I thought this was gonna be a, even if mediocre, good game to spend some time chilling.

At first it was cool and light enough to enjoy it, it was going good. But then the story begun to get convoluted as always and the farming mechanics turned into a hustle more than anything. It was then, when I realized it was going to be "longer than a day without bread" (as we say in Spain), that I just refused to go on.

Good luck if you try so.

I gave it a try, but having such a slow burn intro (game still hasnt felt like it started at hour 5) without having the plot, characters or setting to back it up. The game just feels soulless, and the farming mechanics are more a formality to give the game a gimmick, because dungeon crawling is an all day affair, and theres no customization or real reason to want to waste time farming.

To the games credit, it looks pretty good on Switch, the soundtrack is great and farming mechanics are simple and avoid being tedious. But an RPG with such a bland plot is meaningless. I have no desire to see the class mechanics when there's still tons of great JRPGs for me to play.

*To elaborate, tilling soil and watering crops is way less tedious than Rune Factory or even Stardew, because its not trying to be time consuming.

It just has the vibes, y'know. The farming is not especially complex but chill enough, the combat is janky but actually kinda relaxing if you play as a mage - and the story and world(-building) are actually really interesting! The game's also quite gorgeous, the artstyle and artworks and everything "art-" work really well together! I think I just kinda played it a little to much and a little to intensely, now I'm looking for something else - I will definitely finish this, one day in the future, but for now I need a break.

Harvestella is one of those games that instantly grabbed me with its charming artstyle and vibrant landscapes.
Similar to Rune Factory, Harvestella blends hacknslash with farming simulation with enough depth to last out its 70 hour plus span.

There's a continuous growth in both aspects with skilltrees and added abilities for combat as there are tools, facilities and tons of recipes to gather for crafting and cooking, as well as levelling up abilities for farming throughout clearing different achievements.

That being said, there's also some areas of simplicity with minuscule gear customising and a glaring lack of parrying for the dungeon crawling.
Meanwhile the farming doesn't really offer too much variety in seeds or farm animals other than cufflows (fluffy chickens) and Woollums (more fluffy goats).
In the end the farming aspect serves as a hub simply for gathering foods and buffs to keep both your health and endlessly depleting stamina gauge up for your dungeon spelunking and if you play it right you honestly don't need to do much self managing with your farm when you craft more tools than can even do the work for you.

While the game starts out slow and sluggish, the story slowly strays through some typical plotlines, which thankfully is aided by some inventive twists and a likeable cast as you get past the early chapters and you start affinity bonding with your party members for some heartfelt individual stories. The interactions are mainly through the side characters to the main character and not as much bantering between the party itself, but it does work surprisingly well in the context of how the game has you generally in the center of the narration.

The lack of voice acting and overabundance of stock animation does hurt some of the experience alongside some chuggy framedips. It's a bummer considering how well written the story is towards the second half and how spectular the presentation can get for a few key events and especially for the bossfights.

While you will hear some tracks being replayed a bit too much in some cutscenes and even recycled at some dungeons, the individual tracks are by themselves nicely orchestrated pieces composed by Go Shiina and past chapter 3 the variety does get a lot better with some fantastic dungeon themes.

I really enjoyed my time with Harvestella and while the presentation can at times be sub par for it's steep pricing, Harvestella is loaded with lots of content, decent gameplay and a charming artistic style that may make it's steep admission worthwhile if you tolerate a few glaring rough spots.

Can actually play as non-binary for once! 🙏 Really makes a difference, considering the protagonist is meant to be relatively self-insert.
Graphics on Switch version are often very bleary, especially noticeable in handheld mode. Shame, because it's otherwise very pretty. The character art is lovely.
Engaging gameplay, allowing the player to create their own balance between farming and JRPG elements, without forcing either. It is more JRPG than it is farming sim (the farming doesn't have the same depth as is found in others of the genre), but one can take the quests and story at their own pace.
Varied job system, and the story is interesting enough so far. Has side quests I actually want to do.
Appealing characters (moreso for me when compared with other farming life sims). Everyone has nice voice acting – too bad it's limited to small lines here and there.
Romance options are not gender-locked~
And the music is lovely... Would definitely purchase the soundtrack if they release that.

