It's a shame this game wasn't advertised all that well, because honestly it's pretty great. Rather than the farming sim they pretended it is, it's more of a low budget jrpg with farming sim elements/structure. My daily routine in this game ended up being: farming -> side quests and character bonding -> dungeon exploration and story progression. Unlike, say, Rune Factory, the farming part ended up being a small portion of the game, with everything else taking most of my time.
The story is pretty slow paced and really takes its sweet time getting anywhere, even for a slow burn, but once it does it starts to go pretty insane. I'd describe it as a mix of Nier Automata and Xenogears, albeit a little more optimistic than those two in terms of tone. There are some truly crazy twists that stick the landing better than you might expect, and overall it just punched so much above its weight I was kind of shocked. While it is a bit limited by its budget, they do a really good job at using it well, and some of those late game areas/cutscenes look super good. Aria is also a very strong heroine with a great arc, and ends up being surprisingly fleshed out.
The side quests themselves are alright, they get you to do somewhat tedious tasks in exchange for world building. I did get pretty exhausted by how many focus on the most stereotypical straight romances ever, but there are some that go in surprising directions.
But it's the character quests that work as the real strength of the side content. There's about 10 in total, and each one does a fantastic job at developing each character, giving them strong arcs and exploring some really interesting and unique ideas. There wasn't a single one I found weak, and I greatly appreciated the variety they offered—no two feel the same. It's a bit of a shame that the cast dynamics aren't quite as developed in the main story, but at least these quests gave me a lot of reasons to care about them.
Romance is barely even an afterthought, and gets kinda tacked on in the postgame. I picked Brakka, and his was... fine, but pretty basic and short. There's also a pretty uneven gender ratio of romanceable characters, so you're pretty limited in options if you wanna go for one of the guys (especially when 2/3 have stories focused on letting go of a woman they cared for...)
Combat itself is sorta basic MMO stuff, there's a bunch of classes to switch between and a tiny bit of positioning, but overall it's a lot of dealing with cooldowns. The dungeons themselves are surprisingly well designed in spite of their limited budget, and the developers get insanely creative at using their limited resources/assets to create tricky little puzzles (mostly avoiding easily aggro'd super enemies that will destroy you), and keeping the layouts fresh and engaging.
The soundtrack was composed by Go Shiina, so obviously it's amazing. I'm not sure how they got him, but his pieces enhance the game so much, providing a big variety of unique songs. There is some iffy music direction here and there, such as certain dungeons using music more appropriate for short moments in cutscenes, but for the most part these songs are used very well.
It's also nice to see a Japanese game let you romance whoever the hell you want, and pick pronouns for your self-insert character. While I'm a bit too cis to appreciate the latter, I'm def giving this game credit for that.
Overall Harvestella is pretty awesome—I mean, I did put 75 hours into this thing. While it can be a bit of a jack of all trades master of none, it clearly has a lot of heart put into it, and the story sure does go places that only the most ambitious science fantasy jrpgs can claim to have in common. I highly recommend this to people who want something like Rune Factory, but with a stronger emphasis on story/dungeons/platonic bonding, and less emphasis on farming/crafting/developing romances.
The story is pretty slow paced and really takes its sweet time getting anywhere, even for a slow burn, but once it does it starts to go pretty insane. I'd describe it as a mix of Nier Automata and Xenogears, albeit a little more optimistic than those two in terms of tone. There are some truly crazy twists that stick the landing better than you might expect, and overall it just punched so much above its weight I was kind of shocked. While it is a bit limited by its budget, they do a really good job at using it well, and some of those late game areas/cutscenes look super good. Aria is also a very strong heroine with a great arc, and ends up being surprisingly fleshed out.
The side quests themselves are alright, they get you to do somewhat tedious tasks in exchange for world building. I did get pretty exhausted by how many focus on the most stereotypical straight romances ever, but there are some that go in surprising directions.
But it's the character quests that work as the real strength of the side content. There's about 10 in total, and each one does a fantastic job at developing each character, giving them strong arcs and exploring some really interesting and unique ideas. There wasn't a single one I found weak, and I greatly appreciated the variety they offered—no two feel the same. It's a bit of a shame that the cast dynamics aren't quite as developed in the main story, but at least these quests gave me a lot of reasons to care about them.
Romance is barely even an afterthought, and gets kinda tacked on in the postgame. I picked Brakka, and his was... fine, but pretty basic and short. There's also a pretty uneven gender ratio of romanceable characters, so you're pretty limited in options if you wanna go for one of the guys (especially when 2/3 have stories focused on letting go of a woman they cared for...)
Combat itself is sorta basic MMO stuff, there's a bunch of classes to switch between and a tiny bit of positioning, but overall it's a lot of dealing with cooldowns. The dungeons themselves are surprisingly well designed in spite of their limited budget, and the developers get insanely creative at using their limited resources/assets to create tricky little puzzles (mostly avoiding easily aggro'd super enemies that will destroy you), and keeping the layouts fresh and engaging.
The soundtrack was composed by Go Shiina, so obviously it's amazing. I'm not sure how they got him, but his pieces enhance the game so much, providing a big variety of unique songs. There is some iffy music direction here and there, such as certain dungeons using music more appropriate for short moments in cutscenes, but for the most part these songs are used very well.
It's also nice to see a Japanese game let you romance whoever the hell you want, and pick pronouns for your self-insert character. While I'm a bit too cis to appreciate the latter, I'm def giving this game credit for that.
Overall Harvestella is pretty awesome—I mean, I did put 75 hours into this thing. While it can be a bit of a jack of all trades master of none, it clearly has a lot of heart put into it, and the story sure does go places that only the most ambitious science fantasy jrpgs can claim to have in common. I highly recommend this to people who want something like Rune Factory, but with a stronger emphasis on story/dungeons/platonic bonding, and less emphasis on farming/crafting/developing romances.