Overall 9 Graphics 9 Sound 6 Addictive 10 Story 9 Depth 10 Difficulty 5
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My Favorite Square Enix Game On The Switch zanderlex
Square Enix has developed and published a lot of amazing games during their long history. They developed two of the biggest RPG franchises in the world with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. They made smaller but still pretty big franchises like Kingdom Hearts and Mana, and they made a bunch of other games too. But out of their impressive game library, Harvestella ended up being my favorite Square Enix game by a long shot. The game is a mix between JRPG and farming sim and it pulls it off perfectly.
Not only did this become my most favorite Square Enix game, but one of my most favorite Switch games period for a number of reasons. The first reason is that this is a genuinely good game that I've been really excited for ever since it was first announced. The second reason is that for some reason, I was apparently the only person to get a copy on time, so I ended up playing the game I a lot more than I was planning on so that I could create a lot of content before everyone else. It's also a game that I wish other people would play but in the end, it really seemed like Square Enix left this game out to die.
It has all the makings of a game that could be perfect but the marketing and release ended up being one of the worst that I have ever seen. Before I talk about the marketing, I should reiterate that I love farming games, it's one of my top 5 most favorite genres. I love how casual they are and the large economic systems in many of them. In early 2020, I played Stardew Valley and fell in love with it. Then I went and played every single farming game that I could get my hands on. When I saw the first trailer for Harvestella and the claim that it would also be a fully fledged JRPG, I was really impressed.
But there were so many other farming games being announced at the same time like Rune Factory 3 Special, Story of Seasons, and Doraemon. So even though Harvestella looked amazing, I've seen so many people talking about how bad it is that the market was suddenly flooded with farming games. Right off the bat, Harvestella wasn't getting as much attention as it should because of what the genre was doing and people were getting sick of it. By the time the game was actually released, the marketing was nowhere near where it should have been, but it only got worse.
I was able to get my physical copy of the game around a week early. I picked up my copy like a day or two before Halloween and I ended up putting around 60 hours in by the time the game was released. I also had my main review go out on the day it was released but then I found out that Square Enix didn't even send out review codes until a day or two before release which meant that my review was the only review available for the entire day. On the service, that sounds good because my stuff ended up getting a lot of attention, but it also meant that there were many people who ended up not getting the game because there were no reviews.
It's a shame because for so long nobody was talking about the game but it's a genuinely good game. On top of that, so many people who don't care for farming didn't even bother to look into this game because of the farming aspects. But the truth is that it's so much more than that.
GAMEPLAY
Over the last few years, there's been a big push where farming games have been trying to add all sorts of combat and RPG elements but many of them outright failed. I think Stardew Valley was the best to do it but mostly because it was very simple. Then you have games like Rune Factory 5 that tried adding a bit extra to the formula but it still didn't work the way most people were hoping because at its core, it was still just a farming game with some RPG elements on the side. That's what a lot of people are afraid of and what people were thinking would happen with Harvestella.
So Harvestella didn't really have a big market to begin with, even before all the promotion issues. People who don't like farming games weren't going to play it anyway. People who like RPG's look at it and think it's a farming game and said no thanks. Then, people who do like farming games were going to be skeptical of what the side combat was going to be like or even skeptical of what a Square Enix take on farming would be like. No matter what Square Enix said or did, Harvestella was always going to be looked at as a farming game with some RPG elements. But the truth is that it's really the other way around. Harvestella is actually a real, fully fledged JRPG that has farming on the side, even if it does feel like there's a ton of farming.
Both the farming and JRPG aspects of Harvestella are amazing, but the farming side of things really just serves as another economic system instead of farming for the sake of farming. When you play your average JRPG, there's always a big emphasis on money and items. In order to get newer and better weapons and items, you have to to fill up your pockets with money and there's always a ton of ways to make money in JRPG's. In your average game, the two biggest ways to make money are from battles and looting. You battle and NPC and you'll get some money, you battle a monster and you'll probably get some money too. When you find items, you can sell them and make even more money.
A really good JRPG will have a million other ways to make money. Many games will have a ton of quests where you can make money as a reward and others will earn you money through the use of jobs, achievements, crafting, hunting, fishing, cooking, mini games, and many other ways. Most JRPG's will include multiple ways to make money and they all serve the purpose of strengthening the RPG side of the game. This is why I say that Harvestella can't really be considered as a farming game. It's a JRP first and foremost with the farming just serving as another way to make money in the game.
