Farmagia Review
Hiro Mashima is best known for being the creator of the hit shonen series Fairy Tail as well as Edens Zero and of course Rave Master. With his work having been adapted into anime, games and more, it’s no surprise to find Mashima is no longer just creating manga but also contributing to multimedia projects. Today I’m here to talk about Farmagia, a new video game from developers Marvelous where Mashima has handled character and monster designs. Let’s take a closer look!
Set in the fantastical world of Felicidad, we follow protagonist Ten who is a farmer known as a Farmagia. The role of a Farmagia is to raise monsters, which will then fight by your side in times of trouble. Although the town of Centvelt where Ten lives has been peaceful, things are about to drastically change as the Magus who watches over Farmagia has passed away and those looking to take his place do not have the monsters’ best interests at heart.
Once Centvelt is safe, Ten and his friends set their sights on exploring the other regions of Felicidad to protect their lives as Farmagia and ensure no harm comes to the monsters Elemental Spirits that live here. Along the way, they encounter old friends, powerful enemies and plenty of surprises!
Farmagia is a game that sees you raising monsters on a small plot of farmland before exploring Felicidad in stages. Each stage puts you in a small area where you’re expected to use your monsters to fight off enemies and collect items in real-time combat to help you grow stronger. You can also accept quests beforehand which will offer you various rewards in the form of items or currency.
To start with you’ll play as Ten, but as time goes you gain the ability to play as his companions Leii, Arche, and more. Each character has different abilities to suit your playstyle. As the game goes on, you’ll also make temporary contracts with Elemental Spirits, which offer you powerful super moves the stronger your bond with them (this can be raised by completing quests and gifting them items).
The gameplay loop is fairly simple and it won’t take you long to get the hang of it. There is certainly a world in which it grows stale or repetitive as there’s not a lot of variation in stage design (or monsters within their respective areas), but in my 15 hours so far I’ve not found that to be an issue. Stages have a time limit of between 20-40 minutes to complete them, but I’ve never found myself hitting that limit (I think you’d have to be quite under-levelled).
What is a little awkward is the combat which expects you to block a lot to avoid taking damage or counter the moves of your opponents, but there is some lag between pressing the button to guard and it happening. Luckily this is consistent, so as long as you get used to the timing, it’s not a huge issue but I do wish it was quicker to respond and I could see that frustrating some players.
I think the main deciding factor for whether you’ll enjoy this game or not depends on how much you like Hiro Mashima’s work. All of the characters look very similar to his existing works (which makes sense as Edens Zero has similar characters to Fairy Tail and so on) and not everyone is going to appreciate the lookalike appearances. It’s not just how they look that is reminiscent of Mashima’s other works, but also their personalities.
The overall setting and story progression also share many of Mashima’s usual traits, which is great if you enjoy that the way I do but far less interesting if you don’t get on with it. I haven’t yet hit the credits at the time of writing, so I’m not sure if Mashima was also involved in the writing, but it wouldn’t surprise me as there are far too many elements that feel like his tropes. At the very least if he wasn’t in that role, the team at Marvelous were very obviously inspired by his work.
It’s fun to raise the monsters and unlock new creatures and abilities which, combined with the story, have made for an engaging and entertaining game. The translation has also been solid (not always a given for Marvelous) and they’ve even gone so far as to offer an English dub alongside the Japanese audio. I’ve been playing it with the Japanese audio where we’re treated to the likes of Kohei Amasaki (Will in Wistoria Wand and Sword) as protagonist Ten, as well as Inori Minase, Hiro Shimono and Kouki Uchiyama in the extended cast. Certainly, if you watch enough shonen anime you’ll recognise the line-up, which may be for good or ill, depending on how you like them. Amasaki for example seems to be in absolutely everything right now.
For this review, I’ve been playing a Nintendo Switch copy of the game and understandably there have been some concerns about the performance here compared to the more powerful PS5 version since the game was revealed. However, I’m happy to see I’ve not had any trouble playing it in handheld mode generally and while I have seen the odd dip in frame rate, that is rare or at least not at all noticeable. The graphics don’t look bad either with cutscenes featuring detailed character portraits and battles being at far enough a distance where lower-res assets aren’t readily noticeable.
I’ve not experienced any crashes or bugs either; the only issue is that I had to turn off auto-advance for the text in cutscenes. It seems to be synced to the end of the Japanese audio which is often far shorter than the English text ended up being translated to, so it would move ahead without me having finished reading! Luckily there is a kept history, so if you do miss anything, you can go back to reference it.
Here in Europe Farmagia is being released by Marvelous Europe and is available on PS5 Nintendo Switch and Steam. PS5 and Switch have standard physical editions alongside the digital release and also have limited editions containing a 96-page art book and a soundtrack CD, so plenty of options, depending on how you’d rather own this one. There is an anime adaptation in the works as well, so this is far from the last we’ll be seeing of Farmagia.
Overall, Farmagia is a game that won’t be for everyone due to how similar it is to Hiro Mashima’s popular franchise. Depending on the person, it’s going to vary from being an instant purchase, wait for a sale or a skip but for me, at least I can say I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far. It’s not perfect and risks becoming repetitive, but it has had me laugh out loud several times while endearing me to the characters and sometimes you need something a little less serious and familiar. It’s not flawless, but it’s charming in its own way.
Our review copy was supplied by the publisher.
