[Review] Monster Harvest - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Maple Powered Games
Published By: Merge Games
Categories: Farming, RPG, Adventure
Release Date: 08.31.21

Monster Harvest is what you get when you mix a Harvest Moon, farming simulator and a monster based RPG. Sounds great!

First impressions however, were rather negative with Monster Harvest. This mainly comes from how fidget and plain unresponsive menus are. It was a pain to go through even putting a name in. Pressing confirm buttons never worked correctly, moving through menus slides too fast like I need to be doing everything with split precision. This extents to in-game menus too, like with your inventory and tools, and I swear I accidentally threw out one of my tools, because I couldn’t find my pick-axe and had to restart the game.

That all aside, I was liking Monster Harvest. It’s colorful and the environments look fantastic. Farm simulation wise, it’s competent. You have your tools to clean up your fields, which nets you materials and experience for doing so, you have your seeds for plants, and you have time. Lots of time. You won’t be doing much in those first few days outside of planting the seeds and cleaning out your messy, messy field, which might seem a bit frustrating and slow, but the game is easing you into everything.

See, a big mechanic is the Planimals. You have seeds for food, but also have them for your monster crew. Different seeds mixed with slimes you get make different results. Different Planimals, a quick speed up for that food you wanted. You’re not left in the dark with this thankfully, the game has quite the long tutorial. Don’t skip it, or you’re going to be very lost.

The more you do of, well anything the more experience you get. More experience and leveling up lets you build more objects, the first of which is a chest for your items. Build this right away, as you’ll very quickly run out of space for tools, food, ingredients, or materials you’ll need. Your Planimals can level up too in fights, but I had quite poor luck at first with them perishing in fights before they even got to. This all becomes demoralizing. You lose, you wait, wait, wait.

You’ll see all of these nice expansions around your farm, but they’re all terribly expensive. I never got remotely close to that amount of money while playing. I know I have to play more, but the waiting/grinding, the downright terrible menu navigation, it just add up. It’s things that really hinder a game I am otherwise fond of and a fan of mechanics. This is a candidate for a game I will most definitely re-analyze after updates and patches.