Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is supposed to expand the principle of Harvest Moon, Rune Factory & Co.: Instead of just cultivating fields symbolically from a bird's eye view, every single step of traditional rice cultivation is taught here - and monsters are killed in between.
At first glance, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin sounds like a charming mix of different fighting and building principles in anime garb. After the spoiled harvest goddess Sakuna violates her duty as a guardian and burns down half the estate in a drunken stupor, she has to free a remote island from demons as punishment. Along the way, she has to rebuild her parents' former rice farm to survive - together with a ragtag group of human partners who fled to divine spheres before a drought catastrophe. The entry into the story feels stale, with hundreds of speech bubble dialogues to be clicked away, some set to music, and annoying tantrums from the screeching Sakuna.
With her mortal housemates and fellow children sent off on hunting and gathering trips at best or working on the old-fashioned, pre-industrial farm, Sakuna must take care of eliminating the pesky rabbit, deer, and pig demons herself. For the battles in the levels traveled on the map, the 3D game switches to a side view. Then the manageable grottos with their hidden rooms are cleared of mostly rather mindless enemies. A number of them can be defeated simply by twiddling your thumbs on a hill and luring them into the spiked traps again and again. Essentially, though, the combat system revolves around light and heavy blows with the help of various slashing and stabbing weapons that can be crafted at home with resources at the forge, and for which you learn new attacks after your fieldwork is done.
In practice, however, the fights are usually only mildly entertaining. Various types of blows and combos hurl the opponents into explosive chain reactions in a satisfying way, so that they sometimes rumble together over the pile or against dangerous stalactites. However, the bumpy platforming causes problems again and again.
The farming and the conversations between the farm inhabitants take place in a 3D view, which makes the world look a whole lot prettier than the rather barren battle caves with their partly crudely textured rocks.
It's also nice that you learn much more about cultivation techniques while working in the fields than elsewhere. Here, the work-shy Sakuna has to gradually go through all the important steps to make the rice harvest more and more successful - from plowing to placing prepared seedlings at ideal distances to regulating the water level and fertilizing the field using a specially filled septic tank.
Conclusion
It's nice that Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin with all its rice cultivation phases is clearly closer to the real-life model than other farm adventures - and that you also benefit from skillful fieldwork, cooking, and preservation skills in battle. However, the developers haven't managed to incorporate this strength into a motivating overall package. The game gets too bogged down in micromanagement and monotonous battles with time pressure and backtracking. Even actually good ideas like cool pileups or the grappling hook are impaired by the sometimes balky controls.
