HARVESTELLA

Neat game, would love to see more of it. Production value definitely not worth the full price tag though aside from the soundtrack Only complaint is unskipable cutscenes

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.

Male character is not a male character. I will not play as a girl, even if the game tries to claim she's a boy. I want a refund :/ NOT worth the price tag.

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.

主线勉强还行，支线任务全是网络小段子，屁话多还都是慢镜头。非常浪费精神。

I'm avoiding any spoilers in this review. This one is a though one to rate. I was not sure if I should pick recommended/not recommended. I'm almost finished with year 1 in terms of progress. I'm assuming people already have an idea what this game is, so I won't waste my time with that. It's basically a Rune Factory clone, farming mixed with combat/exploration and a story. The farming aspect is really simplistic, and doesn't have much story relevance. Compared to other games in the genre, it really only delivers the bare minimum in terms of farming gameplay, and is only relevant in the story the first 5 - 10 minutes of the game. Not a lot of crops, you're almost entirely done after the first year (it seems that way at least), not much unique or interesting stuff going on. Combat/exploration gameplay is on par with the RF series, maybe even slightly more fun. Still very simplistic compared to most games that fully focus on the combat, but on the better (or best) side in the genre. The farming and combat do tie in well enough together luckily, so nothing to critisize there. Advancing in one part (e.g. farm) does somewhat benefit/advance the other part of the game (combat/exploration) and vice versa. And the overall progressing/pacing of both is done well in the 1st year of the game. The story and setting are certainly unique for the genre, which makes the game more interesting, but it has almost nothing to do with farming aspect of the game. It's just a fantasy story as some famous JRPGs that I don't want to spoil, because just mentioning their names will pretty much spoil you the direction of the story. The story, companion and side quests are all written decently, but are all rather on the simplistic and linear side, which is fine for this type of game. There's a lot of them, and maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions, they're never nonsensical. Some story elements are even interesting and you want to see how they develop. The illusion of choice during the story is disappointing but I understand why the did it and it's fine. It does at least affect the way the characters answer you even though it doesn't seem to change the outcome. So the story is overall fine, but nothing groundbreaking. There's a lof of quality of life stuff in here, it feels smooth to play, everything is placed strategically and designed in a way that nothing is hindering your progress which definitely helps to enjoy the game. The teleports are placed everywhere, the game is very clear about its mechanics and what happens when and how, the time mechanic personally never felt annoying to me and ties in well into the gameplay. The music is phenomenal. It's really really good. I was surprised, I didn't except to have this quality music in the game. It fits the setting and even addicting to listen to. Overall, the different elements of the game are all at worst mediocre and at best "good/solid", with the farming being the one thing that they should have improved way more. And for that reason it is less addicting than Stardew or the RF series, it does some things better than these games but also some things worse. All aspects together make up an overall likeable game. I can appreciate the effort that went into this game, it's not a half-assed game at all. If you have played RF3, RF4, and RF5 before, and if you have played Stardew Valley, this is probably the next best thing in the genre as far as I'm aware. But this should not be your first choice in the genre, just be aware of that. EDIT: After 100% completing it, I think I need to give a slight update. Everything I said still stands. But I did enjoy the story a little bit more than I initially expressed, it was even exciting to see how it all develops. It's edgy, and inspired by popular JRPG's stories of the last few years, and it's still quite logical given the setting. Almost all character developments make sense, more so than in some other AAA games. I think this is thanks to the well planned scope of the story and game. Although I can see how some people might dislike the science-fiction setting that dives quite into some philosophical topics (even though it still tries to remain simple, you can see the writers really thought this through properly), since it's also supposed to be a farming game to a certain degree which are usually associated with relaxing topics. Oh, and I forgot to mention that ultra-wide screens will have black bars on the sides, and there is a visual glitch that doesn't show the floating HP bar of the enemy properly above their heads. But it doesn't really matter since you can lock on to targets and that will show you another HP bar just fine. That visual glitch really doesn't affect the gameplay, and you kind of forget after a while that it was supposed to be there in the first place.

Managing time, stamina, and food, with combat and map-travel was kind of interesting from a micro-management perspective but overall, the game was a watered-down experience where you're neither interested in the farming nor the story. It's not bad, but it's not good either. Do not get this game expecting a farming sim: this game is more JRPG than anything else. The farming is shallow, and it interferes with the JRPG half of the game and leads to a game that doesn't excel in anything. It takes forever to get to the meat of the main story because of the time & stamina system. It's difficult to make money (especially in the beginning of the game) outside of sidequests, but the sidequests are beyond tedious. They have you run to a house, read a 3-5 minute unskippable cutscene, then manually run to just outside the house/to another house in the same map, read another cutscene, and then manually run back inside the house; loop until the final cutscene. Most other JRPGs at least have you kill 30 chickens to break up the monotony. The sidequest stories started off interesting but themes quickly started repeating themselves, and they eventually test your patience since you're running like a headless chicken from one end of the map to the end to read bland anime sidestories. The combat is a simple mash-run-mash loop with class affinities and a couple skills mixed in. I never enjoyed playing the game, but I never hated it either. It's just...bland.