I played through most of Harvestella in three months, in bigger bursts. Then, after taking a break for three more months, I finally finished the last chunk, only three hours or so long. And I think I only now get what this game is going for, and I'm kinda sad it took me this long to realize, but well, it also made it kinda hard for me.

My reason for the break and the biggest problem in my view (next to the game being a little too long) is the huuuge discrepancy between the urgency of the story and the really relaxed farming gameplay. Its world is repeteatedly threatened by total destruction, yet Harvestella wants me to farm the ingridients and ressources to stop that destruction by playing in a relaxed, day-to-day farming-sim-fashion. This really turned me off from engaging with that aspect in the latter half of the game, because it felt so tonally dissonant. The interesting mysteries the games' plot revolve around also result in a kind of urgency to speedily move through the game. This ended up hurting the experience for me, as I think Harvestella is at its best when the loop of getting stronger through (literally) farming (Most of the time I ended up crafting dishes and drinks to enhance my health pool) and then advancing the story.

But I nontheless really love this game. It's story is really bold, picking a theme and confidently running with it until the very end. Harvestella imagines a Sci-Fi world which finds it hope in Fantasy, and I think that's just such a nice and original central idea. It's also such a beautiful game with gorgeous enviromental design and a great soundtrack, that allow it to really be flexible - even if there's a discrepancy on the gameplay side of things, the audiovisual indentity of this game contains both urgency and relaxedness really well. I don't believe they had a big budget here and I think they put the attention to detail in mostly the right places. The side quests are also really sweet and interesting, mostly skipping the unneccessary grinding and getting straight to the emotional core of each situation.

I think what I love most about Harvestella is its boldness, its vibes and it's readyness to create a little friction sometimes. It's such a lovely little gem that manages to combine familiar tropes and gameplay systems with its own ideas in a way that results in an experience that feels fresh. And I think that experience is best-played slowly, taking breaks as often and as long as you like.

Love the idea and work for this game but has it’s fair share of flaws.

Before I get into my review I just want to say that Harvestella is NOT your typical farming RPG. Yes there is farming in Harvestella but it focuses more on storytelling, exploration and combat like a traditional action JRPG. My main point being if you’re expecting Harvestella to be like Rune Factory, Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons you’ll likely be disappointed. That being said I had so much fun with this game. I did play on the Switch and while the graphics are just okay the visuals look amazing, the beauty and designs of the world looks like a mini version of Xenoblade Chronicles. The art direction for this game is VERY underrated, I love seeing all the glowing trees, crystals and crops during the night. The world itself has lot of detail for its villages and towns and feels alive in a believable way. And there’s also other biomes which look totally gorgeous. The first in game month or so is the tutorial, I personally don’t mind but I can see that being a turn off for some people. I’ll admit it’s very slow to really get rolling with Harvestella but once you get to chapter 3 things really start to get fun. You’ll get to do more with farming and combat. You’ll be able to plant a diverse amount of crops depending on the season and will eventually start raise live stock and you can cook up meals which is crucial for your hunger and stamina or you can sell your meals for high prices. Each season lasts 1 month and you have a one day season called Quietus which kills any and all living beings. Combat was just okay, I really didn’t like the controls for combat as it felt a bit off to me. It can get repetitive but you’ll be able to manage combat more when you have a party to fight with. You can also get jobs which unlock skill trees to upgrade your abilities. You don’t need to grind levels for you party members in this game which is a relief to me. Something I hated about combat is that you need to keep your hunger satisfied in order to have stamina to swing your weapons and sometimes I would get hungry in the middle of a fight with no stamina. Time management is a little bad at first but overall wasn’t a big deal for me honestly when I got used to it. There’s side quest as well which are nothing special since they’re your usual go and fetch quests but the stories for them are worth it at least. Something many critics and reviews didn’t talk about is the romance in this game. YES there is romance in Harvestella but it’s romance to a certain extent. During the main story you’ll build up friendships with some of the characters you’ll encounter. Once you max them out you get an engagement ring blueprint from the mayor after you complete the game and you can use that to craft an engagement ring and choose on who you want to take on as your “partner” aka lover for the post game. The soundtrack is chill with some of the ost being very memorable and relaxing.

