Recent reviews by TheJadeStorm

I find this game to be very enjoyable and addicting is a similar way to games like Rimworld and Prison Architect and such hook me. I've seen a lot of comparisons to Two Point Campus and, of course, that's fair -- but I think this game has a lot more depth to it. When I play TPC, I always end up feeling like I am playing more of a puzzle game than a management sim. Like everything is being spoon fed to me I guess? To be fair it's possible I just didn't play TPC long enough, but I put around 6 hours into TPC and it never quick clicked. In this game I feel more like I'm given enough information to start, but left to learn things on my own. It also opens up a lot at one point to where you are getting more involved in the world outside your school. Lastly, I feel I "get to know" and care about my employees, which is something don't tend to get from TPC or even Prison Architect. Somehow it makes me really care about the students and their success. Anyway -- excellent game, highly recommend!

The short version of this review is that I absolutely love this game. I am fairly sure I am basically at the end of the story now, but I think I'm at a good point to be able to talk about it.

First off, as many others have said, this is a JRPG with effectively a farming game side activity. The farming never really plays an important part. It's pretty nicely implemented, and I enjoyed it, but it's not "important". At some level, the farming is just a way to get materials and ingredients for making healing items, money, and misc items. That said, it is pleasant and a nice thing to do on the side when you need a break from whatever else is going on in the story.

Now -- I find the stories to be wonderful. Most of them hit me in the feels the same way Final Fantasy 14's stories do, to the point where I wonder if it's some of the same writers. The main story has a lot of interesting twists and turns and gets pretty intense and heavy as it goes on, in proper Square Enix rpg fashion. It really does remind me a lot of a Final Fantasy game in that sense.

Side stories are not typically your 'go kill x monsters' fare. In fact a lot of them are literally go to a place, talk for a bit, go on about your business until you hear from the person to meet them for the next part. I found it to be a good way of storytelling and giving you a lot of back story without making you do a lot of repetitive tasks.

Non-main quests are .. well they're a mix. None of them are frustratingly repetitive or boring, and some of them are also still just 'go talk to this person and come back', but they are generally all cute and give good rewards. And as someone else mentioned, there is actually a surprisingly large skew towards "helping kids" in those stories. I enjoyed those quests, but even I noticed how many were like that.

All relationship stuff is done through quests, and to my knowledge there's no marriage or anything like that. I am fairly positive that after I am done with the epilogue that there won't be much else to do and I'll probably call it at that point. But I've enjoyed every minute of it and I hope to see some expansions or something at some point to bring me back in.

One last thing regarding the combat -- one thing that stood out to me about the combat is it felt a lot like playing FF14 (or really any other mmorpg tbh) -- meaning it had the typical tropes of tells on the floor to show you where an attack is going to go -- "get out of the red" kind of feel for most battles. I found that to be interesting in a single player game. I felt right at home so to speak as a fan of FF14.

I found Harvestella to be a wonderful experience and I would absolutely recommend it, but go into it knowing it's more JRPG than Farming Sim. =)

Edit: I just completed the rest of the story and went a bit further and I wanted to correct something above. You can indeed marry. (I haven't tried it but it's an option)

I can not decide how I feel about this yet. I've played quite a bit at this point, up to level 35 or something, and I'm pretty sure almost done with the campaign. 1602 being my favorite of the series, I miss a lot of the ... rawness? For example one of the things I loved about the earlier Anno's was having to balance your population need materials with materials -you- needed. That's all but gone in this. The trade route handling via the "overworld" map doesn't feel nearly as rewarding as the earlier games where you literally were building ships and mapping them to routes. Gone is the anxious and glorious feeling of "oh my god please tell me this NPC boat is bringing construction materials". Gone is the frustration (but imo a good frustration) of your population grabbing the last of the construction materials right when you were about to build something. Now, one thing I found is that if you go to each of your zones and in the bottom right click on the non-minimap icon, you will see a checkbox to have your people auto upgrade themselves. I feel that this brings back a good deal of the feel of the population and you kind of "fighting" over goods. It brings a lot more of a challenge in that you don't get to just go upgrade when YOU are ready, they do it when they are ready and therefore you end up finding out "oh crap I need more food now", which I think adds to the game. The lack of randomized maps and lack of competition on ANY map doesn't feel right. You are literally the only one in our zone map, aside from NPCs that give you quests -- no one else is colonizing on your same map. No race to get the island that has the materials on it you need. In fact there's no such thing as materials exclusive to a particular island (or zone of the same category) anymore. If you didn't get an island that had diamonds on it in the past, well, you better go trade with someone who does or conquer them and take it -- in previous Annos if you want your Luxury goods filled. You are easily self-sufficient in this one.

Now, with all that said, I would actually recommend giving the game a shot. If you can approach it with "this isn't the Anno I know" eyes, then I think you will find something enjoyable, at least for the first playthrough. I do -not- think it has any replayability at all.. maybe in future DLC? It's got a lot of interesting mechanics. I'll also echo what some other folk have said, make sure you have an SSD. You will get to a point where you bounce between zones quickly and that load time will make you want to jab a fork in your eye without an SSD. At this point I have 4 zones (bought out a competitor's spot) and the game does appear to be beginning to get a bit laggy, but for the most part it's playing well. Also if you give it a shot, try not to be discouraged early on. I felt like I was being babysat for the first portion of the game with all of the main storyline stuff. It was very linear and very easy at first. I actually had a fairly negative opinion of the game until I got ... I'd say to a point where I had to start bouncing between the Arctic and Temperate zones.

But yeah, if you are going to spend your entire time going "this isn't Anno", then steer clear. If you can put that away and look at it as a new concept, give it a shot!