Dropped Harvestella. Just wasn’t feeling it any more (late game spoilers)

Somehow I had a feeling from day one that I wouldn’t finish Harvestella, but I thought it would be the combat that would do me in. It turned out to be the story instead, once they did their big reveal of the mystery behind the world we were on.

Late story spoiler: turns out mankind faced an extinction event on a previous planet, but they put themselves in stasis until their advanced AI (Omens) could find and terraform another planet for them to settle on. That new planet is the one we’re currently on. Only it turns out that new humans sprang up out of nowhere (HOW?!) on this new planet as well, and the planet ain’t big enough for the old gang and the new gang.

I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, i.e. they’re facing the extinction event again and the Omens want to create a kind of barrier to cover a small area and keep people safe inside while the rest of the planet perishes. This barrier is coincidentally just big enough to hold all the old humans (Cains) or all the new humans (Abels), but not both.

Despite the heavy contrivance, that’s not bad as far as stories go. It’s a new spin on things, even though I know they’ll find a third option that lets everyone survive. And of course a ‘god’ will pop up at some point so that they can go “Mankind needs no gods!” and “We’ll carve a new path with the power of mankind/friendship!” as we beat down the one-winged angel. All par for the course.

Where they lost me was in putting the choice of who would survive on Aria. And everyone just accepting it, like… what? Just because she’s the only Cain awake in the new world doesn’t mean she gets the right to decide who gets to live and who gets to die. Can’t we have a proper discussion on this issue? Can’t we study the data and come to a conclusion together instead of taking the obviously-biased AI’s word for it? Who died and made Aria queen? Not me!

Even worse, she right away decides to sacrifice the whole planet, everyone she ever met, in favor of saving her friends and family. Okay it wasn’t immediate, she actually agonized over it for one whole day, sugoi. And I mean, that’s fair. If you (very stupidly) leave a choice up to someone, you have to accept the risk that they might choose the option you don’t want.

But! When she makes her choice and flies off with Geist to try and kill us all, can you believe how my party reacts? Because I was pissed when I saw that, like “HOLY ****, THIS B*TCH IS TRYING TO KILL US ALL!!!! WTF ARIA?!”🤬 But no, that bunch of sissies was like “Aww, poor Aria. We have to go save her. She’s our friend. Aww.” Like, seriously? You missed the part where she’s planning to murder everyone you ever cared about? We have to go kick her stupid genocidal ass, that’s what we have to go do now.

Random screenshot before I delete my screenshot folder

Right around the same time, the dungeons in Harvestella had gotten boring and samey, all straight corridors and mechanical enemies. The farming season was also Winter, plus I already explained that the farming is a disappointment and might as well not exist in this game. If I’d felt that one or two more big pushes could finish the game, then I would have pressed on a little longer, but I feel like there’s still a long way to go. First we have to find Aria, then hopefully beat the stuffing out of her, then of course affirm our friendship even though she was planning to wipe us all out, then we have to find a third method, then execute it, then fight something or the other… I’m tired, boss.

I started 2026 with an unusual amount of energy and enthusiasm for RPGs. I haven’t felt this gung-ho about playing games for years now, and I’m not going to let Harvestella or any other mediocre game kill that enthusiasm. Unlike with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I got a good save file that I can pick up from in future in case I ever change my mind. I’d rather read ending spoilers and just call it a day, though. Harvestella was a decent game, but it wasn’t quite my thing and it definitely wasn’t what I was hoping for when I picked it up. On to the next game!

Chaos Zero Nightmare – Frustrating experience, or rather lack thereof

What if you wanted to play a mobile game that recently came out… but the developers said no? Chaos Zero Nightmare is the latest game from Supercreative and Smilegate, the same team behind my beloved Epic Seven. I played it from around day three-ish for about two months, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I’d enjoy a card battler. I’ve never seriously played one before, and all my card game knowledge comes from Yu-gi-oh, but now I’m more than a little bit intrigued. I’ve even bought games like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon to try out one of these days.

I would have loved nothing more than to explore the worlds in Chaos Zero Nightmare some more, leveling up my characters, finding and evolving new cards, and all that other fun stuff people play card RPGs for. Unfortunately the game had three main flaws: 1. Stamina restrictions, 2. Low variety in content, and 3. Rigid builds that killed excitement.

