Sowing seeds.
These days, it feels like games are very generally cast into either the ‘Indie’ or ‘AAA’ categories, regardless of genre. Square Enix has been a major publisher that’s notably been pushing back against this dichotomy by putting out several games that are smaller in scope than something like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but have much higher production values than a budget indie game. Titles like The Diofield Chronicle or the Voice of Cards trilogy have filled this niche well, and now Square is doing it again with Harvestella. Billed by many as the company’s attempt at the Rune Factory formula, this farm sim and action-RPG hybrid does a solid job of merging two very different genres into a cohesive experience. It’s far from perfect, but this feels like a very solid foundation that will hopefully be built upon in the future.
Harvestella takes place in a world ruled over by four giant crystals called “Seaslights” that govern the passing of the four seasons. Some undisclosed amount of time before the narrative begins, the Seaslights begin to act strangely and introduce a new, one-day season that the residents come to call “Quietus” or the season of death. During Quietus, an evil ‘death dust’ fills the air and anything living that ventures outside will die upon contact with the dust. Well, except your conveniently amnesiac character, who wakes up on the ground outside in a village during Quietus. After somehow surviving, the locals let you stay in a ‘shed’ on the edge of town while you recover your memory, and you soon start to try your hand at farming. Eventually, you then get caught up in a grand quest to investigate the Seaslights’ disturbance and hopefully learn more about where you came from.
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