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.
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.