Chelsy Lee

Square Enix's attempt to break into the farming simulators, it’s not bad. It’s not great or ground breaking, nor is the story all that great. Honestly, it could be better in that reguard. So let me tell you the bad, the good, the ugly and the beautiful. Let’s get the bad and ugly out of the way, which are more just Meh, then bad. The avatars in game play are stuck between being CGI and pixelated, looking more like AI design game play. While it isn’t bad or distracting, it’s just notceable. The time in one day still goes a little too fast for my taste, but it’s not terrable and there’s no rush to complete quests or the main storyline. The story is, to me, bland. Square always has had a thing for time travel and this holds true even for Harvestellia. A pet peeve of mine is that your avatar is supposed to be the main character, but makes one of the side characters, Aria the main character. Their stories don’t even enter twine, which would make sense if Aria is to be the second protagonist. I would honestly like to learn more about us. There’s also parts of dialogues where I was shouting at my Switch “stop making choices for me.” Just one character, that’s all I need, to say this. What about the good and the beautiful? What Square got right, they definitely got right. The soundtrack is steller, particularly the Castle of Illusion dungeon and Coral Shrine Dungeon. The soundtrack for these two are hauntingly beautiful. The background graphics are stunning, with striking colors, giving the landscape more personality than even the character. When choosing your gender, there’s an option for non-binary, which is great in gaming. I do find it interesting that it’s farming simulators that lead the way, but whatever. All the romanables are available no matter what gender you choose. While there is voice acting in battle, there isn’t any throughout the game, which I think was a smart movie. Adding voice acting over the box texts, would take some of the charm of this game away. If you do run out of time in the day, they make it easy to get back to the homebase, instead of running around the world map. Which I apprechate. What could make this game even better? More quests, even farming quests, which are called fairy quests in game. More exploration of the two worlds, lost gaia and new gaia. There’s so much to this game that feels undone, or unfinished. I can see Harvestellia becoming a dungeon sandbox, which I wouldn’t mind. They could easily make more money off this game though DLC’s, and just keep this game going with DLC and expansion packs. Is it worth the $80? No, I wouldn’t say it is, but is it worth getting at all? Yes, I think it is.