Neither this nor that, neither here nor there
As a farming sim, the controls are excellent and the graphics are beautiful. It has just about everything that the Harvest Moon games have. Fields to till, people to make friends with, equipments to upgrade etc. Unfortunately, having to catch monsters to substitute for farm animals is just not working out.
There are chicken-type monsters and cow-type monsters to catch for eggs and milk for example, and there are also monsters you can catch, enslave and make them work on the farm for a bit of feed a day. They just live in those boring huts.
It's action rpg element is pretty interesting. You farm in the caves and full fields yield a sort of energy ball for your character to replenished used energy to continue deeper into the caves.
Monsters and monster generators are littered in a reasonable way, but the way your character swings the weapon is really painful looking and slow. It's all about the timing of course.
For what's it's worth, it is a beautiful game and the controls are excellent, better than Harvest Moon DS. There's a great big town with lots of characters to interact with and you can do things like fishing. There's still a lot to like about this game but it's not as good as it ought to be.