Harvestella Is A Very Weird Rehash Of Jrpgs And Sf I Like Also A Farming Sim And The Most Soulful Thing To Come Out Of Modern Square Enix

24 1月 2024

harvestella is a 40-90 hour doujin rpg maker game that would be promoted heavily by retro rpg reviewers if it wasn’t financed by square enix and sold on consoles like nintendo switch.

introduction: another ANOTHER EDEN

if you told me that and a bit more, i’d probably buy the game asap. but the title is very much unknown in the west while in japan it’s considered a hidden gem.

perhaps, it’s because it is marketed as a rune factory-like. it first made its appearance in a sea of harvest moon clones in a nintendo direct and square enix had since been marketing the farming/life sim angle quite hard.

but i think it’s not only misleading but it misses what could’ve made the game an impulse purchase for me: some important staff members including the producer/director come from ANOTHER EDEN.

ANOTHER EDEN is a peculiar f2p mobile rpg. it may have gacha and some login bonuses, but they are unnecessary for progression. instead, it’s a full fledged rpg that plays on tropes and plots of 90s jrpgs favorites like xenogears and chrono cross.

i won’t go too deep into details because the many things i like and dislike about ae can be grasped from what i think of harvestella: i find x from harvestella interesting and the same can be said about ae; i don’t like y from harvestella and that is also true for ae. their dnas are so similar (plot beats, ui, retro vibes) that i basically think harvestella is a 3d remake of another eden.

and that’s what makes the game so fascinating to me: this game doesn’t really make sense from a business standpoint and no one is out there wanting it, but it’s sitting in my steam library. i know i can play it right now, but it shouldn’t exist. how is this cryptid of a title even greenlit?

i am stupefied by its existence and i’m on board with it — until i get to the parts that i don’t like anyway.

a jrpg with a heavy farming minigame

let’s get it out of the way: harvestella is not a farming sim nor is it like rune factory. harvestella and its marketing may try to convince you to pick up the hoe and plant some carrots, but the main story can be progressed with little to no farming.

all the game did was replace the "hero" in hero's journey with "farmer".

your protagonist (who you can gender as "neutral") is a classic adventuring protagonist with amnesia. they team up with a girl named aria who is from The Future to figure out what's up with the world and the 死季 (Quietus), a red fog that makes people die.

you go to jrpg towns and fix their problems. there are Villains of the Week who happen to be the Sole Problem of the society to beat up, but also they are mysteriously part of an overarching plot. allies from different social classes and backgrounds join the party. an airship takes you across the world map.

and also, you farm.

even though they are deeply unnecessary (a theme that will recur in my retelling of harvestella and another eden), the farming mechanics aren't something to scoff at. the game takes many cues from the harvest moon/rune factory lineage: you have a plot of land and you can plant seeds in tiles. these seeds differ depending on the season you're in and are expensive in the earlygame, but they give you so much profit that you can create a moneymaking machine very quickly. as you do more of the main story, you unlock water and cave biomes that have their own unique plants. there are even sprinklers you can add, automating your stardew valleys.

but while the farming minigame covers a lot of ground, it is not full of depth. the economy is so simple and the game doesn't really demand you to farm much (there are no festivals or even a simple deadline where you have to turn in at least something to keep playing) that farming is just meant for income and only that. you could upgrade farms and build barns and coops to house sheep and chicken, but that's only going to help you generate more income.

a charitable way of looking at this is, to cop from a very good amazon ja review, harvestella is an introductory farm sim for retro jrpg players. the early rune factory titles and atelier series can be too complicated for players who have to juggle farming and rpg obligations, so harvestella doesn't do that. quests don't ask you to get specific produce because that would slow the pacing. and etc.

but playing the game, i got the impression that the another eden staff was tasked to make a farming sim because square enix said so and they used this opportunity to make a grand old-school rpg from their another eden experience.

HARVESTELLA FM19.99 - Playing the Greatest 90s JRPG Hits for You Boomers Out There!!!

the story mentions your farming activities maybe twice. really quickly, it drops the pretense it's a farming sim and goes full on 90s jrpg mode. it's gonna take you back to the past / to play the cool games that kick ass. harvestella is enthusiastic about recapturing the super famicom and playstation 1 days on modern consoles.

the towns, for example, feature a lot of unnecessary details that players will easily miss. because it's pretending to be a farming sim, many npcs actually follow a schedule. you don't need to find, say, party members with quests because their routine will be overwritten by the quest's needs. however, you can find them patrolling through town and doing other daily activities.

i'm also shocked by the amount of one-off environment details. there are setpieces designed just for cutscenes and there's areas that you don't ever visit. there is a confession chamber in the cathedral and you have no reason to visit, but it's there and it looks pretty comfy.

and npcs have very different and colorful dialog that can change after certain events have happened. it's not kiseki-tier, but there's a lot of effort into making sure these jrpg towns don't feel generic.