Also a really crappy translation/localization

1. Stamina restrictions right out of 2005

Or whenever it was that developers still thought that letting people play your game for long periods of time was a bad idea. I mean I kind of get that it’s a new game and they don’t want people rushing through and complaining of no content… but then the solution is to launch with more content! Or give players regular stamina infusions so they can check back in throughout the day. Barely a week into the game, I had already started checking in only once a day to do a few dailies, run out of stamina after three or four battles and turn it off again. You know what comes after checking in once a day? Checking in (chaos) zero (nightmare) times, that’s right.

It seems that game developers don’t quite understand the situation they’re in right now. When you release a game in October 2025, you’re not just competing against other games released in 2025: you’re also competing against every other gacha game still running, some of which have had over a decade to add content and find ways to keep their player base busy. So when you say, “Hey, don’t play with those old toys, try these ones instead,” you’d better be sure there’s something substantial in the toy box.

Top tier dialogue 10/10

2. Low variety in content

After a few weeks of not much going on, Chaos Zero Nightmare released its first content patch. This featured a side story with special dungeons offering cards that couldn’t be found anywhere else as well as weekly challenges and achievements. On the plus side, this didn’t require any stamina so we were finally free of restrictions. On the minus side, it turned out to be just running the same dungeon over and over and over again to get good builds to challenge the seasonal content, since you couldn’t use your regular deck builds.

I believe they later relented on that, but don’t quote me because I quit. Instead of injecting new life into CZN, the first patch rather exposed how repetitive the game was, since it was 90% running dungeons, with every dungeon taking at least 15 minutes to complete, usually more. IIRC the developers have promised to add ways to speed up each run, including allowing players to skip cutscenes, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Khalipe my sweet

3. Rigid builds killing excitement

The point of running dungeons (90% of CZN‘s content, as I said) is to build decks. In other words you’re grinding to make your characters stronger, as is typical in gacha games. There are other ways to make them stronger like Memory Fragments (weapons) and Potential (stat boosts), but most of your time is spent trying to get them good skills and artifacts in dungeons. Every character starts with a number of basic cards. They gain and develop more cards and skills through “epiphanies” they have while exploring. For example if they have a card that heals, it can gain an epiphany and become a card that heals and gives 2 AP every time it is used.

Here you see that Hugo’s skill can develop in one of three ways.

So far, so good. Multiple evolution paths for a skill is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the majority of characters in Chaos Zero Nightmare have one, maybe two optimal skill sets. If you don’t get the right epiphanies on that run, you just wasted 15 minutes of your life. Delete save data and try again. I won’t lie and say they’re completely useless without the optimal sets, but they’re pretty close to it, and some like Mei Lin genuinely are worthless without sparking the right epiphanies.

Unfortunately, even if you do spark the right ones, sometimes the game won’t save them at the end of a run… Right, I forgot to mention that the game will not-so-randomly refuse to save some of your skills if they cost too much. Another 15 minutes of your life gone. Then you have to start from zero in the same dungeon using the same skills against the same enemies again because CZN is a roguelite. *facepalm*

Note: All these issues should improve with time

Needless to say, I’ve dropped Chaos Zero Nightmare for now. But it’s only dropped “for now,” not forever. That’s because the game hasn’t been out for even six months yet, and the devs are already showing signs of improving things. For example, right around the time I quit, Supercreative and Smilegate were making save data accounting more transparent so you could know whether all your skills were going to be saved or whether you were over the save limit. They also explained how epiphanies, monster cards, etc. were weighed in the calculations to help increase understanding. TBH this is obviously stuff they should have launched with so I’m not too impressed, but I can tell the game will be very different in two or three years if they keep going at this rate.

Arrrghhh…

In a couple of years, the game roster should grow as well, along with the types of equipment they can use. This should, in theory, create more diversity in teams so I won’t be running Tressa/Hugo or Tressa/Cassius forever. Plus I want to believe that the developers will find ways to shorten dungeon runs, and prepare a greater variety of things to do with the characters. The story hasn’t gone anywhere in the six chapters I played either, so there’s a lot of room to develop that. Not expecting much on that front, though: it’s going to be all Chaos Chaos Chaos forever. After all, if they ever manage to solve the Chaos problem for good, the game will be over.

