Monster Harvest

Genre: Management Simulation / Monster Collecting Turn-Based RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Merge Games Pixel Bundle, along with Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, RIOT – Civil Unrest, and Sparklite)

Monster Harvest, released in 2021 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, is a game that seeks to combine a Management Simulation very much like Stardew Valley with a Monster Collecting Turn-Based RPG vaguely similar to Pokemon. Players take the role of a nephew of a kooky scientist who recently discovered caves full of strange slimes that turn plants into helpful monsters. As he’s become busy with his research, he has asked you to take over his farm.

The visuals here are pretty decent, combining 2D pixel art with 3D movement. There’s a good amount of color and personality to the people, creatures, and buildings here, too, making this a pretty appealing presentation. Backing this up is a synthesized soundtrack that works well enough for the game, but isn’t especially memorable.

When it comes to the gameplay, things start off very similar to something like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, with players clearing rocks and trees, planting and watering seeds, and of course always keeping an eye on their stamina. However, Monster Harvest’s Management Simulation elements are more shallow than what’s on offer in Stardew Valley – there’s no real-time day-night cycle (players go to bed to recover energy, which cycles the time in-game), there’s not as much variety or exploration, and the citizenry isn’t as memorable as Stardew’s is.

However, that’s only half the experience here, as the other half is a Pokemon-style Turn Based Monster Collecting RPG. Players will grow their own fighting companions as well as their own livestock. Their fighting companions will engage with enemies in the game’s randomized Roguelike-esque caves, fighting enemies in turn-based battles. However, the battles themselves are extremely simple, and don’t hold a candle to the depth and nuance available in Pokemon, and players are very limited in their capacity to hold multiple critters.

Still, the weaknesses in each half of this game’s formula do a decent job of covering for each other and providing a unique and fun experience, even if you’ll be negatively comparing this game to its two inspirations. However, this only tells part of the story here.

The other part of the story is, Monster Harvest is pretty poorly optimized for Nintendo Switch. I do not detect any of the game-breaking bugs others elsewhere have claimed were in this game (I understand it received a patch to address the most egregious of these), but there are still numerous quirks and jankiness that makes this game feel like it still had kinks to work out and was pushed out the door a bit early. Your cursor frequently hitches in menus, and every once in a while the visuals briefly stutter.

On top of this, the game often uses text that is absurdly small and difficult-to-read, and despite that this game’s interface was clearly designed for a mouse and keyboard and is begging for touchscreen controls here, there are no touchscreen controls to be found. All of these issues combine to make for a constant frustration that players will have to tolerate if they want to try to get into this game. And somewhere I have to mention that this game is a whopping 1.642GB, yet I’m not really sure where all of that file space is going to.

Is Monster Harvest a bad game? No, quite the contrary, I think it makes a good effort to mash together two popular games, and it largely succeeds, even if both halves of the game can’t compare to their inspiration. However, while this is a decent game, it’s a game that’s made tedious and frustrating due to poor optimization and interface problems in the Nintendo Switch version. If you’re a fan of the genres that inspired Monster Harvest, you may want to give it a try, but you’ll need to be patient to enjoy it.

tl;dr – Monster Harvest is a game that combines a Stardew Valley-style Management Sim and a Pokemon-style Monster Collecting Turn-Based RPG. While each of these two halves pales in comparison to what inspired it, the pairing produces something unique and worthwhile. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch version suffers from numerous small issues that make the experience more frustrating than it needs to be. This is a decent game, but the port to Nintendo Switch feels rushed.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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