Monster Harvest – Review
Our Rating: 8/10
Monster Harvest is a game with a lot of potentials to keep you entertained for hours on end; all thanks to its simplicity and willingness to appeal to a wide range of audiences. It achieves its goal of captivating and entertaining as well. It’s a harvest game or a farm simulator. However, it incorporates concepts from other games. This includes creating monsters, or better yet, plains for battles and exploration, and earning good money to help develop the farm and, by extension, the surrounding area.
While your unknown multibillionaire uncle has yet to appear in front of you in person to claim you as his sole heir, our protagonist gets a letter from his scientist uncle; requesting that he take care of a farm gift that he is unable to do due to his laboratory research. This explains how new species of animals were discovered by combining varying slimes that react when they come into contact with plants, resulting in the appearance of planimals. It’s up to our protagonist to look after and prosper the farm alongside his new friends.
Planimals
Cleaning the planting area, plowing, planting, and watering the seeds are just some of the services we receive on the farm. As we advance through the game, new facilities are unlocked at the expense of natural resources like wood, logs, and minerals. A greenhouse, barn, barn, and storage area for our forages are among the new areas on the farm.
Recalling Pokémon, the difference is that rather than catching our allies, we must take the seed, plant it, and care for it until a new buddy shows up. This varies depending on the seed planted. It also determines which will protect us from monsters while exploring the Dungeon; as well as for a series of “flat battles”.
Furthermore, they implement an evolution system that allows them to gain new skills as they progress through levels, allowing them to become stronger. When you lose a battle, even against another caretaker, be careful because they don’t just faint; they turn into planimal essences, which act as fertilizer for the farm’s ground surface, and new little creatures sprout at high levels. Yes, the battles are a life-or-death situation!
We can walk with up to six flats, but not all of them must be of the same type. When they reach the required total, they will be sent to the stables to be used later to vary the group or even sold for a profit. Battles between planes are turn-based, and switching is not permitted; instead, the battle is by the order in the battle menu.
Dungeons and Slimes
Dungeons are where we’ll go whenever the evening shift arrives to look for minerals, fish, gather wood, and gather goops that have a direct impact on the seeds we’ve planted and the evolution of our little monsters. Monster Harvest has five sections, each of which has lavish seed rewards and is automatically removed once the site is complete.
They’re the reason we want to explore all the time, in addition to the necessary minerals for character development. This occurs with the 3 kinds of oozes: red, green, and blue. They have a direct impact on how seeds germinate and whether or not they can become flat for collection.
Red slimes are the ones who change the seed so that various types of planimal joins the team based on which one is planted. The green goo hastens the germination process; resulting in a plant with ready-to-harvest seeds or a planimal appearing in hours rather than days. Blue goo is responsible for producing flat animals that do not fight. Instead, they serve as cattle to generate food or even raise to adulthood.
Character, equipment, evolution, and surroundings
Our character has an XP and stamina bar of his or her own. We have tools for farm maintenance such as a hoe, pickax, ax, and a watering can. As we progress through the game, new equipment appears to aid in the care of the farm, such as irrigation plumbing, a “canner,” a “glacier,” scarecrows, and other equipment that alter the scenario and customize the farm to each player’s preferences.
The town of Planimalia, on the farm’s outskirts, hosts weekly or monthly events; ranging from gastronomic parties to exhibitions of the breeding plains, with new areas we discover as we go. When we explore, we can interact with the villagers by giving them gifts. In exchange, they will give us gifts. There are also local businesses that can help us improve our gear and expand the space in our backpacks so we can carry more diverse items.
Not everything is a plain bed of roses
Putting the puns aside, it gave you an idea of how much we can do in Monster Harvest. In addition to regular farm maintenance, we can evolve our little monsters, care for each one individually, and expand their collection. However, we’d like to draw your attention to a few observations. This may or may not have a direct impact on how you interact with the game.
Beginning with the character, the level progression abruptly comes to a halt. It is no longer possible to evolve certain supports after they are released. If that happens, that’s fine. However, it’s a fairly quick process that can make a game more repetitive in this regard. There are disruptions between the command and what you see on the screen at times. For those in a hurry, it can produce a duplicate command, causing you to miss an action or command. In addition, when the character accesses the menu, he takes action if he has the selected item and can spend seeds or vigor, which is necessary to keep him awake.
The battle system is simple, but it is overly complex. Monsters don’t have affinities that can help or hurt them in battle. Only the level determines whether you win the battle or not; or if we fight too much with the planimal. We must change if we don’t want to lose it due to the remaining hit points after each completed battle and the lack of health potions. When zoomed in on the plain in battle, the graphics are intentionally retro. But, they are extremely simple and well checkered. There is no battle conclusion music or skills. Once you reach level 8 of each monster, you can no longer gain skill and must repeat your actions.
Final Thoughts
Monster Harvest is a fun game that keeps us entertained while we tend to the farm and the plains in our own unique way. It gets right to the point and provides many hours of entertainment. Due to a lack of resources and more complex battles that need more strategies, we believe that an update would address this issue; as well as the addition of side missions, which would further enhance the game and NPC interaction. Monster Harvest still achieves its goal of entertainment. It never ceases to delight us to see the farm produce and evolve with each new season!