Aaaanyway, in short, I’m setting Chaos Zero Nightmare aside for now, but I’ll be keeping tabs on the game’s progress so I can hop back in when things finally get interesting. The game shows a lot of progress and I liked using my favorite characters like Mei Lin, Tressa, and Hugo. I’ll play other things for now (almost done with Harvestella, it sucks now) and check back in around the first anniversary.

Harvestella: An ordinary JRPG with a not-very-robust farming minigame tacked on

Cryptic BS go!

Yo! I’m back to report on my progress with Harvestella. One of the reasons why I write several posts on a single game instead of waiting to finish it first is that my opinions and attitudes towards a game can changed drastically as I keep playing, and I want this blog to reflect that. The amount of games trying to skate by with a strong beginning that fizzles out to nothing is too damned high!

I’m still playing Harvestella and getting along fabulously. Level 54, Autumn 30, mucking about in the Orbital Cradle maintenance block. It’s a fine game that hasn’t changed much since I started, but I can’t help feeling deceived by the whole farming thing. It plays a much, much smaller role in the game than I had expected when I bought it. Is it a decent RPG? Yes. But decent RPGs are a dime a dozen, and Harvestella doesn’t do much to stand out. Honestly, I wouldn’t have bought it if not for the farming gimmick, so yeah, I do feel a bit weird about the whole thing.

I’m not the kind of gamer to do challenge runs, but as far as I can tell, you could do a no farming run very easily in this game without feeling much friction. Make juice with wild berries, make Mountain Stir Fry stamina food with mushrooms and wild leafs and you’re good to go. Sidequests give enough money for upgrading your weapons, and you don’t need to worry about other equipment. In fact, the farming could be taken out entirely and the game wouldn’t change.

More cryptic nonsense. Why should they explain themselves to you?

Well, complaining is easy enough, but how would I want Square-Enix to fix this? TBH I think it’s okay to have farming on the side, as “that thing you do when you don’t feel like adventuring that day.” If they want to make a story-heavy JRPG with a farming minigame, there’s nothing wrong with that. But once you name it “Harvestella” and base your marketing on the farming aspect, then the farming must be meaningful, robust and fun to play. Purely for example:

  • It could unlock skills and items or grant stats that make battling and exploration easier.
  • Or you could use the crops in optional weapon and armor recipes.
  • I lowkey dislike Harvest Moon-style relationship building, but you could also use dishes to get closer to major NPCs and get good loot that way.
  • Processing machines should be streamlined and allowed to take items straight from the Storage Box, because they are as annoying as heck.
  • I want a seed maker/more random seed drops so I don’t have to keep running to the grocery store for more seeds.
  • And my farm should be easier to rearrange and decorate, because it is currently ugly as heck. At the very least I should be able to move the trees around.

Those are random suggestions off the top of my head that would keep farming optional, but make it more appealing and rewarding. As it is, I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting time on crops in the morning, and I’ve been growing fewer and fewer crops since Summer.

A character who actually has a nose!!!

The rest of the game… it’s a JRPG all right. Lots of people standing around talking about stuff but never quite explaining themselves. “Could it be… but no, that would be…” OUT WITH IT ALREADY! I estimate I’m about 75% done with Harvestella simply because a character actually explained something to my party instead of telling us we’d find out later. When is later? Why can’t later be now?!

Of course they didn’t tell us everything, that would make too much sense. Instead I’m supposed to head to the Orbital Cradle for more info, but of course for the sake of very obvious padding, we’ve had a breakdown and have to make a long detour through some very boring stages. I believe I said the dungeons in Harvestella weren’t long last time. More fool me, this is getting ridiculous.

Combat is still fine, BTW. I’m still rocking my Mage class and still using Heine and Emo as party members because I can’t be bothered to switch them. I like games where you can grind levels to make up for your laziness and/or lack of skill.

I should be done by the weekend if I keep going at this rate, then I’ll return to spoil the story and give my final thoughts.

Harvestella is a fantastic game except for the combat

You ever start a game and realize almost immediately what you’ll eventually quit over? It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I can tell right away what is going to be a pain point down the road, whether it’s a character, a plot point, or in Harvestella‘s case, a game mechanic. To put it plainly, the combat sucks!

