@@ArotTheKarot that is amazing to here!!! It is such an amazing game! It placed ver y highly on my top 10 Games I played in 2023 :) thank you for watching
Great review! Harvestella is such a gem. I'd love to see a sequel that expands and refines the flaws while further building on the world. Oh and with full voice acting too.
Despite many negative reviews of Harvestella, I finally bought it when it was on sale, and I must say that I didn't regret it. I think it's a wonderful game, and contrary to many rather negative opinions about it, I don't find it shallow at all. While it does have some kind of "time limit" in respect to the fact that you've got to get your daily stuff done before night falls and you also have to watch your stamina, because once you keel over from exhaustion, Cres' doctor fees, which increase each time you need treatment, will burn a hole in your wallet really fast. (Did I mention that the game at times is frighteningly realistic?) Yet, in spite of this, the game never puts you under any kind of real pressure, since you can decide when to do your chores or when to go on which quest or when to continue a quest or side quest. So if you don't have too much time left on the current day, you can hit the hay and procrastinate as you wish, which makes it a very laid back experience. Most of the characters are quite endearing, and while the general atmosphere is harmonious, it occasionally touches on some very serious issues and difficult moral dilemmata. Speaking of atmosphere, I think this is where the game really shines, and this is mainly due to the phenomenal soundtrack, which even changes according to the situation. There's even different music depending on the situation. In funny moments there is a rather comical, uplifting melody, in dangerous situations or sad settings the music is different again. One can clearly sense that Square put a lot of thought into this game. At least to me it doesn't seem as if they just hurriedly put together some run-of-the-mill rpg components to make a few quick bucks. However, there is one huge "but" (no pun intended) concerning Harvestella, a trait that, for me at least, almost ruined the whole experience. I'm talking about the faulty use of pronouns in the game. Now I'm not even talking about the option to play as a "non-binary" character per se, but rather about the problems that occur because the game persistently uses "they/them" as a pronoun for persons in the singular form so as not to hurt the feelings of a certain minority. This is not just gramatically wrong (and yes, in the real world it is wrong, and for good reasons), it also gets very tedious and confusing, for instance when one of the characters talks about one person in a group of people. You just don't know whether the character is talking about one person or the whole group/town. If you're lucky, you can derive it from the context, but it's not always clear. More often than not, this drives a wedge into the flow of the story and thus makes the game as a whole less enjoyable than it could have been. Now this could easily have been avoided, if they (yes, I mean the good people at Square Enix, not just one of them) had limited the use of this supposedly gender-neutral "they" to the choice of the non-binary character. That way everyone who feels like a unicorn, a washing machine or a toaster could have indulged their gender-neutrality, or rather gender-confusion, while the rest of us poor "normal" saps who choose either the male or female character could have had a far less confusing and more enjoyable experience. However, the way they handled it, everyone who doesn't feel non-binary is also forced to put up with the ensuing linguistic mess. That, in consequence, leads to the question why they included a non-binary character, when the choice you make changes nothing at all. Even the character models are pretty much the same for male, female and "non-binary". So please, Square Enix, get your act together. Maybe it's not such a good idea after all, to try to accommodate a miniscule minority at the expense of the majority, who are still paying the largest part of your salaries. Again, the game in its entirety is great, but for the future, try not to screw it up by jumping on some ideological bandwagon, especially when said bandwagon is destined to derail.
Thanks for the massive comment! 😁 Glad you enjoyed the game! It was such a surprise to me! Oh I didn't notice that part where they used that for everyone (if I'm reading that correctly). Thank you for checking out my review of the game :)
@@chickenfillets Wow, thanks for your answer! Yeah, they use "they/them" generally to refer to people in the singular. Maybe it stands out to me that much because I'm somewhat of a language enthusiast, especially when it comes to English. Kind of strange considering that it's not even my native language.
