Return to PopoloCrois A Story of Seasons Fairytale Review

Way back on the PlayStation Portable there was an early RPG called PopoloCrois, which got middling reviews. Before that, and spread over several consoles and handhelds, was a life/farming game called Harvest Moon -- at least it was in the West -- that was beloved by its fanbase, if relegated to similarly middling reviews. Well, the latter has since received a renaming, becoming Story of Seasons, which released for the 3DS last year.

Why talk about two such disparate titles in a review for Return to PopoloCrois A Story of Seasons Fairytale (the longest game title possible)? Well, the clue is in the context -- so if you haven’t already gathered that this is a mash-up of the two series, then you might need to get your eyes checked.

I played the original PopoloCrois, but I’ll admit I didn’t get very far, and it was so long ago that I’ve completely forgotten what happened in it. Suffice to say that the main character Prince Pietro saved the kingdom with a little help from his friends. Like its predecessor, Return is an RPG, but as the Story of Seasons part should clue you in, it also has farming elements.

As the farming elements are pretty much the smallest part of the game, I’ll talk about them first. You wind up with several farms over the course of the game, which you can either tend to or completely ignore. If you’re like me, you’ll ignore them -- at first. Every so often I’d be nearby and pop in to harvest some crops, or plant new seeds I’d obtained, and before I knew it I was hurrying through dungeons just to make sure I could respond to the pop-ups telling me of thirsty plants. Not that I was trying to hurry the story, either!

As Return to PopoloCrois begins, we are reintroduced to Pietro and his witch love interest Narcia. I say love interest, but they are clearly children -- it’s funny to think that everyone in the titular country considers Prince Pietro as their greatest hero, and he doesn’t appear to have entered puberty… All is well as you explore the castle and nearby forest, but eventually you are separated from everyone you know, and flung to the far-off land of Galariland, which has almost been overcome by the darkness which has recently begun to invade Popolocrois, and he has to try to get home. Pietro meets new friends and makes new enemies, and although the storyline is a tad generic, it is still filled with lots of lovely character moments.

It’s upsetting, then, that the character moments are only mostly dubbed. It’s quite crazy when the characters are having a discussion, because you have to do some reading along even if you’re listening to the English dub. This is because random lines of dialogue are just punctuated by “Hey!” or “Mr Hero!”, even when the previous line of dialogue -- and the next one -- are dubbed.

The game itself looks better than it sounds, at least, with the simple artistic style of the characters no doubt aiding the outdoor areas which look pretty enough. The darkness which has been enveloping the land has taken root on fields, which has made farming almost impossible. It also looks suitably menacing, as do the minibosses inside the field dungeons!

That’s actually one of my favourite parts of the game -- being shrunk down to fight the evil monsters hidden in the fields. Taking a leaf from the Game Boy Advance title The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, you are tiny and leaves/carrots/nuts look huge. It also means that not all of the areas you can visit are on the already quite large map.

The battles are random, as with most RPGs, but they are a mashup of normal turn-based fights, and tactical ones like what you would see in Final Fantasy Tactics. You get to move across the field a set amount, depending on the equipment you have attached, and your level. If you’re close enough to the enemy, you then get to hit them with your weapon. If you want to use a special attack, you don’t get to move, and it uses mana points.

Depending on how much farming you want to do, Return to PopoloCrois A Story of Seasons Fairytale will last you a good dozen or more hours. Of course, if you get hooked on farming and caring for the crops and animals, then you’ll be backwards and forwards juggling so much that you forget there’s a main quest. Though as mentioned, the main quest is a tad on the generic side, and not helped by the very standard sidequests which usually amount to “Go here, kill that”, which I wouldn’t expect from developer Marvelous.