I would like to point to my hour count, I've had a hard time figuring out if I -liked- this game for most of my play time, only after a friend asked my thoughts on it, I found it is a resounding 'no'. I will chalk this up to the promise of a mystery and a list of goals that give me bonuses carry me through a game that I eventually described to said friend as 'flavored paste'.

Some things/systems that are fine will not be mentioned because I'm already over my character count for this review, so if you're wondering why I don't mention crafting, dungeons, food, animals, and basic combat, that's why.


The game is half JRPG, and half Farm Sim, and it is incredibly milquetoast in both respects.

The combat is basic, You have basic attacks and then special attacks.
There are different jobs, you can have 3 equipped to switch between in combat, but they're all some basic flavor of melee or ranged, some have elements/damage types attached to them, you hit enemies with elements/damage type they're weak to to do more damage, For bosses if you hit them enough with what they're weak to you get MORE damage, If you hit them with more than one type they're weak to you get to do MORE MORE damage.
When you kill stuff you get exp to all jobs you've equipped, that you can spend on the skill tree for it to unlock more special attacks, up to a max for 4. The best thing about this system is each job has 2 items that can give buffs to any job, most of them fall into phys damage, magic damage, break gauge(the boss weakness bars), and crit. Sounds good right? Unfortunately the best part of the combat, the skill tree, is incredibly vague on what the upgrades to your special attacks do. So if there is a special attack called "Slash" and you go to look at "Slash II" to see what it gives you, it just says something like "Acquires Slash II". Ooookay? Do I get more damage? How much more damage? Does it give more range? Does it reduce cool down time of this skill? No idea! Hope you like looking at wikis, because you're going to start seeing a theme.
Okay, so we've got our skills, and we can level up, this is a JRPG, so we get equipment too, right?
Other than a weapon, the only swappable gear in the game is for the main character are two rings.
Yep.
2.
So what can these rings do?
They can increase defense or attack, protect you from debuffs, or give you more Job EXP. Rings can have multiple slots, and you can make a device to make combine rings and kinda make custom gear with the abilities you want. There are multiple levels for each of the ability, even for the status defense items... but good luck figuring out what the difference is between similarly named ones. What does stomach ache guard do? How is it different from Indigestion?? No, I'm not joking, those are the ACTUAL names for the skills. You would think you can l just look at the ring and it will tell me what it does. No. Short of the defense/attack that you can actually change your stats, if you look at the ring, it just tells you something like "Stun Guard III" You know... the name of the skill. Guess where you have to go to find basic information about your gear?? Did you guess a wiki? I knew you would, you're smart like that, that's why I like you.

Here's the thing, I can get through bad or bland game play for a good story.

Unfortunately the main story starts of with your basic amnesiac with a bit of a mystery tease and then dives into some wild mental backflips by the end I wish I hadn't paid as much attention as I did. I'm not going into any specifics here. Maybe if I had gone in with a "This is parody" mindset and just laughed at it.
Side quests are sub basic and a bunch of people being needlessly difficult because they have to drag out this quest chain for 3 more quests. Most of your interaction with your party members are done through the seasonal dungeon they're attached to. After that you have little side quests to get closer to them and a few other NPCs. They are all of similar quality.
I think part of the problem I had is 99% of the choices during dialogue give the same response, and I don't mean, there is like a few about a paragraph of different text but the over all leads to the same result, no. The answer that immediately follows sounds like it could answer either reply same regardless of your choice. For example:
The village mayor asks you to make some mouse repellent and your choices are:
'Sure.'
or
'Don't you have any in the village?'
And the line directly after you answer is:
'The one we have is a little weak. We're going to need something extra strong.'

Which leaves the other half of the game. The farming.

Just like every other farm sim, you have your farm land, you have rocks and wood on it, you break it up and then hoe the land, plant your seeds, water, wait, profit. You start with 1/9th of the field you can get, not counting the two special fields you unlock later.
Unlike other games, there is no reward for processing food, meals don't make them more valuable, turning a fruit into a juice doesn't change the price. After you unlock all of your field, max out your barn/coop and buy the extra inventory bags there is no reason to make more money except to buy seeds. I managed to unlock the max size of everything in spring of year 2, and the most infuriating things is it is not large enough because all of your processing machines HAVE TO BE PLACED ON FIELD TILES. You also unlock different types and colors of fences... again, that can only be placed on field tiles! That's it. That is all of the depth of the farming. You can't increase the level of the soil, if you want better quality crops you'll have to do fairy requests, we'll talk about that soon. There's nothing makes it special, nothing that makes it worth continuing to farm once you're maxed out on money, hell, I'd even say once you have the upgrades and a stockpile of food, there's no point to continue to bother with it.
This is BAFFLING to me as a long time player of a variety of different farm sim games like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, and Rune Factory.
I would even put money on being able to beat the game without bothering with upgrading any of the farm.
Half of this game is a farming game.
That does not make a compelling case for it's farming.

The only thing I was having fun with was doing all of the fairy quests. Each seasonal dungeon you free a fairy that give you what would traditionally be your farming tool upgrades, you do the things they ask they upgrade different areas to give you better quality crops, or crafted item recipes. It's basically a to-do list. They are not worth doing past the first half for the rewards.
Once you beat the game you can marry one of your party members, I did not do so. Full disclosure, I did not beat the game. I got to the last dungeon when said friend asked me if I like it, and after thinking back on it, I would have been better off doing some mod for another farming sim rather than the 130 hours I poured into this game.