Really an ARPG that happens to have some farming in it rather than the Square Enix take on a Rune Factory-like that I expected it to be. Which would be fine, except it's not a very good ARPG. The class system is neat but actually playing it feels like an unpleasant midpoint between Dark Souls and, I don't know, Nier Automata or something. You have basic combos but actually committing to one, or using a class ability, locks you into an attack animation, but at the same time there's not much point in being patient and picking your shots Souls-style because the game doesn't really let you dodge anything anyway and you're just kind of expected to mitigate damage by eating food. Feels very sloppy.

As a farming game it seems to think the appeal of farming RPGs is entirely in doing daily chores. There's no sense of entering a community where everyone knows each other, no events to speak of (whether it be something like a town festival or really bad weather you need to prepare for), and barely any sense of the passing of seasons because each town in the game represents their own season so it can be the middle of summer but you're spending your time in the town where it's always cold and snowy. I didn't make it to winter but in spring, summer and fall my farm just kind of felt like it was in stasis.

I hung on for longer than I would have because I was told that its narrative gets weird in the back half. And it does! Just not enough that it seemed worth it to put more than the 60 hours I'd already sunk into it. I did find it kind of funny though how brazenly it lifts from a certain cult ARPG released in the last decade.

Cool music though!