayStation 5 version feels a little bit inconsistent.

For some reason, the opening cutscene that tells us the setup for the game is still very compressed and filtered. Normally a release like this would be a perfect opportunity to maybe showcase the original FMV uncompressed, since we're not dealing with any storage limitations like we did back during the early days of game development. The opening animation still looks as compressed as if I was playing this game on an original PlayStation. What's more, the actual mini game sections don't look as clean as it feels like they should be, though I appreciate the fact that the pixel quality isn't melted for a sort of fake HD look like I've seen with other pixel based rereleases. There are also a variety of filters offered on this collection that both invoke that CRT feel and even bend the screen to make it seem like I'm playing this game on a classic CRT monitor with a curved glass screen. I would recommend turning on those filters to get the full aesthetic and a more consistent presentation from start to finish.

However, a game is more than just visuals, even if I do have a weak spot for ambitious sprite work. But this is unfortunately where things fall a bit flat for me. This is genuinely just a collection of different mini games where you cycle through different days on a calendar performing different jobs for the sake of killing time. That is really it. Your mom will be home in about forty days, so each day you wake up, do a different job in town, earn money based on how well you perform at your job, then you go home to perform some tasks that could affect your stats to make certain jobs a bit easier, THEN you can spend the money that you earn on accessories or pallet swaps for the stuff inside your uncle's house. Then you go to sleep and repeat everything the next day. Let me remind you, you do this for FORTY DAYS. Not every game is going to be made readily available to you when you start up the game, but I mean it when I say that you have gone through most of what this game has to offer after playing it for just one hour.

That isn't to say that the games themselves are not fun; if anything I was very caught off guard by how involved and kinetic the minigames were. Even at the lowest level, the games do require both the directional pad as well as the face buttons where you'll have to juggle different actions at the same time. You're performing simple tasks, but the pacing is very quick and usually you have to avoid something that runs the risk of obstructing your progress. For example, you might have to wash dishes while being cautious of a stack of dirty dishes falling behind you if you don't do them fast enough while things get thrown at you in the kitchen that could delay your progress. Or maybe you're stacking a bunch of ingredients like you're playing Tetris in order to make cakes but have to avoid germs so that you don't accidentally make a dud. All of these games are under a minute long and before I got a feel for it, I actually did fail quite a few times. But once you get into the groove, it's very easy to beat a lot of these games and even if you don't, this release comes with a rewind feature so if you screw up, you can just rewind the game to start from scratch and then get a good payout.

The problem with the game structure like this is that even when I like the mini games and find everything charming, it overstays its welcome very quickly. This is not a game that you sit at your desk for hours on end to play. This feels like a game that I should have on my Switch or my phone to play for a few brief moments while I'm on the train to work. When you actually sit down and try to commit to it, the charm starts wearing away, I start to feel the repetitiveness of the games themselves, the games limited soundtrack starts to grate on me, and I reach a point wondering why exactly am I playing this. The game expects you to do all of this for so long just to complete one play through. It doesn't help that you don't always have control over what games you can play each day, so even if you do latch onto a game that you feel comfortable playing over and over again, there's no guarantee that you'll get the opportunity to play it over and over again.

This is a game that feels like it's doing everything that it wanted to do, but on the surface, it's very nature does make it hard to recommend to people. I feel like nowadays this game would not come out on home consoles, it would come out as a mobile phone game or as a bonus to a much larger or involved game. The aesthetics and music are incredibly charming, the mini games do offer a good amount of challenge and I do like Milano as a character. As a retro enthusiast, I still appreciate all of the little things that make it interesting and I feel very nostalgic being around this game. But I can also separate that mindset from the idea of recommending this to your average gamer. Maybe it would be worth getting on the switch to travel around with or maybe this could be a great game to show a kid that likes to get distracted with small mini games. Outside of that, it's really hard to see this game grabbing anyone's attention.