In your average farming game, money is pretty useless. You sell all your crops and there's two things that you can do with your money. You either buy more crops to plant way more or you use the money to buy upgrades to your house and farm. That's really all there is to it in your average farming game. you could have 100,000 gold or you could have 5 million gold and in both cases you would be extremely limited to buying just farm related items. It's an endless loop of the same routine. In Harvestella, you still use the money to buy more crops and to upgrade your farm area but the focus is on your RPG adventure.
After playing for like 10 hours, that's what really sold me on the game. I didn't HAVE to farm outside of what was required for the story. I had the freedom to just to the JRPG side of things but then I also had the freedom to farm as much as I want in order to get a ton of money to buy stuff with or to get items that would help you in your adventure. For instance, in Stardew Valley your stamina plays a big role and your health does to an extent and you can use items to restore them. It's the same in Harvestella but your stamina and HP play a much bigger role because your stamina is used for both farming and fighting, and you need a ton of health in the story or you're going to get knocked out a lot.
It's no surprise that the gameplay was the aspect of Harvestella that I liked the most, even after putting in more than 100 hours. When you're looking at the RPG aspect, there's so much to do even though the game is fairly limited with it's stamina and time constraints as well as its pretty linear exploration options. The first aspect of the gameplay that I need to gush about are the customization options when it comes to party setup and combat, which can easily be on par with some of the greatest JRPG's that are already on the Switch.
I love customization in games and the job system is one of the best that I've seen in a long time. There are 10 different jobs to take advantage of in Harvestella, which are basically a type of class and you can freely change between whichever one you want and have unlocked as the protagonist. You start off with the Fighter job and unlock the Mage job in chapter 2. The remaining ones are all unlocked as additional characters join your party throughout chapter 3. In your average RPG, each character has that job or class assigned to them so you would alter your party based on which ones you want to have in battle. That aspect of jobs is the same but having the ability to have the protagonist freely change between them is a really cool feature.
The jobs themselves are pretty intense too. They all have their own unique abilities but each one also comes equipped with a massive skill tree where you get job points and then you can use them to improve the skills for that job. Each job has a long list of skills that can be bought and upgraded over time. For instance, one of the earliest skills that you can get for the Mage job is Freezing and later on you can unlock Freezing II. Once you unlock all of the skills for a certain job, which will take a long time, you're going to be pretty unstoppable when it comes to that job because you'll have all sorts of attacks and stat increases at your disposal. In total, when you look at all of the skills that are available for every single job, I think there's close to 200 in total for you to unlock and use.
The job system is just one aspect when it comes to customization because there's so much more. For example, you have a pretty decent party system. Even though you can do every attack and skill by yourself because of the job flexibility, you can set up your party anyway you like. Not only that, but there's also a decent
selection when it comes to things like weapons, gear, and accessories. You can also upgrade all the weapons to make them even stronger, but you'll need a ton of money and items in order to fully upgrade them. You can upgrade your weapons all the way up to level 8 but the weapons of your party members can only reach level 5.
Finding the perfect balance of which weapon to use, which party to use, and getting your upgrades can take a lot of work and when added to the impressive skill and job list, there's so much fun to be had. The only downside is that the customization of your actual character is horrible, one of the worst that I've ever seen in a modern game. There's only a handful of pre made options for how your character looks and they all look identical. It's not physically possible to create a truly unique character and after the game starts, it's not possible to add anything to your look. At least games like Pokemon and Fire Emblem give you additional clothing or accessory items but Harvestella is locked with some very lackluster and disappointing options. But for the most part, the rest of the game is amazing when it comes to customization.
Beyond the customization, the rest of the gameplay is just as good, if not better because the combat and farming aspects are amazing. The combat itself is amazing and it's one of the best that I've seen on the Switch alongside games like Xenoblade Chronicles, Sword Art Online, and Bayonetta. Combat is fun, very fluid, and it looks fantastic. A large portion of the JRPG side of the game revolves around running around the map, fighting all sorts of enemies, and looting whatever you can. There's also a lot of strategy when it comes to combat because no matter how strong you are, some battles are going to be tough and require a lot of job planning and healing.
Then you have the farming side of the game which has four different aspects. The first is the actual farming itself. If you decide to invest in farming it's going to be really tedious near the start because it's going to be very time consuming and you won't even have that much space to work with until you unlock better tools. But after you've played for a few hours, the farming becomes more manageable and faster. This aspect of the game revolves around planting crops, watering them, and then harvesting them when they're ready. Do all that and then repeat over and over. Getting the ground ready, then planting the seed, then watering that square will be a nightmare when you have to do each one individually.
