Fields Of Mistria

dude... this is the game. think rune factory, stardew valley, with amazing quality of life fixes and deeply loveable characters. Rune Factory is one of my favorite games of all time and Mistria offers SUCH a similar feeling. But... it's better. It feels so much more personal to me than Rune Factory, and it's so much more like optimistic than Stardew while still letting you have accomplishments and growth. I can't believe it's this polished in early access. Also, you hate a fishing game? Because this one is easy and I love that. I LOVE THAT. A kid is psyched when I find bugs? A beautiful himbo is happy when I give him rocks? I can give a pretty puppy sticks and we become better friends? They all gather in the inn for dnd and stuff every week. I could go on. forever, really. this. is. the. game.

Now that it is finally out of Early Access, I finally feel like I can write a review. First of all -- why did I wait so long to review it despite having had 100+ hours in it pre 1.0 launch? Simple -- I wanted to see if they would stick the landing. Games like these that expect the player to immerse themselves in the life of another world [i]need[/i] to be completable (in my opinion) in order for someone to cast any kind of judgment on them. Now that I know that it is, I can actually hype up the game and the progression towards said conclusion (though of course, as any 100%-er knows, there is no such thing as an "end" for these kinds of games until you've actually put them to their limits). I've been playing on one save since a relatively early-ish version of Early Access -- before dating was ever implemented, and even back then I was itching to write a good review. It's hard to summarize why I think this game is so fantastic, so I'll go with an old-fashioned outline of basic categories: ART -- Very cute. It's got an iconic 90's style anime vibe to the character portraits, and otherwise a simple, almost pastel-like look to the overall game appearance. There is tons of customization available for decorating your farm and home, and everything is very carefully crafted for whichever aesthetic you may desire. There are also /tons/ of options for customizing your player character exactly how you'd want and none of them are particularly hard to get (you start with a very big variety, too). Mistria has a cozy, unified look to it, so it really feels like home after a while and all of the categories of levels in the mines have their own distinct visual identity. MUSIC -- I adore it to the point that it needs to be mentioned as its own category. This is one of the few games that I don't turn the sound OR music off when I play, and that's really saying something because I love me a good 3+ hour YouTube video for a gaming session, (and I frequently find soundtracks starting to get annoying when I'm cycling through the same locations). There's something about the way the tracks are composed that either loops nicely or you hardly notice them repeating. I find myself nodding my head along to the ambient themes throughout the seasons and mines, and the music that's played within events and key character moments also adds a lot. With 1.0 they've added music discs and I am obsessed with them! They're shorter themes than the ones that play in the mines or overworld but I found myself spending a few in-game days standing in my living room to listen to them -- huge props to the composer. GAMEPLAY -- I really want to let Fields of Mistria stand on its own, I really do ... but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel like (personally) everything about it is a mechanical improvement on Stardew Valley. You can jump, you move very quickly, you are not punished for making movement mistakes (energy isn't lost for swinging your axe where you shouldn't, or watering a plant that's already been watered). The combat feels very fluid and fun to master when you are able to move rapidly and jump to avoid attacks (as well as do a jump/pound attack). Animations move very quickly when you're using a tool repeatedly and nothing particularly feels like a slog -- even when you run out of energy, you are not locked to sluggishly dragging yourself along. Fields of Mistria wants you to have fun, wants you to get to where you need to be, and it is very satisfying to be able to move at the pace you actually want to. There is plenty to do within a day that the up in pace is warranted. You can give gifts to villagers every day and if it turns out they love/like something, it'll be marked down in your journal so you don't have to run to the Wiki to remember what they wanted. You are giving a dynamic map of all of the villager's locations so you don't have to meticulously memorize their schedules. Each in-game shop is open 24/7 and payment is on an "honor system", so you don't have to wait for a cashier to be present, any store/stall to open or worry about it closing if you need something urgently or you want to get ahead on your beginning-of-season planting. You level up in the different categories (Farming, Ranching, Archaeology, Combat, Mining, Cooking, Woodworking, Blacksmithing ... probably a couple more I forgot about) as you go along, but you are also given the opportunity to unlock every possible perk that comes with it by doing mundane tasks like breaking rocks or harvesting crops (and everything is universally pooled as "Essence", so if you want to unlock something in Ranching, you can still spend the majority of your time in the mines). Once you have a high enough cooking level, anything you make has a chance to be universally likeable/loveable so if you're looking to romance a particularly picky fellow, you can always just give them a special homecooked meal instead of worrying about hoarding one of a particular gift. There are probably more small quality-of-life things I'm forgetting since I've gotten so used to them, but in summary -- it is a game that actually cares about your overall comfort as a player. It wants you to get to and enjoy the content it has to offer, not have to pick and choose which two activities define your whole in-game day. STORY/QUESTS -- Fields of Mistria is one of those games whose priority is the gradual introduction of each character's individual stories rather than some kind of grand "roll credits" finale (though there is a reasonably satisfying conclusion to your whole presence in town). The way each character talks, the way they all interact with each other outside of what you'd assume to be obvious cliques is really what kept me coming back to play this game even at a time when I had essentially seen everything it had to offer. Usually, I'm the type of player that never bothers to interact with NPC's. Unless I get specifically attached to 1-2 of them, I treat the rest as background noise or utilitarian props (I think on my first playthrough of Stardew, I didn't finish my Introductions quest until Year 2). Fields of Mistria ... I genuinely felt like I was becoming part of the town in a very believable way. I was growing fond not just of the bachelorettes that caught my eye, but seeing the bachelors as friends, wanting to talk to the town elders, wanting to find out what kind of shenanigans the kids are up to. There is SO much dialogue in this game -- you can sit in on D&D campaigns, on friendly rivalries, on economic discussions, and there are also plenty of conversations you can walk in on and "participate", like you're also a part of this world and contribute to this town. Every possible combination of characters you can think of have their own dynamic, have at least a handful of interactions, and they are all wonderful to witness. What start out as obvious archetypes will soften/roughen at the edges as time goes on and you get to know them, and the process of doing so feels worthwhile. The one singular downside I will state is that I think the "ending" of the main storyline (relating to the mines) could be a little bit stronger. I just hope that it gets expanded on in future versions. The gradual mystique and development of the story is really, really strong but I think that its ultimate conclusion could've used a little bit more grandiosity ... however, with the primary strengths here being the individual character relationships, this isn't a dealbreaker to me in the slightest. I got this game on a whim and somehow it's wormed its way into my heart as one of my favorite games of all time. I'm really happy the developers saw it through to the "end" and I can't wait to see what's to come. In the meantime, there's plenty here to enjoy! I hope many more people play Fields of Mistria <3

When my dad died very suddenly and traumatically last year, I had already bought FoM and it had been sitting in my library untouched for months. I was kind of lost for a while and didn't know what to do or look at, and I decided to just open the game to have SOMETHING to do. It genuinely helped get me through what has been the hardest time of my life through its loving attention to detail, the vibrancy of its characters, and the gentle passage of time in it's gameplay. Thank you for making it.