izigame.me

This is my favorite game of the last several years. The soundtrack from Go Shiina (God Eater, Tales of) is world-class, and the story is just as balls-crazy as you'd expect from a JRPG, but with an unexpectedly earnest optimism about the human condition that continually surprised me. The world-building is rich and the environments are visually stunning.
Fans of the game will probably see as strengths the very same qualities that those with different taste would consider weaknesses. Namely, the simplicity and relatively shallow implementation of most of the game mechanics. There's enough complexity in combat and farming to allow for multiple viable strategies to choose between, as you would expect from an RPG, but not so much that you spend half your play time in menus fiddling with stats and equipment.
Everything that would normally make a JRPG feel stressful or tedious has been removed or improved:
No grinding required. Just playing the main narrative at a steady pace and taking side quests as I came across them kept me appropriately-leveled for combat, without having to loop back around through previously-cleared areas just to grind for more XP so I didn't get my ass kicked, and without getting so OP that it sucked all the fun out of combat. Because of the day-night cycle, dungeons are designed to be completed in sections over the course of several in-game days, even taking long breaks in between if desired, so dungeon diving feels a lot more like "it's raining today, so no need to water my crops or pet my animals - let's go have a combat adventure and scoop up a bunch of dungeon goodies!" than "I am stuck in this godforsaken labyrinth until I beat it."
Clear and intuitive upgrade paths. While you can choose to unlock your skill trees for each of your combat jobs in any order, you can fully unlock the entire skill tree for every job. Every party member carries one weapon that's upgraded in a linear fashion, with each new dungeon you reach unlocking materials necessary for the next upgrade level, so you don't have to worry about whether you have the best weapons equipped - just keep upgrading until you reach an upgrade level where you haven't yet encountered the required materials and you know you've got the best weapons available thus far.
Satisfying even when played blind and unassisted. A thorough player who takes their time to explore and jots down their own notes while playing about where resources spawn/drop could feasibly 100% the game without ever needing to use a guide. There are no missables, no time-limited or failable missions, and no punishingly-low RNG drops, but there are still a handful of things you'll have to specifically work to achieve (e.g. accumulating enough HQ ingredients needed to cook the HQ version of every recipe to complete your Encyclopedia).
Farming/sim fans should be aware that despite its marketing, this is an RPG with light farming sim elements, not a farming sim with RPG elements. And much the way they streamlined RPG mechanics to eliminate tedious repetitive grinding and make it easy to play blind, the same is true of the sim mechanics:
Farming primarily exists to support combat. You'll grow crops to make your own healing foods and juices, and to fund your weapon upgrades. Although you can continue playing for as long as you want, there just isn't much reason to keep farming after you've cleared the very last boss in the post-game dungeon and completed your encyclopedia. The closest thing to a Golden Clock end-game item that you spend a long time saving up for is just the last couple weapon upgrades that are crazy expensive. There aren't any late-game cosmetics or other non-combat incentives.
There's not much point trying to min-max your farm strategy unless you're a speedrunner. There certainly IS a min-max strategy, but the profit difference between the most and least profitable crops is relatively low. In many cases, raw produce sells for more than processed goods made from it. Ranching is especially shallow compared to other farming games - you can only get two kinds of animals (and each only comes in one color). Some will view this negatively, because it means there is no snowball strategy to getting stupid rich stupid fast through min-maxing. I view it positively, because it meant I could just play the game without constantly checking a guide.
NPC relationships are almost completely un-gamified, and romance is mostly not involved. Instead of building up a relationship through repetitive daily/weekly chores like talking to everyone every day, giving someone the exact same gift 100 times, and being rewarded with a special story event culminating in marriage, your relationship level with each party member increases every time you participate in a character story event with them, the storylines are basically platonic (although you can invite someone to live with you as your "partner" in the post-game, the dialogue in these scenes is vague enough that it can be easily be interpreted as conveying a close friendship or a marriage), and you're rewarded with combat bonuses that apply whenever you have that character in your party and unique upgrade materials needed for that character's weapon. I found it a refreshing change from how mechanical relationships can be in other sims, and 8 out of the 10 character stories were so compelling that I was always excited to see what would happen next!
Finally, players should be aware that this game was clearly made with an AA budget despite Square Enix pricing it like an AAA title. The character models are basic, heavily recycled, and have a limited pool of stiff animations, and when you pet your mount most of the time his entire head clips through your character's body. Dialogue is not voice-acted (though there are some voiced one-liners that you'll hear when your avatar walks near to an NPC) and there's a lot of text dialogue involved in the main scenario, side quests, and character stories. On the plus side, quest rewards are extremely lucrative, so completionists won't feel like they're trudging through all that text solely because it's required for 100%.
As much as I love this game, I don't think $60 was the right price point. Luckily, SE puts it on sale for $30 pretty regularly these days, so you won't have to wait long if you want to hold out for that price. If you do love it, tell your friends, because there was so much potential here that could have been built on to make an even better sequel with a little bit more budget next time, but as of the time of this writing in 2024, the game has not sold anywhere near enough to warrant a sequel. I remain hopeful that against all odds it'll grow into a cult classic someday.