Great review 😊 I have just started playing this and I'm enjoying it so far. The farming side of things is cute, it's my first main game with farming elements. It's nice to see the game is quite inclusion for everyone with the options of gender and thank you for mentioning it. Thanks for a great review! 😊
It's insane how many RPGs Square enix released within that time frame. I am Setsuna, The octopath games, Triangle Strategy, Live A Live, Oninaki, Lost Sphear, diofield chronicles. I managed to get physical copies of them all. But then I recently remembered another game called Various Daylife. The irony of it is that nobody even talks about that one I remember seeing it once in a Nintendo Direct and it was never talked about again. 🤦🏾
Yayyyyy! Loved this review so so much! It was perfect! I only played the game because of Branden at Just The Gems! So we can all thank him haha! Either way, this was a really good review and I seriously hope more people play it because of this!
It's not overally difficult. There were a few boss fights I had to retry a few times. There certainly is reasons to revisit dungeons and get stronger though :)
Adam! Yeah I originally overlooked as well but after watching Femtrooper's review i was sold on it! There is a demo btw so might be worth giving it a go!
Great review. I finished the game twice and loved it. If you are looking for the usual farming game this is not for you. I played a lot of Harvest Moon games and always get bored after a few days playing 😂. I prefer the farming, combat, story type and this has everything. Hopefully the will have either a sequel or DLC but I would be surprised if they do. Hope my English is not not bad 😅
Great review mate, I actually played Harvestella and thought the story was really well done kept me on edge throughout, I will say the gameplay did disappoint me a little the game could have stood to run a little better but that's just my nit pick, Personally I found the game okay but the story is really what made me stick around for the most part
Just a slight nitpic, I wish you talked about the actual performance of the game in the performance section. You kind of really only talked about the art style/graphics not how the game runs. I'm curious about this because I heard that when the game first released the performance was pretty poor on Switch and was wondering if it was any better now.
Hey! Thanks for asking! So for this game I mainly played it on handheld, I didnt see any sort of dips in performance. Even during combat sections where most action JRPGs can chug it was solid. I'm not an expert on output FPS etc but as I mentioned it ran really well and I didn't come across any issues. Btw this is great feedback so I can make sure it's in further reviews down the line :)
Great Review Dude. Now I am even more sure that I need to play this in the near future. Btw. I think it's great that you mentioned the non-binary Option for the character creation. Inclusion's such an important topic. 😊 Can't wait to dive into this game - the Demo was a lot of and surprised me. 😊
Totally unfair the reviews on metacritic. The game does open up after chapter 2. But well, isn't for everyone yeah, especially because all the components of Harvestella (farming and combat) aren't deep, but that's why they work together. There's no time limit for anything, just to get back to your home because the character kind pass out and the doctor will charge you more and more everytime, so as long as the MC cames back before ten to your home you'll be ok 😂. Great review, Harvestella is one of my favorite games of all time (yeah you can laugh at me, i like the game with farming and kinda playstation 3 graphics. So many times people said this to me). So complimenting, the game is not for you if: -You want farming and life sim at full, because is not. Farming is more a mean to an end (resources), and its pretty simple, not more than probably 15 minutes i used to take care of it every in game day. And it's rpg centric, the combat isn't avoidable. -You look for super complex combat, you don't even have defensive options. The difficulty isn't out of the charts, but there are some endgame zones that'll kick your butt (orbital cradle and those damm mechanical things, and the 60 floors of the Quietus dungeon). -Is story heavy. I'd day is kinda self insert, but at the same time the MC has their background, is hard to say more without spoilers.
This is such an awesome comment! Thank you for taking the time to write it! Harvestella is one of the best gaming experiences I've had this year! Everything about Harvestella just oozes with charm! Thank you for checking out the review :)
The time limit is putting me off from trying this game. I'm a slow gamer who likes to grind and explore thoroughly at a slow pace and being stressed up by a time limit, even if it's a generous one, is too discouraging for me. Otherwise, I'd most likely try this game.
Totally get where you are coming from! I would certainly give the demo a go and if you do enjoy it and decide to buy it then your data would transfer over :)
I played this game as my 1st farming simulator and I honestly thought it was pretty boring. Bought it on a sale and it still wasn't worth the price. Granted I did play the demo 1st and the game did look promising at 1st, but the more I played the game, the more I didn't want to play it anymore.