It's a very repetitive process but once you unlock better tools and figured out which crops are the best to plant, farming will become a lot more profitable and fun. The second aspect of farming are the animals. This is a very easy gameplay element because once you unlock the place to keep animals and buy a few animals, you just need to convert harvested crops into animal food, which is easy. Soon enough you'll be getting all sorts of animal products like eggs every single day. With these items, you can either sell them for some extra profit or use them to cook, which happens to be the third aspect of farming.
Cooking has a big impact on the game, much bigger than in other farming games. There are a lot of recipes for you to make, many of which will restore your HP and stamina and if you don't have enough, you won't be able to succeed when it comes to the JRPG side of the game. For instance, it's very easy to use up all your stamina with farming and running around the farm and towns. If you do this, you won't have any stamina to go and fight and will be forced to go to
sleep at like noon if you don't have enough food that will restore your stamina. You always need to have at least a few food items that restore stamina on you at all times when you're adventuring, which means you need to cook a lot.
The same can be said about health because some enemies, especially bosses and other strong ones will be able to knock you out with ease if you aren't strong enough or you don't heal. If you don't heal and get knocked out, you have to pay a medical bill and time will pass so just like with stamina items, you need to make sure that you're always cooking food items that will restore your HP because you will be using a lot of them. It's never a good idea to leave the farm and have fewer than like five of each.
The fourth aspect of the farming side of things is crating, which is super important. It's just like crafting in any other farming game where you craft bigger and better items either as part of a quest or to sell them for more money. But in Harvestella there's a ton of items that you need to craft for the purpose of adventuring. The two main ones are the return bell and the repair kit. The return bell let's you escape from wherever you are back to your farm while the repair kit let's you fix ladders and bridges which are very important when it comes to progressing through each area. Without multiples of each, you'll either be in a battle that you can't win or in an area that you can't get through. So you always need to craft a bunch of these and there are a handful of other items that are just as important.
Put together all four elements and you have a very in depth farming game, more so than any other farming game on the market. Put together both the JRPG and farming elements and you have yourself one very intuitive game with some amazing gameplay that's not only lots of fun, but will keep you invested for many hours. Plus this is just the gameplay alone, there are other good aspects like the story that keep you invested in the game whether you only put in 20 hours or you put in more than 100.
GRAPHICS
It’s very easy to say that Harvestella looks amazing. The only gripe that I have with the graphics is that textures can feel a bit off when you’re looking at stuff that’s nearby. Grass, rocks, and the ground can all look really weird or out of place at times. Sometimes it can be pretty difficult to look at but everything else about the visuals are fantastic. Everything that’s more than a few feet in front of you looks beautiful. There are so many backgrounds that are just so beautiful to look at and these backgrounds are full of so much color and life.
Even when you’re running around one of the villages, the rest of the village and what you can see just beyond looks so good. I think my favorite aspect when it comes to the graphics has to be the lighting and shadows. To me, that’s what really gives everything it’s amazing looking flair. There were a few times where I was running around the map and the trees would look like they were on fire for a second. But I would realize that this was just the normal color of the leaves coupled with an insane use of lighting to relly give off some sort of an otherworldly glow.
All of the visuals that take place with combat look really good too, and the fact that you can have four people at once doing different attacks is pretty impressive. There were so many times where I would be swinging my sword but another member of my party would be doing some fire spell and a third party member would use a completely different attack. Having so many varied attacks and different animations running on the screen all at once looks really nice in Harvestella and it runs surprisingly well.
The last thing to really discuss when it comes to the graphics are the amazing cutscenes. There are a ton of cutscenes that are fully animated and they look great. Everything about how the game looks resembles what you would expect from a great piece of art. Everything looks fantastic.
SOUND
The sound aspect of Harvestella is the one area that I'm truly disappointed in. This is a Square Enix game, you usually expect greatness in the audio department, but this one was such a big letdown because of the lack of voice acting. There are many big games published by Square Enix that have full voice acting and there's no such thing in Harvestella outside of the protagonist. When Pokemon Scarlet and Violet came out last month, there was a lot of criticism and memeing online about how Scarlet and Violet was such a big game but didn't have any voices. This was the exact same way that I felt three weeks earlier when Harvestella was released. The game has so many great story moments, such amazing characters in terms of models and profiles, and some really good animations too.
