I kicked off my six-week-long summer vacation by starting and finishing Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale on Nintendo 3DS. It's a cross-over game of PopoloCrois and Story of Seasons series, combining RPG and farming simulation gameplay.
PopoloCrois's origins are in a manga that debuted in 1978. XSEED Games has offered the chance to read Prince Pietro's very first adventure in its entirety! The initial 1981 serialization introduces all the mainstays of PopoloCrois lore. You can find the full manga spanning 100+ pages, translated into English on the official Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale site. Below a few sample pages.
PopoloCrois has received some game adaptations before too, with the Story of Seasons cross-over title from 2015 being the latest console instalment. A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games by Bitmap Books includes an introduction to the games.
The events of Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale take place in two lands, PopoloCrois and Galariland. The 13-year-old Prince Pietro of PopoloCrois sets off on a quest to rid the kingdom of creatures that are poisoning the soil. The quest takes Pietro to Galariland via a magical transportation circle so he could learn how to combat the "black beasts" that hinder the growth of crops. In Galariland Pietro befriends locals and fairies who help him revive the dying land.
Return to PopoloCrois features turn-based combat, growing and harvesting crops, taking care of livestock, synthesizing items and forming relationships with locals. In addition to the main story there's about a hundred side quests. There are five special ladies whose affection can be increased by gifting them items and conversing with them. There's even cute animated cutscenes when Pietro meets each of the ladies.
The farming elements are mostly optional, so it's possible to concentrate on the RPG side. You can't plant wrong kind of seeds in the fields and it seems the crops don't wither either, so it's a very pleasant, stress-free and beginner-friendly experience. As you harvest and ship crops, you unlock better tools to streamline the process even more.
The turn-based battle system has you control Pietro and a maximum of 3 characters in his party. The story determines who is in your party at which point but at the end of the main story you get to choose between two party composition options. Characters can be moved on a grid on the battlefield and they learn new skills as they level up.
I chose the Seedling difficulty level which made battles very care-free. The only time any of my party members fell was in the final boss battle which was a bit more challenging.
The game features not only one but two Japanese audio options (traditional / more modern "anime-style") and English voice acting which you can choose in the game settings. An interesting and rarely seen graphics setting is an option to enable dark outlines on the character models to make them stand out from the surroundings better. Quality of life features include ability to increase or decrease the amount of enemy encounters during gameplay and convenient fast travel can be unlocked after the first few hours.
I very much enjoyed my time with Return to PopoloCrois. I played it for 29 hours, completed the main story and quite a bunch of side quests, did some farming and worked Pietro's charm on the ladies. The epilogue hinted that the game can be continued even after rolling the end credits.
My only disappointment was that there is no visual representation for the synthesized items. I would have loved to see images of food items like "Elegant Dinner" or "Fruit-Flavored Milk".
I think this fairytale adventure was a great way to get into a relaxed summer vacation mood. My husband noted that I did not curse a single time while playing the game!
Image credits: Marvelous, XSEED Games, Nintendo.
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