HARVESTELLA

This is a farming/action/story RPG, and while I have a hard time giving negative reviews, I cannot sort this among my recommended games. It feels as though the game [b] cannot really decide what it wants to be [/b] - whether it wants to be a farming simulator the likes of Stardew Valley, or whether it wants to be an action RPG, or whether it wants to focus on its story, and it ends up doing all of those things, but none of them very well. [list] [*] The [b] farming [/b] has really rigid controls and actually very little focus on it. You become a farmer because, uh... well, you just arrived in town and there is a free plot of land, so here's a toolbox and now get to work. The crops are essentially real-world crops but with slightly different names such as Carrops, Cucumbles, Strawbuddy, and it ends up feeling just a little silly, as the game seems to take itself seriously in terms of story content rather than try to give off this light-hearted, whimsical feel that the item names carry. At the same time, there really isn't that much time to do the farming, because the game mostly pushes you towards the next point: [*] The [b] action RPG [/b] - You venture outside of your farm, weapon in hand, and fight some mobs. A lot of them. You fight your way through branching maps which are filled with nothing but clusters of the same mobs over and over, occasionally recoloured or with ominous effects to indicate they're stronger than usual. And, well, that's it! Which brings me to my last and biggest issue with the game: [*] The [b] effort and polish [/b] - It honestly feels like the game had a lot of potential, but it's lacking that extra bit of effort to really make it work. Mouse click response times are very slow, leading to unnatural pauses in dialogue, characters are "animated" in the sense they strike the same range of a handful of poses occasionally, the combat controls feel very rigid, but worst of all, I feel the overall story and aspects of the game are disconnected from each other in a manner that can hardly be ignored. Some story elements and explanations are just skipped over, some decisions feel like they're made to move the story forward without much logic behind them, and the side-quests, at least in the starting town, are just not very engaging. I was okay with the first quest following the story of the village children, but after discovering that it's a multi-quest saga of you spending many in-game days just babysitting while the game acts as though you're meant to be extremely invested in these children's problems, it got tedious really quickly. [/list] Due to the above-listed reasons, I just cannot bring myself to recommend the game. If it picked one aspect and focused on it fully to do it efficiently and in a way that's fun, polished, and engaging, I think it would be much better.

100% was awful, farming could have been optimized, the RNG of item drops was awful, better games like it that i would recommend first. Rune factory comes to mind.

決してスローライフを楽しむゲームではない ですがストーリー＋ダンジョン探索＋畑が程よくミックスされていて 真エンディングまで楽しめました。 しかしどうしても納得いかない点がひとつだけ。 スプリンクラーLV3レシピがFearコンプを含む位置に配置されているはおかしい。 畑をフル活用したいのは中盤から終盤にかけてのお金・高位食事が欲しいあたりなのに Fearコンプした後に手に入れても、そのころにはもう畑を使う目的が無くなっているのでは？ 手段と目的が入れ替わってしまっています。おしすぎる。

This game can be a bit of a slow start, however, I am exactly the target audience. If you don't mind that this game takes like 4ish hours to get good and 40ish hours to get great, then have at it.

I can't recommend this game. The combat is clunky, the only good thing about farming is that you don't need to refill a watering can, and the writing is bad. I might play some more but overall, I did not have a good time. Buy on sale.

you hear a lot about how it's not fully voiced, but that really doesn't take away much. the soundtrack is amazing. the story is engaging. the combat is wonderful- each build you use gives you a different outfit, too! the characters are memorable, and you can deepen your friendships with them. there's farming, fishing, combat, story, beautiful environment, and everything else you could want. i got it on sale, but i can see why it's so pricey. a lot of work went into this game. you can really tell.

The game starts really slow and it takes a while to unlock enough to really enjoy the core gameplay, however once you get through a year in game, there's so much to do. A decently fun farm system, crafting, cooking, quests all over the world, nice enough JRPG story, long extra dungeon to grind if you are into that, a dating sim and much more. The game world is very pretty, and the art style is appealing, while the graphics aren't that great, it's solid for a JRPG which tend to have average equality graphics, the art style and character designs more than make up for it as well. There are a number of cons that I think are worth mentioning since they can heavily impact your enjoyment of the game, personally these were not deal breakers for me but if they are for you then be warned. The battle system is probably the single biggest con, there is essentially no skill involved, mechanics like guarding, parrying and even dodging are pointless or outright non existent. Fights are more stat checks over anything else followed by having enough damage items in the form of elemental orbs and healing items for any major boss fights. Almost every attack outside of boss fights is undodgeable, so all enemy mobs will hit you unless you let your party eat the damage. Essentially clearing the game comes down to your level, your weapon level, your job / class being maxed out as much as possible, having a ton of items, ring equipment and upping the bonds with the party members you are bringing into the fight. Actual skill is not involved at all, just grind enough to meet the stat check in each dungeon and make sure you have orbs and healing items to spam for bosses. Breadth of the game: There is just so much to do in this game which is a hybrid between dating sim, JRPG, farming game and because of this the game has to limit how much you can do at first. Due to this it feels quite shallow early on while simultaneously spread very thin across many different things that feel overwhelming to learn. However this gets better over time and eventually these various game aspects do get deeper and you figure out the gameplay loop well enough to handle all of them. Stamina system: The game has a stamina check and a time limit per day check yet isn’t turn based and time / stamina all diminish whether you are farming, building bonds, or clearing a dungeon. It’s like Persona 5 but in the worst way possible, the stamina system really shouldn’t have been included in boss fights, just being unable to even basic attack because your character is hungry mid fight is ridiculous. Quests: The quests in this game are worse then fetch quests, they are basically just follow the person you are engaging with across the world map at multiple locations and talk to them / witness their character drama until you finally get some money and seeds. The actual stories and comedy are pretty good for some quests, but its such a drag to constantly have to chase people across the world in a game where you have a daily time limit every day and stamina needs that keep you from even fast walking, on top of this if you don’t finish a quest in a day you got to move to the next day which means put everything on hold and farm for the entire morning. Dialogue: The dialogue in the game is mostly pointless outside of a single big decision that determines which ending you get. I do mean pointless, not only does it have 0 effect on the story or results you get in anything, even choosing between different dialogue options gives you essentially no meaningful difference in conversation. There shouldn't be so many dialogue options in a game where 98% of it has no impact. Overall though, this game is at least a 7.5/10 and I would recommend getting it on sale.