I'll play your sad farming RPG. I downloaded the demo thinking I would mull it over, but then when I got to the title screen and heard that theme, something in my gut just told me to go ahead and get it to properly savor it that way. I dunno why, but I almost always have a hangup about demos with transferrable saves that makes me wanna just get the game and experience it from scratch, fresh out of the box, even if doing so sight unseen is less in my interest. Enough smart people on here that I admire have said things about this game that got my attention as someone who pretty much never plays farming games, though, so I trust it's still money well spent.
That said, that Japanese copy up top on the back of the box is killer. Just... mwah. 😌
Anyway, I've put in like, six, eight(?) hours and, yeah, y'all were right, Harvestella is a keeper. I think it was @kuraine who I saw make the comparison to Recettear, which I think is really apt. Much less so in terms of direct mechanical similarities, but rather in its ability to, at least at this stage in the game, take pretty take simple, if solidly executed, takes on various systems done deeper and more intricately elsewhere and package them within a unique framework that makes them feel compelling specifically in concert with one another. As I believe Warren Spector remarked on the original Deus Ex's development in an interview I saw a few years ago, these sorts of hybrid games have to go to great lengths to avoid inviting direct comparisons to the best examples of their single-genre contemporaries in the minds of players because as soon as such games are evaluated on individual, piecemeal merits rather than the experiential whole, they nigh inherently lack the means to compete. The self-defined context of why these assembled mechanics exist in an abridged manner has to be convincing enough to keep such games enjoyable within their own lanes in the minds of players, justified on their own terms, and so far, I think Harvestella does an admirable job at this.
Like a lot of people, much of it admittedly comes down to the story grounding the farming and dungeon crawling with a sense of purpose and direction that many of its most direct inspirations lack by design, a choice that's perfectly valid in those games, but tends to feel less compelling to me as some who tends to most enjoy games with a certain sense of intentionality to their experience. The Japanese writing, while overall straightforward and unpretentious, has its charm; the worldbuilding feels genuinely inviting and intriguing and I've been pleasantly surprised at its wry, quiet sense of humor and its ability to make me laugh on multiple occasions considering the game's self-serious marketing. And the music, while sticking to a pretty consistent instrumentation at least so far, is quietly endearing in a way befitting the game's status as small title sneaking out of a big publisher.
But honestly, outside of all that, it's the camera angles that have left the biggest mark on me so far, of all things. This is clearly a game that's self-aware of its limited means, but its striking framing in tandem with its rich environmental design allow it to punch far above its own weight. Who cares about a little blurriness in portable mode and humble polygon budgets for characters when you have vistas that look like that, right? Again, context is king in hybrid games and when you're one trying to do a lot with a little, there are perhaps few tools more powerful for articulating how those assets should look and feel than by smartly directing the way players see and examine them in the first place.
A lot of people tend to say Japanese games of this scale and budget released nowadays feel like PS2 games, something as a pejorative, but oftentimes affectionately. I tend to be loath to do so myself both because it's a overplayed (and often, I would argue, misguided) comparison and also because as someone who has, y'know, spent many, many years plumbing the depths of the Japanese PS2 library, that particular ecosystem of games at that particular time means something very specific and special to me, meaning that I don't want to dilute. But I'll make an exception this time. Harvestella does feel like a PS2 game to me and it's not just because of its aesthetics or production values or particular sense of cohesion. It is Steambot Chronicles, is PachiPara, is Disaster Report, a game that feels earnest and genuine about its mission, sincerity that can certainly still be found throughout Japanese games today, but is so rarely able to manifest in games of this particular size and scope these days, especially as the Japan Studios and the like of the world fade away and close off avenues for games like this to jostle for physical store space. I don't know that I'll come away feeling that it's a particularly essential game from this year to play. But that doesn't mean I'll feel any less grateful that, for once, I don't have to hook up my PS2 and turn on my upscaler to remind myself how the Japanese games that made me fall in love with this part of the industry and work in it in the first place are supposed to feel.
