Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a wonderful mix of the two ideas. As a platformer, the game wouldn’t have enough driving force, and would wear out quickly. For farming, while it’s truly lovely, there’s too much downtime with not enough to do. Each of these things in a game of their own would be draining, but together it creates a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of a game that deserves recognition and continues to feel fresh and enjoyable even after 20 hours in.
If you want a pretty easy anime game with a fun story and an honestly very easy platinum, this game is for you, but it is hard to recommend outside of a preexisting base of Fairy Tail fans.
There is enough variance to make sure for a large majority of story battles you have a way of coming in with a fresh look, but the battles kind of always play out the same way, so it’s frustrating when the build you brought isn’t good enough and you struggle to get through what you were clearing before without any problems.
The best thing that can be said of Atelier Ryza is that it is accessible. Down to its core it is meant to be enjoyed by new players or by series veterans who might be looking for a nice light addition to the franchise.