Main story was pretty generic but was decent enough to keep me interested. The characters you’ll meet all have personality that suit them well. And as I said earlier in my review the story for the side quests are worth it. I loved learning about the problems some of the people have all while learning more about the world and lore of Harvestella. And as you build your friendships you have even more story to see which I absolutely loved.

I believe Square Enix did a good job, not great but I can appreciate the effort for this game a lot. I’d argue this isn’t worth full price since there are games that did better for a lot cheaper but I don’t regret my time with this game as I had tons of fun and will continue on playing for now to see what else Harvestella has in store for me.

Good things:
- The farming tools look great. Their design is not the one you find in all farming games, and despite how notofthisworld they feel you can see how they would work.
- The farming aspect sometimes feels good. Barely.

Bad:
-Everything else.

I tried to ignore the bad in order to enjoy the good it had, but the game won't allow you. Buy any other farming game over this.

good game, changed for the better after the demo critiques, but the price is a little bit too high.

the stamina is so annoying I had to let my mates kill a boss bc my stamina was empty and it took sooooo long

overall having fun and just waiting for Brakka

Honestly, the older I get, the more I realize how much I hate time-wasting mechanics.
I really dislike stamina bars and time restrictions that limit what I can do in a "day", especially when that stamina bar dictates everything - from exploration to combat - and does not regenerate automatically for some fucking reason. I dislike trekking through overly-long levels and dungeons with a bunch of inconsequential loot as a reward for exploration. I dislike meandering story-telling where all of the characters are idiots and the pacing is constantly slowed down to explain things to you or being forced to "regroup" and stop your exploration.
I've just been having such a hard time getting into JRPGs lately, even though it used to be one of my favourite genres to play, and I dislike that I don't have the patience for this genre any more. As an adult and having to manage my time to make a place for things I enjoy like gaming and movies and reading, I really appreciate a game that doesn't waste my time more than anything else in the world.

Boy, is it ever nice to be gay AND nonbinary AND treated like that’s no big deal!!

Farming starts off incredibly simple compared to something like Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but does get slightly more varied as the game progresses.

Easy action RPG elements, slightly more complicated than the farming, but no big challenge. I only died a few times, and never to a story boss.

The way this game explores tragedy reminded me of my favorite parts of Breath of Fire 1+2 and Infinite Undiscovery. The emotions and heart in the main and side quests are powerful, but unsettlingly for such a modern game, nobody breaks down? It is some kind of experience for utterly heart-wrenching circumstances to play out over and over but the people on-screen don't have the good weep they deserve. (There is one instance of particularly sharp emotion that really sold it that time, at least.)

While there is no consistent voice acting or expressions on character models (only their portraits) to bolster the emotional moments, the soundtrack is one of the most poignant I’ve heard in a video game. Some tracks are downright haunting. Could not have asked for better!

Also the food looks unbelievably delicious and the fish look gorgeous. The artist went ham on those. 10/10.

Great, highly-recommended experience overall; no regrets on tolerating “Hellooo little croppieees~” from the fairy over my shoulder on repeat.

The game is a fantastic adventure, with a incredible story which makes the world that you live in feel alive.

As an Action RPG this game is must have, it has an increible combat system that gets better the more you effort put in to it.

My biggest problem and the reason this game has such a low rating in spite of my praises is simply that as a farming game/Simulation game, The thing that was marketed the most, falls flat in a lot of areas, it does some really nice things, however, the thing that hinders it the most is how basic it is, on top of how much you depend from it to get good healing in the late game, you better save your crops, because instead of using them to grow friendships, it is exclusively for money and food, which is fine, but something to consider that this was the selling point of the game.