Harvestella
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Critic Reviews for Harvestella
Harvestella stumbles before it finds a decent pace, with the biggest drawbacks being the slow start and temperamental graphics. If you can get past these shortcomings, there’s plenty to be enjoyed here and a hefty completion time to keep you busy. While it offers an enjoyable blend of RPG meets life sim, there isn’t enough substance on either side to take the game from good to great.
Harvestella’s systems feed together in a way that forces you to engage with nearly everything it offers, whether you want to or not. But those slice-of-life activities are mundane and get in the way of letting you enjoy the RPG elements on your own terms. Maximizing a day’s schedule is sometimes rewarding, but the sluggish pacing makes it tough to stay engaged for the long haul. Harvestella forces you to do a whole lot to complete comparatively little. At 70-80 hours, it’s one of the biggest chores I’ve played in some time. That’s unfortunate because the combat, story, and characters are decent enough that, in a more traditional RPG framework, they’d shine brighter. As it stands, squeezing this fruit isn’t always worth its small amount of juice.
Harvestella attempts to create a unique gaming experience by combining farming and life sim elements with action RPG elements.
Harvestella could be described as one of the best 'good' games you'll play this year. Its performance issues and rather simplistic mechanics hold it back from being great, but its quest design, dungeon exploration, and successful fusion of very distinct gameplay mechanics make it quite compelling all the same. That launch day $60 price tag feels a little high for what's on offer here, but this is absolutely a title that we'd recommend farm sim fans buy when the inevitable sales start to crop up. Harvestella may not be a challenger to Stardew Valley's crown, but it does enough to distinguish itself as a worthwhile experience anyway.
If you can overlook these issues, and are a fan of stuff like Rune Factory, Stardew Valley or even the slept-on Level 5 title Fantasy Life – the latter a definite kindred spirit in terms of its JRPG tropes, action, farming and jobs – then you will get a lot out of Harvestella.
Solid and definitely have an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
A good mix between life-sim and GdR, Harvestella seems to be a game addressed to the less experienced players, rather than the expert ones.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Harvestella starts from a very interesting proposal, combining a story in the style of Final Fantasy with mechanics of games like Stardew Valley, but fails to give the chest by not delving into any of its elements. Add technical defects and we have the clear case of an AA game that with a little more time and budget could be AAA.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