I’m getting that out of the way early because I really like Harvestella. I think it’s a very well-designed game, great soundtrack, nice variety of crops, tasty-looking recipes, moderately-paced day and night cycle, the whole shebang. And I’m going to say as much later below. But there’s a real possibility that I’ll make a future post saying “Harvestella dropped!” and it will be like “what is wrong with this old lady?” so I’m just putting that out there: great game, sucky combat system.

Yes, yes, I shouldn’t expect too much from a farming ARPG… except the Rune Factory series exists and it’s been way more fun to play right from the first clunky game on the DS. The problem with Harvestella‘s fighting is that it’s an ARPG, but you can’t roll or dodge properly to escape enemy attacks. Google is telling me that I’ll eventually unlock some kind of dash dodge… except I’ve already unlocked it and it’s hard and frustrating to use. You can see the boss’s attack aiming for you and your character just. won’t. move. COME ON!

It seems you’re just supposed to stand there and trade hits with the enemy until someone dies. If that’s the case, then why not make it a turn-based game? Square Enix is good at turn based games, and I don’t have a problem with them either. An ARPG with poor mobility and positioning is super frustrating.

Also there are super powered enemies dotting the maps, called FEAR. Think of FOES in the Etrian Odyssey games. I really, really, really hate that kind of thing in video games. Especially in open world or semi-open world games. If you don’t want me to explore an area too soon, block it off. Otherwise just leave me alone, sheesh. So far the FEAR haven’t been too hard to avoid, but if they get too annoying, I will delete Harvestella without a backward glance. It’s the only way these companies will learn.

Love the quest markers, they make life so easy.

“But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” The rest of Harvestella is fantastic, actually. Okay the story is a bit bland because it’s about Ein, the usual farming story amnesiac. And since it’s a Square Enix game, there are these giant crystals all over the place which are acting up so we have to figure out what’s wrong with them. And there are bad guys who are going to turn out to be not so bad in the end because that’s just how JRPGs roll. I really like that while Harvestella strongly hinted at the direction it wants me to go, they left it up to me to decide which crystal secretly evil abomination seaslight to travel to.

I’ve done all of them now, unlocked the Waterside and Cave biomes, almost at the end of Summer in the first year. Although days pass, there are no hard deadlines like in the Persona or Atelier games so it’s very chill. Since I’ve finished all the available dungeons, I’m right on the cusp of unlocking the next stage of the story (I just need to sleep and wake up), hoping they don’t mess things up too much. Did you know that farming games don’t need stories? But if Harvestella insists on having one, I hope it’s a good one.

Other random notes on why I’m liking the game so much

1. The maps are very easy to navigate. I haven’t gotten lost once, the game clearly marks quests and collectibles on the map, and it has by far the least irritating ice dungeon I have encountered in all my years of gaming. I’m also a big fan of all the bridges, ladders and other shortcuts that cut travel time and reduce frustration by a lot. Square-Enix clearly put a lot of thought into not making the dungeons annoying (based on their decades of experience in making annoying dungeons), and I appreciate that the results respect my limited time and energy.

2. The sidequests are a bit, no, very wordy, but they’re chained and develop as the game progresses so they’re interesting to follow. And they’re very rewarding for a perpetually-broke player like me.

Why is everyone dragging me into their romantic drama tho

3. Speaking of which, I like being broke. Too many farming games make you rich too quickly and then there’s nothing to save up for or prioritize. I’m enjoying not being an instant billionaire (mining in OG Rune Factory, those were the days) so that every improvement feels hard-earned and rewarding.

4. For all my complaints about the combat system, I’ve made it this far without too many wipe-outs. Lorelei was a beotch though. I’ve accomplished this by playing exclusively as a Mage so I can hang back while my party members tank hits for me. There’s a non-zero chance that this will come back to bite me in the tushie before the end of the game, but well, if I end up dropping the game, so be it. It is enough to play a whole lot of Harvestella.

5. I like the faerie achievement system. I like achievements in general. I really like being rewarded for stuff I would do anyway. Nothing beats Rune Factory giving experience for walking and sleeping, but as long as I get something just for playing, I’m happy.

6. I already mentioned the great-looking recipes, but I’ll add that I love them including meat dishes. I didn’t have a problem with Harvest Moon‘s pescatarian lifestyle, and Animal Crossing‘s English localization scrubbing all mentions of eating fish or using animal products was a certainly a choice, but… just feast your eyes on this beauty.

