This is a pretty easy sell. This game is Stardew Valley, except it was made by some of the people who worked on Fable. This is somewhat a double edged sword. First of all, the story is far darker than anything in Stardew Valley. It's like they took Stardew Valley, made it much more realistic, then went back and made it less realistic. It's very hard to describe using existing data points and without spoling some really good storytelling, so I'll just mention something that can happen much later in the game. You can die, people around you can die. The game is generational and you'll be saying goodbye to characters you liked, as is a part of life. This could slap someone in the face who was expecting nothing but Stardew Valley good vibes. The game spends a lot of time setting up the good vibes so when these events occur they can be very impactful. It's nothing more intense than the main story of Fable but it might be worth a mention if you came straight from Stardew. So basically it has everything that's in Stardew Valley or Runefactory, except there is more of everything. More people, more choices, more quests. Just more. Again, a double edged sword. There is a LOT to do in this game, all thrown on your lap very quickly. But also, you don't really have that oppressive 3 year timer to deal with. Your timer is 32 years, which is a currency that can very much be traded to the Fae for magic. Once a story beat hits, every member of your family from that point on lives to 50 years of age, and these years can be traded for treasures. The combat system is a charming little turn based real time JRPG, and I'm not sure I've seen anything like it before. It would take a bunch of explaining to desribe and I think that is better left for the game's combat tutorial. Just know that it's different from others in it's class. You aren't in the overworld and there are unique combat screens, similar to something like Final Fantasy. Many of the encounters have some sort of puzzle element rather than just being hit the bat with the sword until you get your item. It's quite novel but I worry it could wear thin easily. It takes quite a lot of active engagement from the player. So far, for me, still fairly early in to the game but far enough that it has presented all of it's mechanics, I'm really enjoying the combat system. I've spent all this time talking about Stardew Valley, but I mentioned that it's from some of (or one of I'm not really clear on that) designers from Fable. Not the new one the original one. So what fable DNA has transferred over into this title? Well, one large component I can immediately identify is the humour. Nobody exactly calls you "Chicken chaser" but it feels like many things, quests and everyday interactions, are treated with the same tongue in cheek humour that was presented by Fable. It's not exactly high brow humour, and one character literally says; "WAHEY!" while talking about another character's penis, but it's fine. The air of silliness can be a bit out of place when the game also presents tragedies and it doesn't really give you much breathing room between the two events in some cases. The most important carryover from Fable is the ability to buy a business. It's a lot more involved than Fable's system and this game almost contains 4 seperate business management games inside the original game. You build, customize, expand and supply your business like any other management title. You hire staff, set their rosters and deal with customers. You essentially play the game for 30-50 hours and it becomes Tavern Keeper as well as being Stardew. They just added the tavern as a business type that you can purchase and manage. So all of this sounds great. Where is there likely to be friction? Well, Stardew Valley is a simple game about a simple life. There isn't really a lot of remember. This game is extremely bloated in comparison. Forget 28 villagers total, there are 28 in your starting town, the smallest town of 5. And then the randomly generated NPCs of the next generation start popping up. You're also expected to befriend a lot, if not every single NPC for their unique stories. You're begginning to encroach on the boundaries of Dunbar's Number, where it is psychologically impossible for 1 human to categorize and remember all of these characters as "people". This is without mentioning the ridiculously complex cooking system that has six different minigames for different categories and types of cooking, and which can easily nuke 6 of your hard earned ingredients because it didn't make any attempt to actually tell you how to play the minigame. Ahh yes. You burned all the ingredients... of your salad. Because you didn't understand what the hell the game expected from you with the croutons and egg and every minigame is different. And these minigames start out... Fine I guess. The 200th time you have to do a minigame you really don't enjoy because you just want a sandwich? Really pushing into the boundaries of being not fun at all. Ultimately, it's hard not to recommend this game, as it's just a linear upgrade of something that's already on the market. The problem is that the thing that it "upgrades" became popular because of simple, easy to learn mechanics. Because to actually play the game you're going to be engaging with these minigames over and over and over. The mechanics. The tool level ups. The skills tied to NPCs that you have to give specific items. The 100+ characters with their own likes and dislikes, all of whom who it's optimal for you to befriend. A massive spawling map. Combat. Finding time for combat between running a farm and running a shop full time. Somewhere, the appeal of the original has been lost. Leaving the hustle and bustle of the city behind to live a simple life in the country. But then you drag all your ledgers along and file and categorize your 16000 items by 10 categories to be spread across use in 7 professions and... Is this really a simple life anymore or is this just imposing modern life on to a group of people who at no point in their entire life (I've seen the whole thing) were they taught to read. I really want to instant recommend this to everyone who plays Stardew Valley but it's just a lot. It's like the Stardew Valley Roguelike with all of it's intersecting mechanics and complex RPG systems and I think that will turn some of the Stardew audience away, but also potentially draw a different type of audience. Is this "good" or "bad"? I don't really know. But I do know that it's different in a VERY refreshing way, that wasn't even delivered in the step from Harvest Moon to Runefactory and Stardew. It is absolutely progress in the genre, but like all progress, some people will be left behind. It's also the type of game where the amount of effort the developers have gone to in order to deliver the experience, it's going to be extremely hard for anyone to follow. It might end up with a bit of Half Life Alyx syndrome, where it's so impossibly meticulously engineered that it might have a negative effect on the future market. Like yeah Da Vinci did a good job here but I'm going to need you to paint better to keep your job or we'll make an AI do it. It's gonna be tough when the next mainstream Harvest Moon-like is Stardew Valley... But with magic! The "But with..." in the case of Kynseed is like 2 other games from seperate genres, a fully functional management simulator and JRPG.