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Harvestella review: a traditional JRPG with an agricultural twist


Harvestella is a JRPG. This may seem like an obvious thing when it comes to a Square-Enix role-playing game, but it’s the most important thing to know when getting in. Billed as a life simulator RPGand with a title that evokes agriculture, you could be forgiven for expecting something along the lines of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but with more monsters. Instead, Harvestella sits firmly in the epic quest camp, with your adventure backed up by your country activities.

Anyone who wants to build a pastoral paradise will be very disappointed because the farming elements are a bit primitive. Even calling your property a farm is a little stressful. Even after a few upgrades, my plot still resembles a larger garden, possibly distributed, if I’m generous.

If calling your plot a farm is the best-selling stuff, your initial description of your place as a warehouse is exactly the opposite. It’s a lovely little house that I’m pretty sure is larger than my two-bedroom house. The downside is, like the farm, there’s no customization to talk about. While some new items appear in the game, such as a kitchen that you must unlock soon and an impressively large tome that keeps a record of your various farming and combat achievements, all Both are pretty quiet. Character customization is also limited. You can choose your gender presentation as well as the color of your eyes, hair, and skin, but that’s it. In a good touch, you choose your pronouns, voice, and body separately, though the latter is between androgynous and girly. There’s no beefcake explorer for you!

That’s not to say the farming and crafting side of things isn’t well integrated with adventure. Your fitness bar only regenerates when you’ve been fed. Food and drink offer all the healing, healing and power-up properties you would expect from potions and the like in a typical fantasy RPG. You also craft tools like repair kits and bombs, which are used to open hidden areas and shortcuts while digging your dungeon. Excess produce could be sold for cash, and one of the most reliable sources of income was cooking a variety of dishes for the inns in each town.


Most importantly, the life of the sim creates a solid foundation for your adventures. You start the day, watering and harvesting your crops as well as collecting produce from your animals, a process that only takes a few minutes, thanks to a number of in-game crystal items that are quickly positioned well. After any replant, you start any quest or quest on the agenda until 10pm when your character gets tired and their stats drop. Then you go home to sleep and start over. The clock will pause whenever you’re in a cutscene or a chat, so if you’re doing a lot of side quests, a day can last a while. Otherwise, it only takes you 10-15 minutes of real time to get through the day. This sets a pleasant rhythm to the proceedings, cutting everything into bite-sized portions and adding a more enjoyable, “just one more turn”.

Constantly jumping in and out of dungeons as these time constraints can be frustrating, but they have been cleverly structured to work in rhythm

Constantly jumping in and out of dungeons because of these time constraints can be frustrating, but they’ve been cleverly structured to work in rhythm. Dungeons are of two types, they are wild areas that you are trying to cross, then they can only be traversed on the world map, or they are locations with a target and finally a monster. big boss. In either case, they’re filled with shortcuts to unlock as you progress, making it quicker and easier to hit the same score next time. It’s a bit like working through an area in Dark Souls, except instead of rereading the area because you died to an undead monster, it’s because you have to go back home to get a crew and do another one. number of snacks.




As for the battle itself, it’s… fine. It’s simple in real time with one button attack, dodge, and up to four different special skills on the cooldown meter. They are mostly massive attacks, but also have some buff and debuff abilities. It’s made up in part by a work system, which I’ve always been a fan of. Every time a new character joins the party, it opens up their class as a job for the main character. You can have up to three of these gear at once and switch between them during combat, albeit with a short cooldown. Enemies have weak points and elemental resistances, and what little depth comes from combining your team and work to deal with the spread of enemies in a given dungeon. Bosses can be “broken” by dealing enough damage of the type they are weak in, which gives you an extra damage interval. Gaining a Double Break allows you to unleash your buddy’s special move. Like the farming side, it’s all pretty basic, but it comes together very well.

It sounds like I’m pretty frustrated about everything, but the truth of the matter is that I really like the game. As I may have mentioned, Harvestella is a lot like a JRPG, which means it’s filled with over-engineered costumes and charming pretty towns, and is a little uncomfortable for the first hour or two. It’s also total nerd and I’m an absolute fan of an anime-style roller coaster ride of a story. The game opens with your amnesiac protagonist appearing outside the village of Lethe (I understand what they did there) not long before a large crystal containing a girl from the future falls from the sky. sky. Before you know it, you’re on your way to saving the world by fixing some even larger crystals called Seaslight and that’s before it begins to delve into soft, smooth themes. such as the meaning of life and death, or the nature of faith.


Side quests underpin everything and let you know the group of bad guys you’ve accumulated along the way. A lot of these people head straight for the cheap melodrama genre and make me reach for the tissue directly. They have an orphanage in the second town, friends, the second bloody town. Harvestella goes straight to the heart cord, through your chest if necessary.

Overall, the presentation was lovely, especially the music, however, it’s clear this is a Switch game. The limitations of the hardware it was designed for are obvious, and there are very few graphical options to tweak. It’s not entirely a negative, as it feels like a great game to curl up on the sofa with a handheld, and it makes me really wish I had a Steam Deck to play it with.

Harvestella is not just the sum total of its distinctive parts. Almost every aspect of it just does the job it’s supposed to, but it all comes together so well that it becomes a must-have fun experience. If you’re looking for a meaty JRPG to eat delicious bites on those longer nights than ever, you absolutely can’t go wrong with this one.

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