Of the games I've played where you alternate between two game genres, I'd say this is one of the best. A lot of games like that have trouble making both halves fit together smoothly, either favoring one half or the other, or making it feel like two separate games crammed together, but Sakuna manages to avoid that. You want to take care of your rice and that directly makes you stronger when you're out fighting, and you have to go out fighting to get resources and story progress to make it easier to grow your rice. And both halves feel like they've gotten a lot of polish (though the combat isn't quite as deep as the rice growing, though that isn't that much of a slight given how crazy deep the rice growing is).

Moment to moment, when you're growing rice, there's a lot to keep track of and it's all about making small adjustments and remembering and sticking to a long term plan. There's enough details to adjust and details that are mostly out of your control that there's always something to improve. When you're out fighting, the combat feels good, trying to maintain a combo, smash enemies into each other, get out of the way of the big attacks, etc. There's also a bit of exploring the levels looking for rare materials and equipment.

The experience of the game is a back and forth between needing to deal with the urgent needs of your rice, the ticking clock of daylight, and wanting to get further into the levels to progress. The year-long cycle of growing the rice forces you to plan well ahead, and you learn how to best grow it in bits and pieces, which both serves to not overwhelm you and to keep you interested. The story also does a good job keeping you moving forward between years.

Should you buy this game for the aesthetics? The game and characters are cute and enjoyable to hang out with. All of the art is well made, though there's a few hiccups in the animations. Overall I wouldn't say the aesthetics alone are impressive enough to sell the game. They're not hurting it either though.

Should you buy the game for the story? Maybe. It's well enough written and localized, and the setting and characters are interesting. While the major story beats may be a little predictable, that's not such a bad thing. It does a good job of keeping you interested throughout the game's runtime. And there are a few surprises along the way.

Should you buy this for the gameplay? Definitely. This is both one of the best examples of how to mash two genres together as well as one of the deepest farming sims I've played. Unless you just hate beat-em-ups or farming sim games, it's definitely worth playing.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (10/10 title) was incredibly charming in its presentation but man the combat felt super clunky thanks to some of the strange unchangeable controls: a single tap in the direction of an attack to parry, double tap forward to dash (hardly ever used this, so useless), and - the worst offender - double tap R1 to dodge. Right up to the very end of the game it felt like I was half fighting against the controls. You better come to a full stop before you use a quick attack or you're locked into a dash attack that has absolutely no follow-up capabilities and leaves you wide open.

Also why were the directional inputs so unnecessarily sensitive? My controller doesn't have any stick drift yet countless times I found myself locked into an animation facing the wrong way. Early on I hated how little you could do to knocked down enemies (without doing fancy aerial juggling stuff with the raiment) but the game would be so brainless if you could just stun lock everything lol

I probably tried too hard to optimize my rice farming considering you have unlimited years to farm but I suppose that was part of the fun (plus how you avoid overlevelling). Farm sim games probably aren't particularly for me though if they're like this half of Sakuna - it was neat and surprisingly deep but I don't find it relaxing or "comfy" thanks to my silly optimization anxiety (le gamers will optimize the fun out of their games)

The story was fine but the point was definitely the characters - Sakuna herself had a very endearing maturation from her arrogant, lazy brat start and there was a nice "found family" vibe with the farming gang humans. Each member of that gang could have used a tad more fleshing out though (I'd happily sacrifice combat missions for more side stories). That one side quest reveal of Yui's origin shocked the hell out of me lmao (those who know, know)

Oh yeah I played with the English dub and Laura Post was fantastic as Sakuna! Rest of the cast sounded solid too, although I never bothered to compare them all to the JP dub