There was no reason to not have fully voiced dialogue, even if it was only in animated and regular cutscenes. At least those would allow for some of the big moments to feel more immersive and allow for the experience to feel even better. But no, there's nothing. The only thing we get when it comes to voices is random short lines that are spoken by the protagonist. Not only is this not enough, it's also not necessary. Sometimes these lines are spoken randomly after 10 minutes of silence. Sometimes the lines are jarring or out of place. It's also the same voice actor and same voice whether you chose a male or female. Personally I would have chosen to have complete silence in terms of voice acting over one random line every now and then that doesn't feel like it belongs.
Don't get me wrong, the performance is good, I just don't think it belongs, especially when there's literally nothing else in terms of voices. Over the six weeks before Harvestella was released, Square Enix also published The Diofield Chronicle and Star Ocean: The Divine Force. Both of these games had huge cast lists, especially Star Ocean which featured a lot of big names from the voice acting community. I just feel like it could have been easy for Square Enix to have the developer put in voices, I doubt it would have been too expensive, especially for a company as big as Square Enix. I feel like when you think back to the promoting and distribution issues that I discussed earlier, this is just another arrow pointing at the possibility that Square Enix had this game built to fail, expecting that it wouldn't sell.
In contrast to the dismal lack of voice acting, the music is basically what I would expect from a Square Enix JRPG. Not only is the soundtrack itself really good, but there's also a lot of variety. For instance, there's a handful of places that have two different themes, one that plays during the day and another version that plays during the night. I feel like there aren't enough games that employ a dynamic soundtrack in this way and it's a really nice touch. Some of the places that offer different tracks depending on the time of day include Bird's Eye Brae, Lethe Village, and Nemea Town. I usually skipped over these because I would end my day before it gets too late but once I discovered that there were different tracks, I had to go and find them.
The soundtrack is also massive. It's what you expect from an RPG but people don't expect much from farming games. It's really nice that the soundtrack leaned more towards the RPG side. In total, there are 70 tracks across the entire soundtrack, with many of them being pretty long. The entire runtime of the soundtrack is close to four hours in total, which is something that I really liked about the game. I love when a game has a long soundtrack and Harvestella was no exception. I also figured that the soundtrack was going to be fantastic as a whole when I first realized who was composing it. The entire soundtrack was composed by the legendary Go Shiina.
What I've personally seen when it comes to video game soundtracks is that there's usually someone who does a lot of work for one developer or publisher. For instance, in my Ni No Kuni review, I mentioned that the game was animated by Studio Ghibli and the soundtrack was done by the person who composed many of their movies. Big franchises usually keep the same person or a few people because of the style so when you look at their resumes, it's like a ton of the same kinds of games and a few others.
This guy is different because he's been EVERYWHERE. He's basically been the type of person I just mentioned because he worked for Bandai Namco and did the soundtrack for games like Ace Combat, God Eater, and Tekken. But he's also worked on stuff like Arknights, Various Daylife, and the anime for Demon Slayer and Fate Grand Order. Not only is his resume stacked with big name projects, but the music itself is actually really good in many of the things that he's worked on, making it an almost guarantee that the soundtrack for Harvestella would be really good. Spoiler, it did in fact turn out really good.
Many of the songs fit the tone of Harvestella so well. There are songs that mesh with the action, songs that work very well with the peacefulness of the farming side, and songs that can get dramatic and emotional. There's a handful of songs that are catchy too and one or two that I feel like could have become iconic if Square Enix had done a better job with marketing and releasing the game. Overall, I think the soundtrack is amazing and the voice acting is dismal. I didn't care too much for the other sounds of the game and for an overall sound experience, I give Harvestella a 6 out of 10.
STORY
There’s so much to talk about when it comes to the story of Harvestella. The game begins with the protagonist sort of waking up in an unfamiliar land during a time known as Quietus. This is one of the main themes of the game and it’s a time where crops die and the air is too dangerous to breath so the entire world basically turns off for a day. This is a cool gameplay twist of sorts to make sure that you have to replant and change crops each season. You’re rescued by a doctor and given a small house and farm to take care of while you’re staying there.
Throughout the first couple of chapters, you’re introduced to many of the different characters along with a lot of lore and background that has to do with the world and its people. When it comes to the main story, there’s a lot going on and it’s all very well written. There’s also a ton of character related stories that seem like something you’d see in a game like Fire Emblem or Genshin Impact. These are kind of like side quests revolving around specific characters where you learn so much about them.
