Farmagia Review – 2024’s Most Overlooked Action-Strategy Gem

Introduction: Why Farmagia is 2024’s Hidden Gem

Poor first impressions from marketing can sadly ruin someone’s prospective interest, regardless of whether the experience or product would have been worthwhile. Still, being ignored outright is arguably worse than being ridiculed and mocked. Marvelous’ upcoming action strategy game Farmagia fell victim to the former. Following its initial reveal, I have not seen a single person give this title the time of day or even acknowledge its existence. And I can’t really blame anyone from that crowd either because I was the same. The announcement video featured poor performance and dull gameplay that didn’t do anything to compel me even remotely. Past that, I’ve barely seen the title marketed, illustrating either a lack of confidence or funding.

Consequently, when I took the review code for Farmagia, I was undeniably expecting a middling experience at best. However, it has exceeded all expectations, becoming one of my favorite titles this year primarily due to a refreshing gameplay loop with an addictive core that makes everything click.

Farmagia: An Immersive, Story-Driven Experience

Farmagia is a surprisingly narrative-focused and character-heavy experience set in the fantasy land of the Underworld, specifically, the regions of Felicidad. Following the death of Felicidad’s ruler, a member of the elite group known as Oracion Seis, Glaza, takes control, imposing an unprecedented regime. Glaza is at the helm of this oppression, and many other members of the Oracion Seis are antagonistic, but a resistance builds against this tyranny. In particular, protagonist Ten and his allies band together in a united effort to bring a sense of peace to the world once more. Additionally, as a point of clarification, those who can battle and synchronize with monsters are called Farmagia, a relatively gifted position.

Farmagia features frequent cutscenes with gorgeous character artwork by Fairy Tail creator Hiro Mashima. The familiar yet still effective designs succeed in making everyone memorable, so fans of Mashima’s style are well-fed. Moreover, one of the most shocking factors of this experience is that, from what I remember, practically every single main story scene is fully voice-acted, with an English dub, too. Alongside strong performances and casting, there are plenty of cutscenes, so the voice work is pretty consistent. Plus, this full voice acting even extends to the bonding system.

Character Bonding and Development

Throughout Farmagia, Ten forms temporary pacts with higher beings known as the Elementals, and of course, they’re rather attractive girls. Following their mandatory story introductions, you can complete missions and give gifts to raise their bond level with Ten, culminating in lengthy, fully voiced cutscenes that do fantastic jobs of communicating their personalities, desires, and struggles. I can’t emphasize enough just how well-directed this English dub is; it’s genuinely one of the best I’ve heard in recent memory.

Yet, Farmagia‘s writing can be hit-or-miss. While several main cast members receive notable focus and boast humorous and emotional exchanges, the scenario tends to fall into the trap of poorly introducing the setting and story elements. To specify, whenever the game first mentions a character, area, or concept for the sake of indirectly informing the player, there is usually at least one character in the room who does not know what they’re talking about, even though they should considering their occupations and general position in the world. Admittedly, this shortcoming is only primarily present in roughly the first half or so, but you do have to suspend disbelief more often than not for some of the tension to stick. Still, at least personally, the character interactions more than made up for this fault.

Gameplay Variety: Farming, Raising Monsters, and Battles

In the realm of gameplay, Farmagia has a lot going on. For one, you have a farming component, which, to be honest, only takes around five minutes at max during each visit. Essentially, the general loop you perform consists of farming tasks to grow monsters, raising them at the ranch, and then heading off into the mazes that take up the rest of the day. Afterward, time passes, and a new day dawns, recycling this sequence of events, though other objectives and menus exist between these waypoints.

Firstly, farming only requires tiling the land, placing seeds, and watering them once a day; that’s it. I’m pretty thankful that this facet of the gameplay isn’t overly involved or contrived since there has been a slew of recent farming games that embrace the practice far more intricately. Although each seed type has a predetermined amount of space it needs to grow, that management factor is arguably the most crucial. Some other add-ons are also available, such as applying fertilizer to speed up the growing process, but it’s all extremely self-explanatory.

Raising and Battling Monsters in the Mazes

Then, raising the monsters at the ranch is also a swift process. You simply provide the necessary materials for them to train, with each monster type focusing on clearly emphasized stats. Further, this can’t necessarily be spammed incessantly since every growth milestone requires a higher tier of items that need rarer resources to be crafted or more currency to purchase. Additionally, the monsters become tired after excessive training, so you need to give them your favorite treats, which are far cheaper.

Lastly, the dominant avenue of gameplay resides in the mazes, essentially back-to-back areas of monster arenas where you command your party of four monster types. However, rather than taking the laid-back approach of an observer, Farmagia embraces action-game components with the characters standing right in the action with their monster allies. The most significant impact of this design choice is rooted in the parry system. Whenever a monster flashes a brief yellow light or shoots projectiles, you can counter their strikes. Doing so will reduce their break gauge, eventually manifesting fragile vulnerability once depleted fully. This step is then taken a step further with red attacks. Strikes that flash this color can only be dealt with by being entirely out of the line of fire, which may not be possible on short notice, or by performing a parry with a special skill of your own.

To elaborate, monster types by your side all have their own respective gauges that fill during battle, and activating them will cause temporary transformations that unleash a powerful technique. Another notable technique is fusion, merging your monsters on the field into a ferocious beast selected from the pre-battle setup. Speaking of, much of your success in Farmagia relies on you continually upkeeping your compact farm and monsters for as lite as it all is. Variety is really the name of the game here, with even the combat being relatively simple to parse and actualize. Yet, despite that reality, I can’t deny how fulfilling and addictive the battles are.

Rewarding Combat and Side Content

The sense of impact and swiftness embedded in the parry system is substantially rewarding, ensuring that each encounter is gratifying. Plus, some enemy telegraphs require rapid, consecutive blocks, further bolstering the sheer strength of this gameplay feel. The difficulty is on the lower end, even on Hard mode, but you do need to pay actual attention to succeed. This praise may sound like an exaggeration, yet I became hooked far more than I’d like to admit, resulting in me traversing mazes with the main objectives as afterthoughts.

Still, the mazes are far from faultless, even if their shortcomings may not matter much, depending on the crowd. As previously mentioned, the mazes are essentially just battle arenas. There’s little exploration, with the only element of choice being the type of room you want to enter next, communicated by specific icons. This roguelite-esque component features areas with fairy skills, essentially temporary upgrades applied to the humans or monsters at the cost of them only lasting for your presence in the current maze. Personally, this choice system was enough to supplement the constant battles of the mazes, especially since encounters tend to be brief. Honestly, it’s a shame that you can only perceive the joy of the combat while playing since trailers and other footage do not even remotely communicate how satisfying it all feels.

Final Thoughts: Farmagia’s Lasting Appeal

Farmagia is an experience that has revealed itself as 2024’s most pleasant video game surprise. Between the strong cast, gratifying combat, and approachable yet fulfilling farming and raising mechanics, all of my boxes were checked. Of course, I have no idea how this title performs on Switch, so it may not match the relative smoothness of the PC version’s framerate, and the narrative writing has its fair share of noticeable stumbles. I also may be in the vast minority upon this release’s reception, seeing as I’m a fan of less-than-liked recent outings such as Soul Hackers 2.

Still, I was constantly entertained, and most faults were felt in hindsight rather than in the moment. Given the astounding number of well-received launches, 2024 hasn’t left many opportunities for players to experiment with genres they’re unfamiliar with, but if you have the spare time and funds, I assure you that Farmagia is worthwhile.