It’s that time of the year again when developers are releasing all of their farming games all at once in order to offer a more relaxing and cozy gaming experience just in time for the Holidays. If you want to stand out, you’ll need to do something different. That’s exactly what Square Enix must have thought with the release of Harvestella, a game that combines relaxing farming with intense battles. Does this mix of genres work? Let’s find out!
Start your new adventure
Before you start your adventure in Harvestella, you’re able to create your character in the customizer. It’s a bit of a strange one to be honest because you’re only changing the voice and colors of your eyes and hair. It doesn’t really matter if you’re picking a male/female or x character as the actual in-game character will always look the same. A bit of a strange decision if you ask me, they could have just gone with a named hero instead of giving you this type of freedom that doesn’t really make sense at all. That being said, our hero does look the part and fits right into the fantasy world Square Enix created for Harvestella. But what about the actual story?
In the world of Harvestella, the four seasons are controlled by four giant crystals called the Sealight. Nothing to worry about until the Sealight created a fifth season called Quietus, also known as the season of death. It’s here where our story starts, at the beginning of Quietus and like any good RPG, it starts with you fainting and losing all of your memories. You wake up in the village of Lethe where you see the glooming red light of Quietus, a light which is acting all weird and menacing. To make things even worse, a mysterious ship comes crashing down, carrying an unconscious person. Marked as an omen, the person is prohibited to enter Lethe but has to live on a smaller farm just outside of the city. It’s here where you’ll join the mysterious omen and join the farming life to take care of the omen and save the world of Harvestella at the same time.
The farming life
So when I first saw the trailers and screenshots of Harvestalla, I thought it was going to be a deep and complex farming simulator with some combat to keep things interesting. The truth however is a bit different. At its core, Harvestalla is more an RPG than it is a farming game. On your farm, you’re growing crops, taking care of your animals, and selling products to give you some extra funds for gear and upgrades in your missions. It’s all pretty basic and simple and in all honesty, it feels more like an afterthought than a core mechanic and that’s a bit of a shame. It feels like Harvestalla was created as an RPG and the development team decided to give it a unique hook by adding a farming simulator to it. The main issue with that part of the game is the fact that for a simulator, it simply doesn’t go deep enough. We’re spoiled when it comes to cozy farming simulators and we expect certain kinds of things. From growing romances to complex farming, none of those are present in Harvestalla. It feels a bit too light and not important enough while it still remains entertaining.
A bit of a shame really because the game certainly looks its part and offers the perfect scenery for some relaxing farming. It’s one of the better-looking games in the genre and the atmosphere really nails it, which makes it even more painful that your options are this limited. So what about the second part of the game? What about the combat?
Defeat the monsters
As said earlier, Harvestella feels more like an RPG than a farming simulator so, during most of the game, you’re following the main story missions and its side-missions. The story is the true star of the game as it immediately sucks you in and takes you to gorgeous new locations. This is perhaps the best part of the game, discovering all those magical locations while the interesting story is unraveling in front of you. It’s a gorgeous game, especially in handheld mode so discovering more and more locations is extremely rewarding. During your quest, you’ll face a lot of enemies that you need to defeat. Combat happens in real-time but has a couple of issues to really be satisfying.
During combat, I noticed the game lacks feedback and speed. You’re able to run around freely but when you’re attacking, you can no longer move, making you very vulnerable. It doesn’t help that there isn’t any feedback when you hit the enemy or vice versa. If you hit the enemy, that enemy will stay in the exact same spot, making it easy to counter your attack and inflict damage. To counter those shortcomings in combat, the game offers a unique job mechanic that allows you to switch between jobs if you give it enough cooldown. This means that you can use your long-range mage attacks but can inflict short-range attacks later on when you switch your job. The more you play, the more jobs you’ll unlock. It’s an interesting mechanic and it works surprisingly well, which is a shame considering how much fun combat could have been if the team managed to balance things a bit more.
Conclusion:
Harvestella has some fun ideas and certainly offers some quality gaming time thanks to its intriguing story and variation in gameplay. Sadly, none of the parts are worked out could as they should leave you with a game that isn’t perfect. If you’re looking for an action RPG on the side, you can certainly consider buying Harvestella, just don’t expect the same type of quality as many other Square Enix games.
