Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (2020)

Really wanted to love this game. I love the story and the art and the detailed culture nods in ingredients, weapons, and enemies. It has a lot of charm. But it is so very tedious. I really struggle to motivate myself when the playtime is 75% sun is setting, time to go home, walk up the path to the rice field, talk to npc, eat dinner, sleep, follow prompts, gather and garden and only 25% exploring/battling.

I have tried to pick it up again each time i finish another game, but it doesn't take long before I set it aside again in favor of games that don't make think about all of the more productive things I could be doing.

On paper, Sakuna is two entirely different game genres smashed crudely together. In reality, it completely turns RPG progression on its head to create a gaming experience unlike anything else I’ve seen.

You play as the spoilt, carefree Princess Sakuna, daughter of a war god and harvest goddess. You end up entangled with a group of mortals fleeing for their lives who have somehow found their way to the bridge between worlds and through your inaction face banishment to the island of Hinoe where you must fend for yourself and protect the mortals. The island hides dangers, secrets and hordes of armed, demon animals just waiting to be slaughtered.

The core daily gameplay loop is thus:

1. Wake up, weed and fertilize the fields.
2. Send companions off gathering.
3. Go exploring and hunting.
4. Come home, check on the fields again.
5. Have dinner, choosing appropriate buffs for either the night’s or following day’s exploration.

This also fits into an annual gameplay loop of rice growing which involves tilling, planting, maintaining water levels and temperature, harvesting, drying, threshing and hulling. The rice farming is surprisingly deep, each step evolves through the game as you develop new tools or techniques to make your life easier. You can add any number of extra items to your fertilizer, which will have both seen and unseen consequences. They may well be creating the perfect environment for bugs and disease if you add without thought.

As with the mechanics, the game slowly drip-feeds advice on the best conditions for improving the harvest. Much like farming in reality, there’s no knowing what exactly improved one harvest or decimated another: it could have been the rainfall, temperature, fertilizer, seed spacing or any number of other factors. You learn by experimenting and making mistakes in your first couple of years.

The exploration takes the form of a 2D beat ‘em up. While it starts very simply, by the second half of the game it’s fast and frenetic; you’ll be flying across the screen careening through demon badgers at will. In addition to your standard light and heavy attacks, you also have your raiment. A type of mystical ribbon with which you can attach to and spin around enemies. As you progress, you gain a plethora of new fighting and raiment skills which keep the combat fresh. All of your skills level up as they’re used, allowing for many and varied playstyles.

New areas are locked behind an ‘exploration level’, which you can grow by completing objectives. These can be defeating a boss or a certain number of enemies, collecting resources or finding treasure. Your buffs from last night’s dinner run out partway through the day, which pushes you to return home either to refill before exploring at night (with much tougher enemies), or completing farming tasks and heading home for a chat over a hearty meal.

What makes Sakuna stand out is how it weaves these two disparate genres into one cohesive narrative. Your level progression is not determined by experience from defeating enemies, though you do collect items that push you along. It is instead largely dependent on your rice harvest. As the rice shoots grow, you’ll be able to see various attributes: aroma, taste, aesthetic etc. Each of these corresponds to a boost you receive to one of your combat attributes upon completing the annual harvest. You’re therefore heavily incentivised to make sure you spend enough time maintaining the fields. Go out for too long and weeds or bugs may take over, the water may run dry and your harvest will suffer that year.

Linking progression to your farming rather than combat worked out brilliantly in my eyes. There is no time limit in the game, just a daily and yearly cycle, so you can explore at your own pace. However, getting this leveling up in batches once per year does create an imbalance. Where a certain level may have proven too difficult multiple times, immediately after completing a harvest, it became a cakewalk. Now this could easily be by design, but it’s nonetheless a little jarring. Perhaps a smoother progression of leveling at each stage of the rice’s development may have helped?

Where the earlier mentioned opacity fits the farming perfectly, it does not fit story progression. Many of the major story cut-scenes take place after completing a specific quest or boss fight, but others seem to appear at random. Most notably for me, I ended up waiting the best part of a year for the quest to trigger the final boss to appear. From what I can tell, this may well be different for every playthrough, with no explanation why. There are also plenty of non-critical cut-scenes that may or may not show, again it seems to be different for each playthrough with no obvious reason why. The fact that so much is left unexplained is in many ways refreshing, but when you’re just wandering around with no quest, waiting for something, somewhere to trigger it can be equally frustrating.

My last little nitpick is the end boss. I hate it when a game introduces a new mechanic specifically for the final boss that has never been used before. You have spent 30 hours mastering the combat mechanics and then right at the end get thrown a curveball. The fight also plays out unlike anything that came before, so all that fast zipping around you’ve been learning to control becomes pretty useless. To top it all, in his final form, all attacks except one can’t hit you: stand to the side and your health regeneration will even kick in.

Aside from the above minor issues, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is an absolute triumph of an indie title and I’m delighted to hear it’s sold so well, moving around 850,000 units at time of writing. The developers tried something completely new and for the most part absolutely nailed it.

Sakuna Of Rice And Ruin Review

First game of 2020 i beat thats not a 2020 game.

Story It starts out with these 5 humans walking across a bridge. This bridge acts as a path between two realms The Lowly realm which is the human realm and The Lofty Realm which is a Realm of Gods. Sakuna finds these 5 humans and rescues them but leaves them. Sakuna than goes to her capital where the Gods are but the humans find there way in and go to there storage area thats has all this food and rice. Sakuna goes to check what there up to and there eating everything and shes not happy she starts arguing but the place catches fire burning the whole storage room of food.

