Fields of Mistria (2024)

• Playtime: 147 hours (completed all story quests)

• Played: 2024-2026

• Context: I gave Stardew 2 stars because of its many flaws.

The Good

• Tons of dialogue.
• Solid characters.
• The story and events are nice.
• Fast travel between home, mines and most distant point.
• Magic spells to make it rain, regain stamina/hp, grow plants.
• Skill system really makes you feel progress.
• With a single click you summon and get on your mount.
• Mount can take appearance of any big animal.
• Lots of cute accessoires for animals and pet.
• You can jump and swim.
• Far less time spent on processsing items compared to Stardew.
• Deliver X item quests don't have a time limit like in Stardew.
• Villager relations don't decay if you don't talk to them.
• Running over forageables while mounted harvests them.
• Items not picked up (outside mines) are put in the lost & found chest.
• You can disable the penalty for falling asleep outside your bed.
• You don't get robbed when that happens like in Stardew.

The Bad

• There is a mandatory bedtime (02:00).
• You need to look up what to gift on the wiki.
• You can only save in your house.
• Some items are still too annoying to get (e.g. "fish in X place during Y season if there's Z weather").
• Moving chests requires moving every item in it individually.
• Crafting items shows a cutscene, then a popup then another popup if it's a new item.

The Ugly

• Like in all of these games you spend so much time on inventory management and your farm gets filled up with ugly chests.
• You can't simply move buildings. You deconstruct and reconstruct them. You have to store your animals in a different building or at Hayden's farm. Any plants in the greenhouse are destroyed too.

Conclusion

Fields of Mistria fixes some of Stardew Valley's most glaring flaws while also adding some fun new elements. It's also a much more relaxed and cosy game, you don't "have" to constantly talk to everyone for one thing. I do really hate that you still get knocked out at 2 AM, but at least you don't get punished as much.

The game is still in Early Access but it's already the best farm life sim i've played.

My friends and I decided to play Fields of Mistria together so I launched it for the first time today (we're not gonna talk about how it was gifted to me over a year ago). As a farming sim fan, I hardly needed convincing to join the fun.

Just look at that start screen! I love the art style so far. It definitely has retro farming sim inspirations but also mixes in shoujo fantasy elements that I very much enjoy and I think any Sailor Moon or magical girl fan would too.

I haven't played a farming sim in awhile so I don't recall there being any decision or choice-making during conversations with NPCs so I thought this was a nice addition to add some oomph to character interactions. Also Balor is giving Fire Emblem protagonist energy and I don't mind his company one bit.

I'm enjoying the change from the typical land inheritance to an earthquake messed up the region and you've been hired to help with the revitalization of the town, free land and home included.

The humble beginnings of my farmhouse (I love the retro emoticons). What isn't pictured is the character creation screen that includes all the staples such as skin color, hair style, clothing, eye color, eye shape (none of which are gender locked) and the quickly becoming normalized pronoun selector which was quite robust. Of course you got to name yourself and your farm too.

Upon waking, I met the cover art star, Celine! Shortly after, I'm introduced to mechanics that will be famliar to farming sim veterans such as hoeing (heh), planting crops, and watering. As you can see the farm is overrun and needing lots of work but after planting my few starter seeds, graciously given to me by my kindly neighbors, I set off into town to explore instead. And this is where I spent the majority of my day.

After picking up my first quest, which required introducing myself to all the villagers, I explored every building available in the main town area that was open. Some of them were boarded up and it left me wondering how much the village would expand over time. Most of them were open to exploration and I got to meet a bunch of new characters. I appreciated that the non-romanceable NPCs had a relationship marker as well. The romantic NPCs have jeweled hearts next to their name and the platonic NPCs have square gems instead. I also appreciated the diversity in characters.

Even when the characters were nowhere to be found, I enjoyed learning about their interests via investigating points of interest. It added personality and environmental storytelling that varied from amusement to adorable.

Perfection needs no descriptors.

By the time I finished exploring the town and speaking to its citizens, it was quite late so I headed back to my farm to do some last minute planting and weed cutting. I got too into it though and pushed my character to exhaustion so I'm gonna start day two with a rough (and late) start. Oops!

I hope you enjoyed reading about my first day on the job in Fields of Mistria. :))

everything i wished for in a farming sim, but please for the love of god CAN GAMES STOP MAKING SO MANY HOT CHARACTERS ? like i cant decide theyre all just so gorgeous ... but my faves are march and caldarus hehehe and that priestess girl in th e mines .

anyway, def a really good early access game and im excited for what is to come ! its very cute and comforting, reminds me of rune factory for some of the things that is in it which i love, because rune factory is my favorite farming series, like the whole levelling up when you craft or cook and stuff like that is one of my faves things to happen and i odnt know why its just satisfying. i love fields of mistria and i dont care what people say about it, "its a stardew valley copy!" no? just cause its a farming sim its a stardew valley copy? thats not how it works !!!! there are SO SO SO many farming sims with the same stuff stardew has cause its normal IN A farming sim . plus, there was even farming sims like harvest moon that came out waaaayyy before stardew ! but yeah , i love this game a lot ! its like my dream farming sim game came true

Been looking forward to this one for a long time, and it's finally got a demo! If Stardew Valley is the polished and quest-focused, indie version of Harvest Moon, Fields of Mistria is the exact same thing for Rune Factory. There's farming, mining, crafting, and a bunch of villagers to meet, now with some magic spells and fantasy set dressing.

It's hewing extremely close to the template set by Stardew, but the visuals and music are lovely, the controls and UI are snappier, and the writing for the villagers all seems pretty charming so far. Wish the demo covered more than the first 3 days, and it doesn't sound like the full release is coming out til late 2025 at the earliest, but what little's here feels super promising.