A shame harvestella ain't going to have a sequel cuz the producer left square enix. I just realized something I have never even played final fantasy not even sure which one to start with. I kept on thinking getting final fantasy 6 but I hate square enix except for yoko tara( hopefully I spelled his name right cuz I love nier on the Nintendo switch). I'm just going to wait for ender magnolia to come out and replay ender lilies and redemption reapers later on. Sorry if I sounded rude
Nah bud, didn't sound rude! I really hope we do get a sequel but like you say we probably won't! If you ever did try Final Fantasy at least you have plenty to choose from haha! FFX is always a good starting point. I did start off with FFVII when it first came out in 97. Thanks for checking out the video :)
Have you played Harvestella?
No. It's in my backlog
@@Morgana_Diego good morning!
I've played Harvestella to 100% completion. It's not only my favorite game on the Switch, but my 2nd favorite RPG ever (behind FFIX).
@@ArotTheKarot that is amazing to here!!! It is such an amazing game! It placed ver y highly on my top 10 Games I played in 2023 :) thank you for watching
Great review! Harvestella is such a gem. I'd love to see a sequel that expands and refines the flaws while further building on the world. Oh and with full voice acting too.
Thank you :) absolutely agreed!
Despite many negative reviews of Harvestella, I finally bought it when it was on sale, and I must say that I didn't regret it. I think it's a wonderful game, and contrary to many rather negative opinions about it, I don't find it shallow at all.
While it does have some kind of "time limit" in respect to the fact that you've got to get your daily stuff done before night falls and you also have to watch your stamina, because once you keel over from exhaustion, Cres' doctor fees, which increase each time you need treatment, will burn a hole in your wallet really fast. (Did I mention that the game at times is frighteningly realistic?)
Yet, in spite of this, the game never puts you under any kind of real pressure, since you can decide when to do your chores or when to go on which quest or when to continue a quest or side quest. So if you don't have too much time left on the current day, you can hit the hay and procrastinate as you wish, which makes it a very laid back experience.
Most of the characters are quite endearing, and while the general atmosphere is harmonious, it occasionally touches on some very serious issues and difficult moral dilemmata. Speaking of atmosphere, I think this is where the game really shines, and this is mainly due to the phenomenal soundtrack, which even changes according to the situation. There's even different music depending on the situation. In funny moments there is a rather comical, uplifting melody, in dangerous situations or sad settings the music is different again. One can clearly sense that Square put a lot of thought into this game. At least to me it doesn't seem as if they just hurriedly put together some run-of-the-mill rpg components to make a few quick bucks.
However, there is one huge "but" (no pun intended) concerning Harvestella, a trait that, for me at least, almost ruined the whole experience.
I'm talking about the faulty use of pronouns in the game. Now I'm not even talking about the option to play as a "non-binary" character per se, but rather about the problems that occur because the game persistently uses "they/them" as a pronoun for persons in the singular form so as not to hurt the feelings of a certain minority.
This is not just gramatically wrong (and yes, in the real world it is wrong, and for good reasons), it also gets very tedious and confusing, for instance when one of the characters talks about one person in a group of people. You just don't know whether the character is talking about one person or the whole group/town. If you're lucky, you can derive it from the context, but it's not always clear. More often than not, this drives a wedge into the flow of the story and thus makes the game as a whole less enjoyable than it could have been.
Now this could easily have been avoided, if they (yes, I mean the good people at Square Enix, not just one of them) had limited the use of this supposedly gender-neutral "they" to the choice of the non-binary character. That way everyone who feels like a unicorn, a washing machine or a toaster could have indulged their gender-neutrality, or rather gender-confusion, while the rest of us poor "normal" saps who choose either the male or female character could have had a far less confusing and more enjoyable experience. However, the way they handled it, everyone who doesn't feel non-binary is also forced to put up with the ensuing linguistic mess.
That, in consequence, leads to the question why they included a non-binary character, when the choice you make changes nothing at all. Even the character models are pretty much the same for male, female and "non-binary".
So please, Square Enix, get your act together. Maybe it's not such a good idea after all, to try to accommodate a miniscule minority at the expense of the majority, who are still paying the largest part of your salaries.
Again, the game in its entirety is great, but for the future, try not to screw it up by jumping on some ideological bandwagon, especially when said bandwagon is destined to derail.
