A few months ago I had the opportunity to discover the early stages of Harvestella, Square Enix’s farming RPG. At the time, I was able to see a brief demo of the story, life simulation elements, and other activities and quests it offers, but while it was fun to get a little hands-on, much of the game’s story didn’t resonate with me due to its intricacy very logical in nature. Now Harvestella has debuted on PC and Nintendo Switch, and I’ve been immersing myself in her fantasy world for a while.
First of all I would like to let you know that while the narrative and story has some interesting moments, it is so atypical and full of dark fantasy elements that it is very hard to follow. It mixes time travel with fantasy, verges on sci-fi, and then tries to weave it all into a storyline that often leaves the player with more questions than answers, at least for most of the game. And for me, this becomes a bit of a challenge to master, as it’s difficult to immerse yourself in a world that really doesn’t make sense to us, even though that feeling sometimes seems intentional. I mention it at the beginning of the review for the simple reason that even after many hours of play I’m still having trouble deciphering much of the storyline, which means I keep exploring the world and doing quests simply because the game allows me to says. shows.
And on top of that, the mission design is a bit one-dimensional and boring. We’ll spend a lot of time between the main and side missions, without being able to go beyond dialogue with other characters (none of whom are voiced) to reach the end goal. There have been times when I’ve completed a bunch of side quests and literally spent an hour chatting, aside from pacing here and there for a few minutes to pick up an item or move to another location . It can get very boring. There are quests that require you to go into the world and complete a dungeon full of monsters, and here and in the life simulation elements, the pace of Harvestella increases and the title becomes much more attractive.
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When it comes to exploration and combat, the world of Harvestella is divided into multiple zones that you can roam freely. In the cities where the missions take place, new faces and allies are met and even resources are bought. The less civilized locations are designed like dungeons, with rooms full of monsters and connected with corridors leading to secrets or the next room full of monsters. When we reach these places we have to go through hordes of creatures, be they goblins, scary monsters in the form of snails, fish known as sagahin, etc. There is a really impressive variety of enemies and almost all of them are designed in such an unusual way that it is difficult to describe them clearly.
The fight is quite simple and we only have to damage these monsters with a job from our collection or deal magic damage to them. Each of them is unique and you can choose up to four to change them in battle whenever you want, which means we can go from a melee fighter to a fighting sage or something completely different like a mage and so on. . Each new type of job is unlocked by meeting important people throughout the story, and each job can be upgraded by spending job points to unlock specific skills or improve the effectiveness of existing ones. It’s a simple system, but it works pretty well.
Life simulation systems also work very well. Although Harvestella appears to have a significant agricultural presence, it is actually not that large. It seems more like a series of daily quests to be completed that fuel and fund our adventures elsewhere. Thanks to the speed of the days and the magic of the world in which Harvestella is set, the plants can grow overnight, or on the contrary, they need a few days to germinate, which means we have to constantly take care of farming and tillage planting the land, planting seeds, watering the crops, harvesting them, everything to be able to sell them and get some grid (the currency) to buy extensions and improvements to the farm, upgrade weapons or recipes to buy to be able to use other crops Cook food that will serve as the main method to stay in battle when we face dungeons. And that’s why the farming part sometimes feels like a chore, as daily land checks are crucial to aiding efforts elsewhere, as combat is marked by a health bar that can be grid-filled, but also a stamina bar , which only fills up when the character has food in their stomach.
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Don’t overlook some ins and outs. As the plants grow much faster, so do the seasons. A season in Harvestella lasts about 30 days, and it’s important to keep track of each season as the plants only grow (or bear fruit) at a specific time of year. There are also crafting items that can be used to improve our adventures and unlock new locations in the dungeons (e.g. bombs to break through rocky debris), or even items to improve our farming and self-sufficiency projects. If we build a flour mill, we can process wheat into flour and no longer need to buy it from the local store. Or vice versa, a juicer can turn veggies and fruits into juice for a quick health boost in battle.
Although I’ve tried Harvestella on PC, it’s clear that the game was made for the Nintendo Switch and that the effort required for the PC version is fairly minimal. Running on an RTX 3090 with an 11th gen i9 CPU, all combined with 64GB of RAM like I did, is not necessary at all as Harvestella hardly puts any load on the PC. In fact, it’s pretty clear that the game wasn’t made for PC gaming, as there aren’t any real options to change the graphics settings and we can’t even rebind the controls from a connected controller (although they can be customized). ). And the reason I’m bringing this up is because the graphics themselves and even the world design clearly belong on a Switch. It’s true that the character models are usually impressive and the color palette used to bring the game to life is striking, but the world feels empty, lacking in detail and the frequent loading screens between literally every location, we visit (whether on dungeon floors, entering a house, or walking to a neighboring town) become frustrating.
There are many things about Harvestella that I like and enjoy. I like the farming systems and how they tie into the overall game, the combat, the job system and the variety of enemies that make exploration interesting. But the world doesn’t want to be explored, the pacing is so constant and the narrative so unusual that it’s hard for me to get used to it. Yes, there are some impressive shots, but there are also moments where the game already feels incredibly dated, and it all adds up to a title that didn’t grab me in the way I expected. If you’re into JRPGs and farming RPGs, you’ll probably find some interesting moments in Harvestella, but if you don’t like these types of games, this game most likely won’t entertain you.
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