ADDICTIVENESS AND DEPTH
Harvestella is very addicting because you're basically getting the best of Stardew Valley and the best of Final Fantasy at the same time. You're going to have an amazing experience if you like both sides but there's nothing stopping you from just doing one side and only doing the bare minimum when it comes to the other aspect. For instance, I love farming games and I wanted to do a challenge video that was related to the farming side. Kind of like how there's a ton of Stardew Valley challenges out there. So I started a second playthrough where I wanted to do a Speedrun to see how quickly I could get to 100,000 and a million Grila.
Every hour or two I would put in like 15 minutes into the story just so I could unlock better tools and stuff but my main focus was just on farming and making as much money as I could as fast as possible. I was basically going through one in game year every real hour and I was having so much fun in this playthrough. Plus I was having my normal amount of fun in my main playthrough where I was really focusing on the RPG side of things and I would occasionally forget to farm for an entire in game month. Both sides of the game have a lot going on that make the game so much fun and make you keep coming back for more until you fully beat the game and then some.
One of the biggest contributors to Harvestella's depth is the sheer amount of quests that you can take on. There are a few different types of quests that you can do and each type has a ton. Some of the quests are pretty short while others can end up taking quite a while and really add to your playtime. The main type of quest is simply the main story, which is what will take up the bulk of your time. There are ten chapters in total and if you invest some of your time into farming and working on your party, each of these main chapters can take you a couple of hours to get through. Aside for these main chapters, there are literally dozens of other quests that you can do for a variety of different reasons.
The next type of quest you can do are the side quests, and there are a lot. Each village has a handful of random quests ready for you to do and in total there are close to 50 side quests. Next up is my favorite type of quest, the character stories. I love these quests so much because heavily involve you with the other characters. I don't need to talk much about these here since I already mentioned them before but each important character has a handful of stories and there are more than 90 in total. If you find yourself getting invested with the other characters or you liked the character stories from games like Fire Emblem Three Houses or Genshin Impact, then you should do many of these. If you do all of them, you're going to be wasting hours, but it's worth it in the end.
The last kind of quest is the Farie Orders. To an extent these are kind of like completion rewards. For instance, there's one where you need to collect Stellar Wheat and there's five tiers for collecting 1, 10, 30, 60, and 100. There are more than 70 different orders in total and many of them involve harvesting, crafting, or doing something small. In total there are hundreds of quests for you to do in Harvestella. If you are a completionist, you will have a blast with all the additional quests and you'll spend dozens of hours completing as many as you can. But the assortment of quests is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to depth.
You can hunt for rare fish, cook every meal in existence, collect dolls, and unlock secret jobs. You could even spend hours setting up a powerful monopoly if you really wanted to. It’s very easy to get 100 hours out of Harvestella and if you really wanted to, 200 could be attainable as well.
DIFFICULTY
The game can be quite difficult for a few reasons. First of all, combat can be tough. You’re going to die easily and a lot if you’re not strong enough or if you don’t have a ton of items that will restore your HP and stamina. During my main playthrough, I probably died a dozen times or more just going through the second chapter because before I knew it my HP would be really low and I had no more food. There were also plenty of times where I overestimated my ability.
The game can also be difficult because you need to be really patient at times. The farm aspect will take a lot of time and will require many in game days to pass before you make any significant amount of money. Lastly, it’s a very time restrained game. You need to be very careful with what you’re doing because time goes by quickly and before you know it, it will be the middle of the night. As a result, you need to be very strategic with what you do each day. Other than that, it’s all up to getting stronger and getting better equipment and skills.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Harvestella is by far the greatest cross between farming game and JRPG ever made simply because it’s the only game that’s a full-fledged crossover between the two. If you love JRPG’s, you need to give this a shot because the farming aspect can be tolerated or even skipped over aside for important parts. If you love farming games, it’s an amazing farming game with a ton of JRPG elements. It’s a win-win situation as long as you like one of the two genres. It’s also a great value for the price. People will argue that it's not worth $60 but it really is. You can easily get 100 hours worth of enjoyment out of the game and I think the price tag is more than worth it. Overall, I think that Harvestella for the Switch gets a 9 out of 10.
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 9
Sound: 6
Story: 9
Addictiveness: 10
Depth: 10
Characters: 8
Difficulty: 5
Overall: 9/10
Graphics 9 Sound 6 Addictive 10 Story 9 Depth 10 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 12-12-22
Review Replies: 0
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