as for the actual game, much of the gameplay time for me was dedicated to completing the most old-school sidequests in different towns. the stories that make up these sidequests are really familiar ones to me: i saw my character listen to the desires of a teenage girl who want to see the sea one day, help rebuild the lighthouse to help sailors lost in the seas, and even investigate a mysterious well that may be haunted by a ghost. while the quests are clearly written assuming they will be done in a day, this is usually impossible due to farm sim time reasons. they follow another eden's format by making you go all over the world map to continue them, so they're more like elaborate questlines than individual and standalone quests. it's possible to do a rescue mission and leave the dying soldier for days because you're too busy doing other things and then return to it as if everything's normal. it's weird and they take up so much of the game that i got a bit tired of how much i was doing. the game feels like a visual novel, but you need to do chores in order to read more -- by the time you read the text, you just get too tired and want to go back to do the chores.

but i kept doing them anyway because, like another eden, it's refreshing to feel like i'm helping a jrpg town once in a while. i got pretty invested in some of the stories, especially the ones that deal with children. the game really stands up for children and you're always playing this blue archive sensei-like intermediary where you are making the parents carefully listen to what the kids are saying. there's even a part where you're trying to find out the location of another kid, so you tell the kids hiding that information she's got toys and playing with herself and they blurt out the truth and go "oh shit". as a gender-neutral uncle, i really enjoyed how much this game understands kids and makes their interactions funny.

(it makes me wonder if the parenting stuff reflects the older demographics of the audience that will enjoy this kind of old-school rpg...)

when i finally got to the main story, i was hit by a bigger nostalgia wave. so much of the plot beats are taken from the playbooks of my favorite jrpgs; it was to the point that i was just predicting the next jrpg plot it's going to use. you have the classic four mcguffin towers you need to visit, Villains of the Week you have to beat in order to solve structural problems in jrpg towns, and an overarching grand narrative where you reach for the stars and fight an otherworldy force -- it's the classic jrpg template that's been done since the beginnings of dragon quest. but it's done in a convincing, sincere, and earnest way that i was quite moved by.

like another eden, harvestella is especially inspired by old and new jrpgs, in particular xenogears and nier automata. it finds the technology of the xeno games utterly fascinating and agrees with yokoo tarou's cynicism on the excesses of humanity. at the same time, it marches on with a simple belief that despite humanity's evils, humanity rules.

this leads to some incredibly corny writing that i find extremely surprising in a commercial rpg that tackles current dilemmas in society. interestingly enough, harvestella does not shy away from how humans have behaved in the past, even bringing up themes that belong to metal gear solid 2. however, despite all that, it will keep arguing about how HUMANS HAVE HOPE and ONLY HUMANS CAN ACHIEVE THE IMPOSSIBLE. the title is in love with stories about discovery, the relationship between humans and AI, and the meaning of humanity despite wars. it doesn't take the transhumanist angle that games like crymachina would do but instead, hope defines humans. it is as if it's telling creators like yokoo to smile a little bit because humans want to live, dammit.

the earnestness in this game is so reminiscent of the 90s rpg vibes that made me play rpgs in the first place. and it's not just a homage to title chapter titles and questlines after famous science fiction works; it's the philosophy of the game because it's drowning in optimistic science fiction vibes that it can comment on human atrocities of the past but still say humans are the future with a straight face. humans adventure, explore, write, and do jrpg things: it's what makes us humans human.

ugh gameplay

too bad the action rpg part sucks ass.

for adventuring, you're usually exploring elaborate dungeons with unique gimmicks and they're all atrocious and long.

the game actually tries its hardest to make for interesting level design (again, another carryover from another eden) and it's usually borrowing from gimmicks of the past. do you enjoy teleport puzzles? harvestella has some for some reason. there's ice floor physics too. and the dungeons are so long that you have to do them in chunks because, due to the farming sim mechanics, you have a limited amount of stamina that gets depleted fast and you can't just eat food you produced forever.

some of this tedium can be relieved by searching for spots that create shortcuts at the expense of time and if applicable items. what i usually do is run through the dungeon, ignoring the million enemy groups to create these shortcuts and even try to reach the end.

it's not like the combat is any good either. you have the options to use different jobs/classes, but you can only set three at a time. the idea behind the job system is that you switch between the three jobs you have for appropriate situations: exploiting a weakness, creating distance, switching between skills that have cooldowns etc. however, i found that more of a hassle because it isn't that effective in tackling enemies. it's easier and safer to stick with a job unless you know what weaknesses enemies are prone to.

this simplistic combat system doesn't also match the complexity with enemies and bosses. for whatever reason, enemies and bosses can react differently to how far or close you are. telegraphed moves will show the area where the attacks will land. you're supposed to play it like some jank mmo from the 2000s, but your party members cannot be controlled in any way and your movement options are limited to running and a weak dash/spring. couple that with large enemies' hitboxes clashing with your hitbox and you can't really move well to dodge anything.

