This is a Ghibli inspired, deck building, monster collecting, farming game. That is the perfect combo for me. I've seen all the Ghibli movies and Nausicaa is my favorite manga. I love deck building games like Slay the Spire, Baten Kaitos, Battle Network, Chain of Memories, etc. I love monster collecting games like Megami Tensei, Pokemon, Digimon, and even Spectrobes. I love farming games and I've played most of the Harvest Moon/Story of Season/Rune Factory games, as well as all the major indie games in this genre.
I hope it's clear that I am very qualified to talk about this game. With that in mind, I can confidently say that each aspect of this game is executed very well. If all of those genres appeal to you then go play this game. If you only like a few of those genres but not all, read below.
Aesthetically the game is beautiful. Anyone who has seen Kiki's Delivery Service will immediately recognize the inspiration. Flying around floating islands defeating giant stone guardians gives a Laputa vibe. Then once you get a glider, you've befriended a fox-squirrel like Teto, and you're trying to balance nature then you'll feel like Nausicaa. Great pixel art all around.
The deck building allows for tons of different viable strategies. It is easy to add and remove cards so it's possible to often adapt to new tactics. There's also just a surprising amount of cards. Towards the end of the game I was still pulling new cards I had never seen before regularly. As each type of monster has different types of cards they can pull, and some monster types won't be see till the end of the in-game year, there's tons of incentive to be consistently changing your strategies.
The monster collecting is great. Taming isn't hard, just feed the monster while battling it. Each species of monster has a unique ability, some of which is useful in battle while some are useful in the overworld. There's no type chart. Every monster has two random weaknesses. This means it's worth catching multiple of the same species and using different party members. A Poison type dungeon will use poison attacks, but since you don't know what the boss will be weak to it's worth bringing a diverse team.
For the social aspects, I really like how the player can go on dates right away. The date dialogue is much more interesting than the daily greetings that make up the bulk of most farming game NPC dialogue. The cast is also diverse with multiple different accents to keep character distinct. I settled down with a 50 year old divorced mother. I love how this was an option as usually all romanceables in farming games are just teens/early 20s people.
Farming is primarily for feeding to your monsters for daily stat buffs rather than selling for money. I spent little time doing this actually as I got sprinklers immediately. All farmables appear in the overworld to be picked and this was fine for the early game. In the mid game though, using fertilizer and turning the crops into potions makes a huge difference.
A significant portion of playtime is spent exploring. The location of islands is randomly generated and the player has to fly everywhere to put them on the map. There's also thirty dungeons with some very simple puzzles. So the gameplay loop is usually checking on crops, uncovering the map, doing a dungeon, taming some new monsters, upgrading your deck, and having a date before the day is over.
The only problems, as of March 2024, is that the game has some annoying menuing and a lack of proper tips. Healing your party is odd. The player needs to equip an item, hold down that button, walk up to each monster, go to the third option to feed them, then choose the healing item in the inventory. Likewise, if I put ore and fuel in a furnace it doesn't automatically start as I have to click a start button, which gets annoying after doing it so many times. This stuff could be easily fixed but probably won't be too annoying as long as you don't play the whole game at once.
The bigger issue is the lack of tips. I've seen too many people give up on this game because they wanted a Ghibli farming game but they couldn't beat any more dungeons because they didn't understand the core concept of keeping your deck small. Too many players that like deck builders thought they needed to grind for better stats, when in reality their level was fine but they just needed to grow crops and make potions.
No aspect of the game can be ignored, and if you don't know how one of the genre works then you'll need to learn about it, possibly from outside sources. This isn't a hard game at all, but for the audience of a game that markets itself as cozy, people are likely to give up if they hit any kind of wall. If you're willing to learn then you'll have a great time. If you hope that you can just avoid one aspect of the game then this isn't for you.
I hope it's clear that I am very qualified to talk about this game. With that in mind, I can confidently say that each aspect of this game is executed very well. If all of those genres appeal to you then go play this game. If you only like a few of those genres but not all, read below.
Aesthetically the game is beautiful. Anyone who has seen Kiki's Delivery Service will immediately recognize the inspiration. Flying around floating islands defeating giant stone guardians gives a Laputa vibe. Then once you get a glider, you've befriended a fox-squirrel like Teto, and you're trying to balance nature then you'll feel like Nausicaa. Great pixel art all around.
The deck building allows for tons of different viable strategies. It is easy to add and remove cards so it's possible to often adapt to new tactics. There's also just a surprising amount of cards. Towards the end of the game I was still pulling new cards I had never seen before regularly. As each type of monster has different types of cards they can pull, and some monster types won't be see till the end of the in-game year, there's tons of incentive to be consistently changing your strategies.
The monster collecting is great. Taming isn't hard, just feed the monster while battling it. Each species of monster has a unique ability, some of which is useful in battle while some are useful in the overworld. There's no type chart. Every monster has two random weaknesses. This means it's worth catching multiple of the same species and using different party members. A Poison type dungeon will use poison attacks, but since you don't know what the boss will be weak to it's worth bringing a diverse team.
For the social aspects, I really like how the player can go on dates right away. The date dialogue is much more interesting than the daily greetings that make up the bulk of most farming game NPC dialogue. The cast is also diverse with multiple different accents to keep character distinct. I settled down with a 50 year old divorced mother. I love how this was an option as usually all romanceables in farming games are just teens/early 20s people.
Farming is primarily for feeding to your monsters for daily stat buffs rather than selling for money. I spent little time doing this actually as I got sprinklers immediately. All farmables appear in the overworld to be picked and this was fine for the early game. In the mid game though, using fertilizer and turning the crops into potions makes a huge difference.
A significant portion of playtime is spent exploring. The location of islands is randomly generated and the player has to fly everywhere to put them on the map. There's also thirty dungeons with some very simple puzzles. So the gameplay loop is usually checking on crops, uncovering the map, doing a dungeon, taming some new monsters, upgrading your deck, and having a date before the day is over.
The only problems, as of March 2024, is that the game has some annoying menuing and a lack of proper tips. Healing your party is odd. The player needs to equip an item, hold down that button, walk up to each monster, go to the third option to feed them, then choose the healing item in the inventory. Likewise, if I put ore and fuel in a furnace it doesn't automatically start as I have to click a start button, which gets annoying after doing it so many times. This stuff could be easily fixed but probably won't be too annoying as long as you don't play the whole game at once.
The bigger issue is the lack of tips. I've seen too many people give up on this game because they wanted a Ghibli farming game but they couldn't beat any more dungeons because they didn't understand the core concept of keeping your deck small. Too many players that like deck builders thought they needed to grind for better stats, when in reality their level was fine but they just needed to grow crops and make potions.
No aspect of the game can be ignored, and if you don't know how one of the genre works then you'll need to learn about it, possibly from outside sources. This isn't a hard game at all, but for the audience of a game that markets itself as cozy, people are likely to give up if they hit any kind of wall. If you're willing to learn then you'll have a great time. If you hope that you can just avoid one aspect of the game then this isn't for you.