Quick Look: Harvestella

Weirdly enough, I feel this Quick Look encouraged me to give the game a try when the initial reviews had me writing it off. I had seen talk about how short the days are and how poorly the game handles both the farming and combat aspects. After seeing this footage, it seems like it's pretty standard as far as these types of games go.

Outside of the overworld, which does seem way too fast, the clock seems to be about the same timeframe I would expect from a Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, and actually seems even slower than those games. The combat looks roughly on par with something like Rune Factory, which isn't exactly a compliment, but not a huge negative in my opinion.

Also, Jeff mentioned that it seemed to be progressing slowly and how in comparison roughly 6 hours is enough to experience a whole year in Stardew Valley. Now I'm not sure if Jeff is just skipping through his days in Stardew Valley or if I'm particularly slow, but in my experience my first year of Stardew was around the 30 hour range. Not expecting this game to be a 10/10 by any means, but it looks better than I initially thought.

The little dude in the first town sells a mount which you can then feed to upgrade its speed. Makes the overworld time less of an issue.

It’s not an amazing game, but I’ve been enjoying it. A good switch and tv show game.

My only question is how do you kill god in this game.

i think jan n i have different farming tastes , this looks n sounds ok , ooblets i found super mehh. thanks for the QL tho!

The Switch has a demo for the first two chapters if you want to try it out. Progress carries over. I enjoyed what I played.

Also the shop sells an upgrade for the backpack (gives you another row) and an item that unlocks fishing. I was able to afford both of them in the demo. It could have been signposted better.

@dizial laid out a lot of points I agree with. I'm not interested in this particular game but all of the problems Jan listed in the first 8 minutes or so are literally bog standard mechanics for virtually every farming game (i.e. Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, Coral Island).

I really don't think you can include Animal Crossing or Dreamlight Valley (both games I enjoyed a great deal) in the same genre. To reference today's Bombcast, they are farming games in exactly the same way that Sifu is a fighting game. Yes, they contain farming/fighting, but "farming game"/"fighting game" has a different, specific, established meaning.

you can stay out until 12pm every day without any major issues. That'll give you an extra 6 hours every day.

I agree with a lot of the comments on here; probably one I would try on a sale but otherwise no rush to play.

As someone who plays 2-3 farming sims in rotation, I thought what I played of Harvestella was the most refreshing take in a long time. Shame you didn't take to it.