this gets really funny(?) when you're fighting the final boss. it's so big and its attacks cover so much ground that the camera has to take a step back, but all it does is just show the boss's large ass back. you are always under the boss to deal damage, so you can't really tell where the hell you are. all you see is just the texture of the boss, nothing else.

the combat isn't very fun and i swore a lot from how i would suddenly die because i got stunlocked without realizing it and no way to heal. the only way to play the game is to make a lot of vegetable juice by farming lettuce and putting into a processor -- your protag can chug like ten vegetable juices while they fight the boss because juices don't have animation frames while food and other items do. it's extremely silly to imagine soldiers drinking huel to keep on fighting.

xenogears disk 3: farming edition

but regardless, harvestella is a huge game that is full of content (perhaps, too much). it took me 40 hours and i'm quite a fast player; most people who finished the game have recorded gameplay time that ranged from 60 to 90 hours. this is a demanding game and i don't believe many people reached the ending, so folks are not aware how the plot is just some xeno series game.

there's many reasons why people probably don't know this, partly because the game has been marketed as a chill life simulation title for so long. but also, the story really begins 20-40 hours into the game.

it's literally the "it gets good 30 hours in, trust me bro" game.

many fans of harvestella hide the science fiction turn for good reason since it's very much a spoiler, but i find that to be the game's detriment. i find the game far more interesting once it suddenly becomes a long-lost cousin to the xenoblade games.

i won't be explicit, but it was utterly fascinating to see a so-called farming sim take on grand themes like saving the world and contesting the fate of humanity. the game introduces so much setting details that even the final boss gets their own lecture. the setpieces are so lavish that i started laughing and pogging when the game went all blue archive on me and remembering this is supposed to be a farming sim.

what i find most enjoyable about the game is the bizarre execution. its obsession to copy the successes of classic rpgs in the format of a farming sim action rpg hybrid is truly incredible because it's able to do so much but in a very weird way. it's largely derivative of so many great rpgs, but the implementation is so surreal that i find it utterly memorable.

on the same day i'll be planting a prized watermelon, i'll be fighting robots from the far future that question our sentience and grappling pasts that weigh on characters like aria.

it's awesome and very stupid. and the game doesn't even seem to recognize how strange it is: it just thinks this is the correct way to make games and i kinda love harvestella for that.

this is why i sorta saw the game as having soulful doujin storytelling. many doujin games, especially the good ones, believe in some of their plot beats so much that they'll not realize there's holes in it. harvestella doesn't seem to give a shit about whether its narrative design and ludonarrative harmony are coherent to people; it thinks they are and that's all that matters.

even if i believe that the game has a tacked-on farming minigame, there's something very funny and heartening about playing a farming sim that becomes a xenoblade 4. it's why i enjoy talking about harvestella than playing the game: the absurdity and the jarring nature of it all are what make the game interesting to me.

conclusion: The Heart.

but note that i have not said throughout the post that it's a "good" game. i don't think it's good nor is it fun. i just find the experience interesting and memorable.

i find most of the gameplay exhausting and too much like chorework. the story is too familiar to me, even if i found it exciting and nostalgic. there's way too much text density, which is also an issue for another eden. the 3d character expressions are static and have lifeless performances. and it's also just too long and much for its own good.

but i won't deny that i had some fun and found the game fulfilling like older rpgs i've played. because it knows it's building off successful games, the writers can relax and write some cool lines about humanity and hope that i find memorable. the dissonance between farming and the narrative is also constantly amusing to me.

outside of yokoo tarou's games, harvestella is the most interesting and soulful game square enix has released in modern times. and it's solely because this is a game that would be a huge hit with the doujin/free game circles i hang out in if it wasn't an overpriced square enix game.

it's the kind of game that inspires me because it's full of raw personality and speaks to me as an old jrpg fan. if i had the square enix money to make the dream game i've always wanted, it would be a mess like harvestella.

and i can't deny how cool that is. the game has a banging soundtrack by shiina of all people (and he's never worked on a square enix game besides this one) and it's full of life. it's the dream game you write in your middle school notebooks and plan to create using rpg maker 2000 during computer classes.

the whole game is the definition of Soul. i don't enjoy playing the game the same way i don't enjoy playing games made by middle schoolers who decide to take the rpg maker plunge. but i am still affected by it because it's a dream rpg come true and i get sappy over these kinds of romantic adventures. its optimism about humanity is so goofy that it warms my cold heart.

how can i not like it?

harvestella is a fucking weird game. it has so much Soul like some shounen protagonist and i want to cheer for it. this game truly comes from The Heart of JRPG Developers.

p.s. after writing this post, i realize it’s a candidate for the top game of the year for me not because i love it but because it has earned my utmost admiration. it’s such a cool passion project about exploring the fun of jrpgs.

it’s just a title that resonates with me.

p.p.s. i finished the game without spending a whole game year; i never saw winter...