A really cool game! Kinda went into this game blind and was happily surprised at how great it was.
The game to me has three main pillars; the combat, the farming and the characters and each one of them is done to a gratifying degree! The combat feels simple but very punchy, due to the main gimmick of the game being the crash system. You can smack dudes or use your grappling arm to chuck and throw people around and when they connect with other enemies (or the enviornment), they crash into them dealing additional damage to both the airplane and the destination. Speaking of that grappling arm, I should probably say that yeah, you get a grappling arm from the first minute of the game and it's a valuable tool in making the combat feel very expressive. But overall the combat is simple but fun.
The farming actually totally caught me off guard. I went into this game aware of the combat/farming sides but kinda expected the farming part to be a more throwaway side part of the game. Boy was I wrong! The farming goes into a sometimes exhaustive video-game recreation of farming, with you having to do heavy labour and managing all the different stages of cultivating and sowing your rice crop. That means manually planting hundreds of seeds in the early game one button press at a time, by the way. While this may scare or bore some players off, I think they did a fantastic job of it and it was one of my favourite parts of the game.
I'm a sucker for forced monotony in games as long as it has some sort of purpose (games being bad on purpose being one of the highest art forms, of course) and sakuna defintely fits into this mold for me. Going through eahc stage and feeling the labour of each part really struck a chord with me and made the whole process much more rewarding in the end of my first few years. The game does something smart though and actually have an exp system built in to the farming side and the more experience you get at doing each part of the farming process, the more upgrades you get. For instance, with seed planting you start out planting seeds one by one, but them you unlock a grid overlay to judge spacing better and you also unlock different skills that you let plant a different amount of seeds all at once and in individual patterns. It's really cool and helps stop the farming from becoming too much of an actual chore over the time.
Also I know I've been blabbering about the farming a lot but I just wanna also praise the system where the rice you grow at the end of the farming process is how you level up. Killing enemies and completing stages doesn't grant you experience points to level sakuna up but all your experience points actually come from the farming side of the game and depending of MANY variables during the farming process, such as tempreture, weather, season, fertilizer, seed spacing and WAY more, depend on how much you level up and also what stats you level up, like strength, magic, luck etc. It's a really, really neat system and I gotta give the dev team praise for how well they pulled off the farming partof the game.
Then there's the characters which, I'll be honest, the story isn't amazing in Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Sakuna is blamed for humans breaking into heaven and causing an accident, so sakuna is punished along with the humans to live on a demon infested island where they gotta find something. The story doesn't do too many interesting things but it does act as a vehicle for the characters who I fully enjoyed. The game does a really good job of letting you get to know each character you work with in the game and giving them their own individual stories and personalities. These are backe dup with not only good writing but also a lot of random cutscenes on your home base that, whilst short, usually tell you a little something about a character or their relationship with someone. There's an abundance of them in the game and their all pretty swell. At first it starts a bit light on character building but after the halfway point it really starts to shine (Sakuna and Kokorowa are great).
There's some gripes I have with the game, mostly the level design and the length. Levels maybe feel a little bit too similar/basic and the game feels maybe a little bit too long for my taste but overall I had a great time with Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Hihgly recommend those who loves good aesthetics, fun combat and unique games that try to do something a little different.
The game to me has three main pillars; the combat, the farming and the characters and each one of them is done to a gratifying degree! The combat feels simple but very punchy, due to the main gimmick of the game being the crash system. You can smack dudes or use your grappling arm to chuck and throw people around and when they connect with other enemies (or the enviornment), they crash into them dealing additional damage to both the airplane and the destination. Speaking of that grappling arm, I should probably say that yeah, you get a grappling arm from the first minute of the game and it's a valuable tool in making the combat feel very expressive. But overall the combat is simple but fun.
The farming actually totally caught me off guard. I went into this game aware of the combat/farming sides but kinda expected the farming part to be a more throwaway side part of the game. Boy was I wrong! The farming goes into a sometimes exhaustive video-game recreation of farming, with you having to do heavy labour and managing all the different stages of cultivating and sowing your rice crop. That means manually planting hundreds of seeds in the early game one button press at a time, by the way. While this may scare or bore some players off, I think they did a fantastic job of it and it was one of my favourite parts of the game.
I'm a sucker for forced monotony in games as long as it has some sort of purpose (games being bad on purpose being one of the highest art forms, of course) and sakuna defintely fits into this mold for me. Going through eahc stage and feeling the labour of each part really struck a chord with me and made the whole process much more rewarding in the end of my first few years. The game does something smart though and actually have an exp system built in to the farming side and the more experience you get at doing each part of the farming process, the more upgrades you get. For instance, with seed planting you start out planting seeds one by one, but them you unlock a grid overlay to judge spacing better and you also unlock different skills that you let plant a different amount of seeds all at once and in individual patterns. It's really cool and helps stop the farming from becoming too much of an actual chore over the time.
Also I know I've been blabbering about the farming a lot but I just wanna also praise the system where the rice you grow at the end of the farming process is how you level up. Killing enemies and completing stages doesn't grant you experience points to level sakuna up but all your experience points actually come from the farming side of the game and depending of MANY variables during the farming process, such as tempreture, weather, season, fertilizer, seed spacing and WAY more, depend on how much you level up and also what stats you level up, like strength, magic, luck etc. It's a really, really neat system and I gotta give the dev team praise for how well they pulled off the farming partof the game.
Then there's the characters which, I'll be honest, the story isn't amazing in Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Sakuna is blamed for humans breaking into heaven and causing an accident, so sakuna is punished along with the humans to live on a demon infested island where they gotta find something. The story doesn't do too many interesting things but it does act as a vehicle for the characters who I fully enjoyed. The game does a really good job of letting you get to know each character you work with in the game and giving them their own individual stories and personalities. These are backe dup with not only good writing but also a lot of random cutscenes on your home base that, whilst short, usually tell you a little something about a character or their relationship with someone. There's an abundance of them in the game and their all pretty swell. At first it starts a bit light on character building but after the halfway point it really starts to shine (Sakuna and Kokorowa are great).
There's some gripes I have with the game, mostly the level design and the length. Levels maybe feel a little bit too similar/basic and the game feels maybe a little bit too long for my taste but overall I had a great time with Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Hihgly recommend those who loves good aesthetics, fun combat and unique games that try to do something a little different.