Thanks for the massive comment! 😁 Glad you enjoyed the game! It was such a surprise to me! Oh I didn't notice that part where they used that for everyone (if I'm reading that correctly). Thank you for checking out my review of the game :)
@@chickenfillets Wow, thanks for your answer! Yeah, they use "they/them" generally to refer to people in the singular. Maybe it stands out to me that much because I'm somewhat of a language enthusiast, especially when it comes to English. Kind of strange considering that it's not even my native language.
Great review 😊 I have just started playing this and I'm enjoying it so far. The farming side of things is cute, it's my first main game with farming elements. It's nice to see the game is quite inclusion for everyone with the options of gender and thank you for mentioning it. Thanks for a great review! 😊
That's awesome you are enjoying it!!! It was of my favourite games I played last year! I always sing it praises :)
It's insane how many RPGs Square enix released within that time frame. I am Setsuna, The octopath games, Triangle Strategy, Live A Live, Oninaki, Lost Sphear, diofield chronicles. I managed to get physical copies of them all. But then I recently remembered another game called Various Daylife. The irony of it is that nobody even talks about that one I remember seeing it once in a Nintendo Direct and it was never talked about again. 🤦🏾
Damn you're right I forgot about that Various Daylife as well! haha. I'm gonna have to try and find out more about it! :P
@@chickenfillets Sweet appreciate what you do bro! 😁💯
@@SlRNIGHTINGALE that means alot honestly! Pop into the comments anytime!
Yayyyyy! Loved this review so so much! It was perfect! I only played the game because of Branden at Just The Gems! So we can all thank him haha! Either way, this was a really good review and I seriously hope more people play it because of this!
Thank you :D it really needs to get played!!!
Now that's you two plus Alex from Backlog Battle all telling me to play.
@@JamesBantz thats the writing on the wall haha!
love that you've covered this hidden gem!
Thank you! :) I loved the game :)
I was intrigued by this game before but I think you've convinced me I have to try it out at some point
Hey! Thats awesome! There is always the demo as well to try out as well!
I enjoyed the demo but unfortunately it has the 2 most time sinking features that will be hard to complete
Farming and leveling up lol
Hey dude!! Haha totally get you, the farming luckily I felt didn't take up too much time!
How is the difficulty? I like a bit of challenge in RPG's but I've heard people say it's pretty easy
It's not overally difficult. There were a few boss fights I had to retry a few times. There certainly is reasons to revisit dungeons and get stronger though :)
I did overlook Harvestella because of the farm sim elements but the combat looks pretty cool and the game looks lovely overall. Cheers John.
Adam! Yeah I originally overlooked as well but after watching Femtrooper's review i was sold on it! There is a demo btw so might be worth giving it a go!
A good vid. I had opposite feelings on this game, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Thank you! I can understand that yeah, not every game is for everyone haha!
Awesome review, John! I still haven't played my copy, and I know one of my friends will be slapping me across the head for not doing so 😅
Thank you my dude! Get it played man!
Great review. I finished the game twice and loved it. If you are looking for the usual farming game this is not for you. I played a lot of Harvest Moon games and always get bored after a few days playing 😂. I prefer the farming, combat, story type and this has everything. Hopefully the will have either a sequel or DLC but I would be surprised if they do. Hope my English is not not bad 😅
Hey there! Your english is perfect! Thank you for saying it was a great review! Harvestella is so good in every way! Loved it!
Great review. Might pick this up if i can get it for the cheap.
Honestly bud its great! Hope to see it appear in one of your videos soon ;)
I loved Harvestella! Such a great game
I see nothing wrong with this statement! Haha!
Great review mate, I actually played Harvestella and thought the story was really well done kept me on edge throughout, I will say the gameplay did disappoint me a little the game could have stood to run a little better but that's just my nit pick, Personally I found the game okay but the story is really what made me stick around for the most part
Story is definitely the strongest part of the game! Like totally didn't see anything coming!
This has been on my shelf for so long. Why haven't I played it yet?
Well hopefully the review helps get you to take it off the shelf 😀 appreciate you checking the review!
One that defo fell under the radar, might pick it up at some stage, gotta get through other RPGs in the back log!
