Fae Farm (Switch) Review

If the year of Luigi was 2013, then the year of the farming RPG is 2023. With us three quarters of the way into the year, we’ve already seen over a dozen farming RPG games across a number of platforms, with at least six of these already releasing on the Nintendo Switch and still more to come. As there are so many farming RPGs to choose from, it would have to be tough to stand out from such a crowded space. Thankfully, Phoenix Labs have come through with something well worth checking out if you’re a fan of the genre.

Things start off familiarly enough through the character customisation suite. Characters are made in a similar fashion to Miis, where there are a limited number of facial features to choose from that feels as though it is designed not to overwhelm anyone. Choosing a body type and picking your pronouns, you are then immediately thrown into the world of Azoria.

Things start to feel a tad unfamiliar, as rather than going with the familiar trope of inheriting the farm from your dead relative, Mayor Merritt welcomes you to the island, and summarises the story up until now, where your character has managed to find themselves on the island despite a vast number of natural disasters currently taking place preventing anyone from leaving or entering the island. It is a refreshing take on the usual farming RPG by adding a touch of magic and fantasy to what could have been a tired old story.

Upon learning your fate, you are given a homestead and some farmland to begin your journey in Azoria. The local NPCs all take an interest in you and feel as though you can handle many of their life problems seeing that you made it through literal disasters to get to the island in the first place. Fae Far sets itself apart with an integrated story and questline that goes beyond fetch quests and learning the game mechanics. As you explore the world, you find more and more going wrong with the land and it’s up to you to build your skills and unlock new abilities in order to solve the mysteries around the island.

Many of the early quests are designed to help with working out how to farm, shop and explore the many places of Azoria. As you progress through the main questline, the citizens become more personable, and the quests become more about saving Azoria and bringing peace back to the land.

The story is not as gripping as your usual fantasy RPG, though it was enough to keep things from getting overly repetitive and boring. As someone who has been turned off by so many farming simulators doing the same thing with a different aesthetic, this was very welcome.

The gameplay itself is reasonably tight, with a fixed top-down view allowing a sizeable viewing angle allowing you to see enough of your surroundings without compromising detail. Moving around the world feels smooth, and the addition of a jump button lets you go just about anywhere you would like. You can jump fences and swim through rivers and lakes, and utilise magic mushrooms (no, not those) to bounce high in the air and move up cliff faces with the greatest of ease.

Finding things are a cinch due to the ability to go into a map and add a waypoint to a location or any NPC character in the game. Once I finished certain quests, the waypoint system the game implements allowed me to easily find someone when I needed to. All of your main tools used for farming, mining, and foraging all take up the same inventory slot. This allows you to just hit the A button next to a tree, rock, seed or plant, and your character just knows what tool to use without having to switch tools. You do need to switch to your fishing line, bug net and magic wand, however. Little quality of life inclusions like these makes these types of game a lot more accessible and less of a chore to play.

As there are so many fantasy elements woven throughout the game, Fae Farm’s biggest theme is the magic. Just about anything you can do in the game involves magic in some way or another. Rather than include farming machinery into the game to help with certain elements, you are able to build your magic abilities in order to help out with your crops. Magic can be used for things such as growing your crops faster and mass-harvesting to save time. You can utilise magic in the mines as well during combat and mining which makes these a lot less tedious as well.

There are some aspects of Fae Farm that aren’t as polished as the rest. The opening vanity logo for Phoenix Labs stutters when booting up the game. When opening menus and inventory screens, I often end up pressing the button multiple times it feels like nothing happened for the few seconds it takes to load the overlay. The battling done in the caves isn’t the most exciting, and I would have liked to have seen some more RPG-like elements here. Overall, though, most of these things don’t seem like something an update can’t fix in the future.

Unfortunately, as I am reviewing the game prior to release, I haven’t been able to try local or on-line multiplayer. What I can say about multiplayer though is that it was a main focal point of development all the way through the creation of the game. It is something I am keen on checking out though, as the game gives off an Animal Crossing type feel, and I enjoyed playing multiplayer in that with my family.

When presented with the prospect of reviewing a farming game, I honestly thought I would be in for a rough time. After Stardew Valley basically perfected the genre, not too many other games offered much of a difference.

Fae Farm breaks the mould by introducing a variety of elements that work in the context of a farming RPG, while at the same time introduces many fantasy elements that just make this different enough to stand out from the crowd. There are some technical hiccups that can be ironed out in future patches, but even if you’re sick of farming on your Switch, I do recommend checking this one out.

Rating: 4/5