domicile > Game review
Mirthwood is an opened - macrocosm husbandry sim that sees you escape feudalism into a land of on-key exemption , where only your power to raise , fight , and trade determines your selection . Hardly my first agriculture game , I was intrigued to ascertain a title in the genre with a sour fantasy setting — one I ’ve yet to see a farming sim force off . Though it took a while , I find out myself plunge in Mirthwood and can aboveboard say it ’s one of my new favorite land sims .
Mirthwood … takes some sentence to open up up .
Beyond the more or less lengthy tutorial , the game features a want of direction that can make starting out intimidating . Beyond a few mere start seeking ( with many trust on your sense of direction instead of map arrow or guided paths ) , Mirthwood does n’t tell you what to do or how to do it . Once you have some basic tools and have plant some crop , what you do next is totally up to you .
While I struggled with this at first , I quickly began to apprize this choice . Basic system took a few minutes to figure out , but I realized that the only thing keeping me from doing something was gathering the necessary materials . Before long , my homestead was taking shape , and the sense of acquisition and superbia I felt when I bought my first poulet is hard to understate .
There are many different craft to master , from farming and prepare to minelaying , blacksmithing , and even combat . While each benefit from time spent in another ( cutting down trees is light with a adept ax ) , you may loosely focus on the craft(s ) you favor . I put more effort into excavation and refining metal than the other swap , with copper barroom sell at a premium .
That being said , I ’d recommend against play Mirthwood as a fighter or tramp adventurer . While there ’s a pot to see , the fight is underwhelming in complexness , and I found it galling to make it work with the game ’s 2D plane . I ’d often run up to an enemy , swing , and miss for reasons I was n’t sure of .
With all the different patronage , Mirthwood introduce a cool leveling system that honor you for doing what you enjoy .
Basically , as you perform tasks corresponding to the different skill , you gain experience points . As you level up in a trade , you unlock pocket-size bonus , such as a hazard to harvest more wood or ore . Further on , you attain access to cards that extend powerful benefits and can be slot a smattering at a time , get you build your case to best perform homestead tasks .
Mirthwood is , more or less , an open - ended farming sim where you do n’t have to worry about much beyond your farm , its crops , and selling them to the local marketplace . It ’s similar to many other farming sims in that respect . Like those other sims , it also have quests and NPC interaction to mix things up when you ’re not farming or look for crop to grow .
The quests in Mirthwood , however , can be a spot slippery to sail .
A huge part of this is due to the dialog system . When address to a raw villager relate to a quest line for the first clock time , you get a text command prompt with unique dialog and responses to point you through the quest . This will be entropy like , “ Oh , go snap x from y location . ” Fairly straightforward .
unluckily , once that interaction is complete , the dialog is supervene upon with Mirthwood ’s interaction organisation , replacing the written dialogue with cards offering to cheer , joke , or romance the NPC .
gratefully , some quests extend waypoints ( though they were grueling for me to notice , intermingle in with the colorful map ) , but I still base it thwarting that I could n’t have the information repeated , peculiarly when it was gone to make way for a simplistic relationship system I did n’t use .
Mirthwood ’s fundamental interaction organisation lets you have plus , negative , or even romantic interactions with any NPC ( except those try out to kill you ) . While interesting in theory , this system replace any actual written dialogue , direct to meaningless bout of one - line descriptor with every interaction . Basically , no character reference has any real personality unless a pursuance pay them a irregular script , which , in my opinion , contravene the purpose of having any kinship with them .
While more a topic of taste , I was n’t in love with the art way . Charming , indisputable , cute , decidedly , but I found it did n’t totally tally the game ’s vibraphone , and the 2D plane often made things difficult to pilot , like with the armed combat I refer .
The Final Word
Mirthwood is an open - ended farming sim with a unique sorry fantasy setting . While character interaction is limited and combat is underwhelming , you ’ll find yourself spoiled with affair to do , allowing you to live free in a hand - drawn and mystic state .
prove Hard Guides received a personal computer review code for this game . Find more detailed looks at popular and coming deed of conveyance on ourGame Reviewspage ! Mirthwood is available onSteam .