Harvestella BBQ Churrasco

Mmm, looks so yummy. Here’s another one:

Ah, so rich and juicy. Nothing against meat-free games, but when I imagine my ideal farm lifestyle, it definitely includes thick cuts of meat and hearty stews. GIVE ME MEAT! Also cozy winter nights spent knitting in front of the fireplace with a bowl of soup. Let’s see if Harvestella can keep my dream alive.

7. Fast pace. No scene, plot arc or dungeon lasts long enough to become annoying, everything moves along snappily. Even the flavor text is short. Love it. One of the things I dread most when starting a new RPG is the endless reams of text, tons of forgettable lore and backstories, and the never-ending cutscenes that developers seem to think is mandatory these days. For once Square-Enix has understood the assignment: if you make a farming game, let the players farm! Keep the convoluted stories for Final Fantasy and let me farm!

8. Simple controls. I’ve played games where swapping tools or equipment is an ordeal, and it wears you down slowly but surely. Here it’s pretty easy to map an item to a button and use it right away. It took me all of 10 minutes to master the system, which is more than long enough.

These flowers and this whole stage remind me of 7th Dragon 2020

9. And on the theme of simplicity, I also like the simplicity of weapons, accessories, etc. in Harvestella. There’s no armor, leveling your weapon just means paying for upgrades, and your party members are super independent so you don’t need to worry about their equipment or skills or attacks, or anything. Like I said, let me farm!

And so on, and so forth. There are other things I want to talk about, but my throat is all scratchy (am I getting a cold?!) so I need gaming therapy right now. 2026 is my year of slow gaming and taking my time with every game so I’ll be focusing on Harvestella even more going forward. See you next time!

Happy New Year 2026!


Happy new year, everyone! If I’m not much mistaken, this humble little blog will be 17 years old in May 2026, and this is also the 14th edition of my New Year’s greeting (the first was a whole lifetime ago in 2012). No idea how much longer I’ll be doing this, but then again I never set out to blog with any specific timeline or goal in mind, so I’ll just keep taking it one day at a time. Hope you all had a nice restful Christmas break and didn’t pig out disgracefully like I always do, haha haha… ha… (my head still hurts)

Here’s the full list of all the past “Happy New Year” posts btw, if anyone’s really bored.

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025

This year I’m not gonna sully your eyes by making New Year’s gaming resolutions I won’t keep… even though I did attempt some of the games on last year’s list. I played almost all of Xenoblade Chronicles X, I’m still playing Triangle Strategy very very slowly, I started Monster Hunter Rise, created a character and then dropped it immediately, and the only reason I didn’t play Atelier Ryza 2 is because I hear Nintendo is coming out (has come out???) with DX versions of the Ryza series and so I have to wait another year or two for those to go on sale. Yes, I’m cheap, how did you know?

But I’m thinking that setting goals for the year may have contributed, at least subconsciously, to the pressure I felt to finish Xenoblade X last year, with less than optimal results, so 2026 is going to be the year of just playing whatever, whenever, no matter how long it takes me to finish it. Actually I bought a whole bunch of games on sale over the holidays, but I won’t say what they are in case that jinxes it. Okay, I’ll mention just one: Harvestella. Been wanting to play that for a while, even though I don’t know if I still like farm sims or not. Barring any grand cataclysm, I’ll be playing that sooner rather than later.

On the gacha game front, nothing has really stuck with me except Epic Seven and Love Nikki, and again that’s okay. I won’t force myself to drop them if I’m having fun, and I won’t force myself to continue the minute they become a chore. I dropped Chaos Zero Nightmare because it was super tedious and repetitive, but thanks to that I’m interested in card games like Slay the Spire, Chrono Ark, and Darkest Dungeon. Might try some of those this year but zero promises. Negative, even. I may have doomed them to eternal non-playability just by mentioning them.

Enough with the rambling, I guess? I don’t have to work until the 12th, but I’m filling the time with food, manga, food, food, sleep, sleep, and just a little bit of videogames. IRL my only goal is to read a few more books and practice a little more on the piano and I am doing exactly zero of that right now. Down with resolutions! Up with going with the flow! And that’s my mood going into the rest of the year. See you guys around!