C_Aves86
2 reviews liked by C_Aves86
Harvestella
2022
It was. Okay. The sharp division between farming game and dungeon crawling rpg felt too harsh and made progression feel plodding at times. 2 halves of mid games shoved together to make a midder game. Oh well!!!!
Seemed really hard for me to grasp at first but then I realized all you really need are ninjas, archers, and crafted equipment, and then it was a cakewalk.
tl;dr: I like this game! I think the story cutscene to fight ratio isn't balanced enough, and there's characters with wasted potential, but it's still really cool!
The story is interesting! There's warring nations and political power struggles flying around with Denam (the main character) caught in the middle of everything and trying to figure out how what exactly he wants his role to be in all this. There are two main routes you can go, chaos or law, and I picked chaos. Honestly, there were so many names for me to keep track of and a lot of characters that didn't leave much of an impression that parts of it kind of blurred together? It didn't really help that there were a lot, and I mean like a lot of fights. I feel like for every fight there was 1 short to medium length cutscene until the very end, where you have to do at least 10 fights in a row with maybe 1 story cutscene thrown in there. This wouldn't seem so bad at first until you realize a fight can take between 5-10 minutes if it's short, and can go on longer if it's particularly difficult.
Luckily, there's an in game encyclopedia called the Warren Report that contains character profiles for every named boss and npc mentioned, and also the ability to rewatch cutscenes, so I was able to keep up enough with what was going on. You can read things like in universe news reports that sometimes unlocks side dungeons and content, which I think is cute. I appreciate how all the character profiles change depending on what happens in the story, so it's constantly updating Denam and other story relevant characters' summaries.
The characters are, like I said, a little on the weak side save for a few people but they serve their purpose for the story. There are characters that seem interesting at first that don't really do or say much story wise after they join your team, and I feel like it's a wasted opportunity. It would have been cool to see some characters interacting with Denam and building up relationships with him, or weighing in their opinions in general with whatever situation was going on. That being said, I do like the conflicts Denam faces as he goes on through the story and has to come face to face and deal with dirty political deals and people he morally cannot abide by while trying to stay true to himself. His relationship with both Lanselots, Vyce, and Catiua are all things I liked, though I wish I could have seen some more sides of Catiua that got hinted at near the beginning in the route I played.
I don't really have much to say about the gameplay honestly? It's a fun tactics strategy game similar to final fantasy tactics and fire emblem. It can be hard early game to get through fights before you can get better skills and equipment and units, but that might have just been me not knowing what I was doing and then actually figuring out how things work.
There's some extra story content that got added after the main story in this remake which I have not gotten to yet due to being a bit underleveled, but I would like to eventually. There's also some other extra content the game doesn't outright tell you about, which I think is really cool.
It's not a game I'm crazy about but it was, at the very least, great at scratching the tactical strategy rpg itch I had. I like it and think it's a good game, and I can see why it's a cult classic.
tl;dr: I like this game! I think the story cutscene to fight ratio isn't balanced enough, and there's characters with wasted potential, but it's still really cool!
The story is interesting! There's warring nations and political power struggles flying around with Denam (the main character) caught in the middle of everything and trying to figure out how what exactly he wants his role to be in all this. There are two main routes you can go, chaos or law, and I picked chaos. Honestly, there were so many names for me to keep track of and a lot of characters that didn't leave much of an impression that parts of it kind of blurred together? It didn't really help that there were a lot, and I mean like a lot of fights. I feel like for every fight there was 1 short to medium length cutscene until the very end, where you have to do at least 10 fights in a row with maybe 1 story cutscene thrown in there. This wouldn't seem so bad at first until you realize a fight can take between 5-10 minutes if it's short, and can go on longer if it's particularly difficult.
Luckily, there's an in game encyclopedia called the Warren Report that contains character profiles for every named boss and npc mentioned, and also the ability to rewatch cutscenes, so I was able to keep up enough with what was going on. You can read things like in universe news reports that sometimes unlocks side dungeons and content, which I think is cute. I appreciate how all the character profiles change depending on what happens in the story, so it's constantly updating Denam and other story relevant characters' summaries.
The characters are, like I said, a little on the weak side save for a few people but they serve their purpose for the story. There are characters that seem interesting at first that don't really do or say much story wise after they join your team, and I feel like it's a wasted opportunity. It would have been cool to see some characters interacting with Denam and building up relationships with him, or weighing in their opinions in general with whatever situation was going on. That being said, I do like the conflicts Denam faces as he goes on through the story and has to come face to face and deal with dirty political deals and people he morally cannot abide by while trying to stay true to himself. His relationship with both Lanselots, Vyce, and Catiua are all things I liked, though I wish I could have seen some more sides of Catiua that got hinted at near the beginning in the route I played.
I don't really have much to say about the gameplay honestly? It's a fun tactics strategy game similar to final fantasy tactics and fire emblem. It can be hard early game to get through fights before you can get better skills and equipment and units, but that might have just been me not knowing what I was doing and then actually figuring out how things work.
There's some extra story content that got added after the main story in this remake which I have not gotten to yet due to being a bit underleveled, but I would like to eventually. There's also some other extra content the game doesn't outright tell you about, which I think is really cool.
It's not a game I'm crazy about but it was, at the very least, great at scratching the tactical strategy rpg itch I had. I like it and think it's a good game, and I can see why it's a cult classic.