Sakuna than gets scolded by the Goddess known as Kamuhitski she gives her a task to investigate an island of demons than she is banished from the capital along with the 5 humans. She travels to the island but shes forced to do things on her own and live on her own with no one helping her she lives on the island with 5 humans and this story is about Sakuna having to change and her bond with the 5 humans.

Characters

They are okay i don't think no one will be that memorable but they are find. Sakuna being annoyed having to do things on her own and argue with the humans was always funny. Touemon who is a bandit but escapes from that life but hes kind of useless he can't fight or do anything he just has knowledge. Kinta who is a kid and gets on Sakunas nerves the most which is always hilarious. Yui is another girl with an accent she was probably my favorite next to Sakuna. She watches over this kid Kaimaru and shes always getting angry at one point she slaps him and it was hilarious, Yui the savage. Kaimaru who i guess is a little boy but the characters are all small and i don't think you ever got there age but Kaimaru can't really talk he can but not clearly but Yui understands him. Than last is Myrthe which is my least favorite because shes religious and worships her god and stuff.

Gameplay

Sakuna being a goddess the type of god she is is a rice goddess. This game is a half side scroller and half simulator. Sakuna has to plant seeds to get rice and this is where her power comes from. It is a really deep and detailed rice simulator. You first plant your seed alot of them you have to make sure there spaced out and sometimes its hard to line up, than you have to add water, have to keep checking on them pull weeds and pick bugs out  until they grow and they have three stages. Theres fertilizer you add and theres 3 different types Kernel Leaf and Root, but than you can add compotents so when you get the rice you get more power.

So after the plants grow you than have to Harvest the plants pick them out every single one. Once thats over now you have to hang them up to dry them and wait a couple days, After that now you have to thresh the plant to get the rice out again every single one after that now you hull it to mix it into brown of white rice, brown rice gives you more food bonuses and white rice gives you more stats when leveling. Last is seperating where you seperate bad seeds by pouring mud into the water the good quality seeds will float up. So it is a deep rice farming simulator and as you do it you get skills to make Sakuna do it much faster at a quicker pace.

There is also tiling when its winter the soil will be to hard so you have to make the soil softer by using a tool.

Gameplay Part 2 The second part of the gameplay is the side scrolling action parts. You go to a number of locations dungeons and fight enemies and bosses. They have a number of floors, in the dungeons theres combat Sakuna has heavy and light attack and she has her raiment which is kind of like a scarf she can use it to attach and reach higher places also pull enemies towards her. Sakuna gets different abilities to use in combat when you level up from the rice. In these dungeons you get material and enemy parts to use as food and also craft so you'll probably be doing the dungeons multiple times for supplies.

The game has a day and night cycle not a realistic one it turns night fast. When its night enemies are way stronger and usually you have to leave the dungeon and return in the day time. When you leave the dungeon you eat a meal with your 5 friends the foods give you different stats depending on what you eat and theres tons of foods. The place you live at you also get events from the characters and side missions some want you to build them stuff like Kinta is a blacksmith, Yui makes garments, and these are where some materials will go to and some you just learn more about the characters.

Negatives

Not much actually i think the main thing i got annoyed from was exploring a dungeon than it turns night and enemies are way stronger so you'd end up leaving until later on when your strong enough. You could be right at the boss and it turns night and the boss is hard as shit because of it. The soundtrack to i guess nothing memorable and also the locations look  alright nothing really stand out and the colors aren't really vibrant mostly lot of gray and faded out colors. The enemy variety aint much either about 10.  thats about all the negatives for me.

Final thoughts

I enjoyed it funny i played 3 simulators Death Stranding i played Omega Labryith which was a farming simulator because you water plants and pick from different seeds and different waters and now Sakuna which is a rice simulator. I guess the game can be tedious for people getting tired of doing the rice stuff lol but it was the best part for me i liked doing it even didn't use the abilities to make it take more longer and more work and some stuff without ablities can take 8 to 10 minutes maybe longer to do.

Combat was fun, characters were fine Yui being my favorite and Sakuna and Kinta arguing always funny. The story was okay the final boss was alright best part was Sakuna bonding with her friends. My score for Sakuna Rice of Ruin is an 8.

Sometime I get tired of finding the same mechanics in every game. I know that killing enemies to level up is practically a given, ¿but what if we change that and level up by taking care of a rice harvest?

Sakuna is a perfect mix of action-RPG, survival and farm simulator with great characters and a cute, heartfelt story. The combat and harvesting are in constant evolution so it doesn't gets repetitive. Sadly, the game has some filler by repeating bosses and making us traverse some levels several times.

Despite that and some bugs, this is an excelent and unique game. You can find my full review in spanish here.

I got a PS5 and compared to some of the titles I've been able to play, this has taken a bit of a backseat! It's a fun game, but the constant day/night rushing around takes some of the fun out of grinding through enemies. I almost wish the days were.. a bit longer, maybe? It seems like I never have enough time to do anything, which is hitting a little too close to home at the moment, with a newborn.

I'm a bit disappointed at how little this game is grabbing me currently. I started playing The Last of Us recently and I am constantly thinking about playing it. In fact I played TLoU for almost 3 straight hours the other night, not realizing I stayed up way too late. That literally has not happened to me playing a game for hours straight in probably, 5-10 years?

It almost feels like I was making myself play Sakuna in comparison to how I felt with some of these PS4/PS5 games I'm checking out for the first time. Maybe it's the allure of the shiny new toy in the room.