It's honestly worth a go, there is a demo btw if you wanna try it out!
Just a slight nitpic, I wish you talked about the actual performance of the game in the performance section. You kind of really only talked about the art style/graphics not how the game runs. I'm curious about this because I heard that when the game first released the performance was pretty poor on Switch and was wondering if it was any better now.
Hey! Thanks for asking! So for this game I mainly played it on handheld, I didnt see any sort of dips in performance. Even during combat sections where most action JRPGs can chug it was solid. I'm not an expert on output FPS etc but as I mentioned it ran really well and I didn't come across any issues. Btw this is great feedback so I can make sure it's in further reviews down the line :)
Great Review Dude. Now I am even more sure that I need to play this in the near future.
Btw. I think it's great that you mentioned the non-binary Option for the character creation. Inclusion's such an important topic. 😊
Can't wait to dive into this game - the Demo was a lot of and surprised me. 😊
Thanks man!! Yeah thought it was worth mentioning! The game is awesome man trust me haha
Totally unfair the reviews on metacritic. The game does open up after chapter 2.
But well, isn't for everyone yeah, especially because all the components of Harvestella (farming and combat) aren't deep, but that's why they work together. There's no time limit for anything, just to get back to your home because the character kind pass out and the doctor will charge you more and more everytime, so as long as the MC cames back before ten to your home you'll be ok 😂.
Great review, Harvestella is one of my favorite games of all time (yeah you can laugh at me, i like the game with farming and kinda playstation 3 graphics. So many times people said this to me). So complimenting, the game is not for you if:
-You want farming and life sim at full, because is not. Farming is more a mean to an end (resources), and its pretty simple, not more than probably 15 minutes i used to take care of it every in game day. And it's rpg centric, the combat isn't avoidable.
-You look for super complex combat, you don't even have defensive options. The difficulty isn't out of the charts, but there are some endgame zones that'll kick your butt (orbital cradle and those damm mechanical things, and the 60 floors of the Quietus dungeon).
-Is story heavy. I'd day is kinda self insert, but at the same time the MC has their background, is hard to say more without spoilers.
This is such an awesome comment! Thank you for taking the time to write it! Harvestella is one of the best gaming experiences I've had this year! Everything about Harvestella just oozes with charm!
Thank you for checking out the review :)
The time limit is putting me off from trying this game. I'm a slow gamer who likes to grind and explore thoroughly at a slow pace and being stressed up by a time limit, even if it's a generous one, is too discouraging for me.
Otherwise, I'd most likely try this game.
Totally get where you are coming from! I would certainly give the demo a go and if you do enjoy it and decide to buy it then your data would transfer over :)
I don't think this game is for me. But I will say I love the art style.
theres a demo that maybe worth a try dude ;)
@@chickenfillets I'll give it a go. How's work going since I know you're shattered.
The artstyle is absolutely gorgeous, isn't it?
@@uppernimbus Yeah it is.
Good Morning 😂
Good morning!
I played this game as my 1st farming simulator and I honestly thought it was pretty boring. Bought it on a sale and it still wasn't worth the price. Granted I did play the demo 1st and the game did look promising at 1st, but the more I played the game, the more I didn't want to play it anymore.
Totally fair! Not every game can hit a home run! Really appreciate you checking the video out :)
A shame harvestella ain't going to have a sequel cuz the producer left square enix. I just realized something I have never even played final fantasy not even sure which one to start with. I kept on thinking getting final fantasy 6 but I hate square enix except for yoko tara( hopefully I spelled his name right cuz I love nier on the Nintendo switch). I'm just going to wait for ender magnolia to come out and replay ender lilies and redemption reapers later on. Sorry if I sounded rude
Nah bud, didn't sound rude! I really hope we do get a sequel but like you say we probably won't! If you ever did try Final Fantasy at least you have plenty to choose from haha! FFX is always a good starting point. I did start off with FFVII when it first came out in 97. Thanks for checking out the video :)
The meeting and female barely look different at all... missed opportunity for another cool character
Can understand where you are coming from!
I played the demo and it was really mid at best
Totally fair! At least you gave it a try :) thanks for watching the video!
@@chickenfillets good video bro