Harvestella Review – So Much For So Little

Harvestella wants to be the master of all trades but ends up being a master of none. This combination of action and farming simulation can be fun, but it is more common to find the two genres clashing. It is more likely that the result will repel than it attracts fans.

An amnesiac warrior awakens in the village’s outskirts, completely unaware of his origin or purpose. The four powerful monolithic, monolithic Crystals known as Seaslight regulate the environment of this picturesque continent’s seasons. Quietus is the fifth and most dangerous season. This deadly year wipes out crops, and places humans at great risk. When the Seaslight start acting strangely and mysteriously from the far future, Aria, an unknown scientist, causes this unusual normalcy to become unstable. Aria, like you, is clueless as to how she got there. You partner up with Aria to find your origins and fight a global crisis. You can also build a farm. 

The plot’s absurdity is a credit to the author. The mystery becomes increasingly grandiose as the story unfolds, in typical JRPG style. Although it’s silly much of the time, it was very entertaining. One revelation made me laugh out loud at how bizarre it is, and I can’t help but respect Harvestella’s willingness to take some wild turns while sprinkling a few poignant moments. A group of likeable party members joins the main duo. They include a talkative inventor, an A.I.-powered robotic robot and a unicorn talking. However, you mostly spend your time one-on-one with them. As such, you don’t often see everyone hang out together, and when they do, the lack of group chemistry is noticeable and disappointing. It’s like inviting a bunch of good friends to hang out who know you, but not each other. 

Harvestella encourages both types of play, but it feels more like an action-RPG and a farming video game. The game involves running through boring dungeons while hacking away at foes. You also collect crafting materials. While there is a wide range of game styles, I have only chosen a few. The combo-focused Shadow Walker, which is agile and flexible, as well as the floating dance blades of Pilgrim are my favorites. Other jobs, like the Mechanic and singing-focused Woglinde, simply aren’t fun to use, and the game rarely encouraged me to experiment once I settled on my favorites. Even though I loved the attacks and classes, combat was a bit boring. The bosses can be either pushy or frustratingly low-skilled. 

Farming fans won’t find much unique about Harvestella. Although you have the ability to expand your farm several times and use machines to process food, Harvestella only allows for two types of animal rearing. You can grow certain foods only during particular seasons. The farm also changes according to the changing seasons. The Quietus is a temporary weed killer that can be used to destroy crops. However, I found it simple enough to make plans around and it was less frightening than it seemed. 

Farming is like combat. It feels easy, but it’s crucial for success. The only way to make money in agriculture is through selling your crops. A full kitchen is essential to make a wide range of delicious dishes. You can keep your stomach full and increase your energy, which will in turn help you to maintain your stamina. The meter controls actions like farming, running, and even special attacks. Eating replenishes your health and can be done in large quantities depending on what you are eating. However, you can’t eat if you’re full, which becomes a maddening hindrance during tough battles. Since traditional health potions don’t exist, you’ll be making all of your recovery items. Doing so takes time which feeds into Harvestella’s biggest nuisance: the clock.

Harvestella works on an intra-game day/night system that moves in increments of 10 minutes faster than you might expect. At 6 p.m. night, your character falls asleep at 10. This reduces their ability to recover stamina. Thus, returning home to crash in your bed – and only your bed as, annoyingly, you can’t sleep at the game’s several inns – is vital. If you stay out after midnight your hero may collapse due to exhaustion and return home. Falling to exhaustion or death comes at the oppressively steep price of paying an increasingly exorbitant doctor’s fee while clicking through the same unskippable cutscene. It’s a loathsome penalty that’s too strict for its own good. 

Progress becomes very slow when you must drop everything in order to get home every night. The act of dungeon crawling is about moving slowly, then stopping to restart the day. It takes precious time to reach a place on the globe map. Then, faster ways of traveling open up. You can still go back and forth through dungeon sections until you find new territory, even if you have found shortcuts or quick-travel checkpoints. You will eventually run out of food, so make sure you cook ahead. Cooking takes up a lot of time, which limits your ability to travel. As only a few staples are available, running out of ingredients for cooking means that you have to make more. This means that you will need to wait for the crops to grow again, create enough food to go back to a dungeon and then repeat the process all over again.

It is virtually impossible for the story to advance for long periods of time because this framework does not allow it. There’s often so much work that has to be done beforehand that I was often lucky to have enough daylight to pursue the missions I wanted. It was the most frustrating thing for me when things took an exciting turn. I just wanted to find out what would happen next. It’s an awful form of gating, as progress is bottlenecked no matter how powerful or well-equipped I was. Sometimes, it takes days to finish a single floor of dungeon. 

When I didn’t have enough time in the day to complete a story mission, Harvestella admirably provides plenty to do outside of the main narrative and farming. There are many multi-chapter sidequests, but most involve lengthy conversations or simple combat encounters. Despite a few interesting stories, these missions aren’t great, but the game makes completing them worthwhile, for better or worse. You can earn a lot of money, blueprints and vital recipes by side missions. Unfortunately, I felt obliged to complete as many side missions as I could. I preferred the party bonding missions, in which I learned about my teammates’ troubles by helping them through unique storylines. They were more fun and I was rewarded with greater physical perks like increased strength, defense, etc. It almost required me to play. 

Harvestella runs smoothly, but it can occasionally feel unstable. One example of this was the strange bug in which half of Harvestella’s screen would occasionally flash a solid color. This could happen when it is docked, or while handheld. The game also doesn’t look great on the big screen due to its low-resolution textures and models.

Harvestella’s systems feed together in a way that forces you to engage with nearly everything it offers, whether you want to or not. But these slice-of life activities get in your way of enjoying RPG elements on their own terms. Maximizing a day’s schedule is sometimes rewarding, but the sluggish pacing makes it tough to stay engaged for the long haul. Harvestella makes you do more work than it takes. At 70-80 hours, it’s one of the biggest chores I’ve played in some time. That’s unfortunate because the combat, story, and characters are decent enough that, in a more traditional RPG framework, they’d shine brighter. As it stands, squeezing this fruit isn’t always worth its small amount of juice.