We Need to Talk About Fields of Mistria
The Farming Sim Heard ‘Round the Steam World
Gamers who are tapped into the cozy genre were well aware of Fields of Mistria leading up to its August 5th launch date. The cozy farming sim has a large social media presence and has smartly used that to market the 90s-esque aesthetics while building up to the early access release. That being said, the game had a large enough pop (over 100k downloads in its first week on Steam) that it managed to catch the eyes of those even outside of its core demographic. Some gamers are checking it out as their first farming sim, which naturally is creating the “how is it different from Stardew Valley” conversation, and well…it feels similar to us (notably not interested in FPS games) looking at two first-person shooter games and asking how Overwatch is different from Valorant. The two may look alike on the surface because they are the same genre, but you can feel the differences when you play.
Hype is one thing, quality is another.
So, where does Fields of Mistria land?
We’ve played over 40 hrs in Fields of Mistria and wrapped up Year 1 before writing this review. We completed the main story as far as early access will let us go, have upgraded our house, unlocked the larger barn/coop, and reached level 47 for the town. With that, we can confidently tell you: the rumors are true. Fields of Mistria is good. It’s very good, actually.
Fields of Mistria is good. It’s very good, actually.
As with all farming sims, you start off with a plot of land filled with debris that you will ultimately need to clear out, decorate, and turn into a functional farm. In the midst of making the deserted land your own, you also help the townsfolk with quests, help improve the town, and build relationships with all the NPCs. Pretty standard, right? Well, yes…but, if checking those boxes was all you needed to create the next hit farming sim, we’d have a much larger list of high-quality farming sims that stack up against the best of the best.
How Fields of Mistria Cured Farming Sim Burnout
Fields of Mistria managed to stand out in a sea of farming sims, making a huge splash in the cozy gaming community. In a time where a large portion of the community has expressed farming sim burnout, that’s no easy feat. So, what makes Fields of Mistria unique? What does it offer that other farming sims lack? There are a few features present in Mistria that aren’t considered standard for farming sims, such as:
Introducing the jump button in a farming sim, giving you an alternate traversal option when debris or an enemy is blocking your way.
The watering can that never runs out of water, saving you the painstaking walk to and from the well in early game.
The ability to dive in the water, giving you yet another way to collect goodies for the museum.
A skill tree that adds buffs or cost-effective bonuses to various activities like cooking, ranching, combat, and more.
The breeding mechanic with ranching allows you to unlock different color variants of animals.
The ability to craft without having the materials in your immediate inventory saving you the hassle of having to check what’s on your toolbelt.
Shops that remain open all day, every day.
Fields of Mistria feels like a love letter to Rune Factory and Harvest Moon, perfectly mixing the cozy elements from those games while being reminiscent of the magical 90s Sailor Moon era with its visual aesthetics and relaxing melodies.
Fields of Mistria feels like a love letter to Rune Factory and Harvest Moon
The above bullets are just a few things that Fields of Mistria does well. That doesn’t mean they are the first and only game to have some of those features. Sun Haven, Fae Farm, Animal Crossing New Horizons, and even Harvest Moon have some of the aforementioned gameplay mechanics. What makes it so special in Fields of Mistria is that all of the features come together to create a cohesive gameplay loop, all wrapped in a nostalgic and colorful world.
Falling for Mistria at Your Own Pace
When we think of Fields of Mistria and why it’s become such a hit, there are two aspects that address the biggest critiques of most modern-day farming sims: NPC depth and time restrictions.
Bad boys, himbos, and researchers…oh my!
The characters of Mistria make the world feel alive. The trap that some farming sims can run into is the inability to make your character feel like they are part of a living, breathing town. By ditching the “inherited farm from grandpa” introduction, Mistria sets up a backstory for the town.
We learn that the town recently experienced an earthquake. Through Adeline’s early game dialogue, we learn that the town rank has since dropped significantly, and the supply chain is impacted by broken paths. In exchange for a place to stay, our character is tasked with helping to restore the town. Suddenly, there’s motivation behind our character moving in (hey, who doesn’t want a free plot of land?), but there’s also motivation for the NPCs to make us feel welcome. You wouldn’t want to run off free help—unless you’re March—would you? What starts as a win-win transactional relationship slowly starts to blossom into actual friendship as we get to know each character.
Through everyday dialogue, we learn about Olric and his love of rocks and short shorts, while simultaneously realizing that he sadly isn’t available to date. (If you like him, there’s a sweetheart named Unsuur in My Time at Sandrock that you’ll absolutely adore.) Olric introduces us to March, his younger and less likable brother that we’re convinced we can fix. We learn about Eiland’s infectious curiosity around the historical artifacts across town, Reina’s knack for cooking while serving look after look each season, Juniper’s shady yet endearing (and we’re pretty sure evil but in a fun way) personality, and more.
With over 20 NPCs, there’s so much life to the town in their varying personalities alone. Add to that their weekly hangouts at the inn, the Saturday markets, and their changing interactions based on season and time of day, and what you get is a town brimming with life. It’s exciting to run into the adorable kids and see what they’re up to each day because at 40 hours of gameplay, we have yet to run into consistently repetitive dialogue.
Don’t worry, it can wait.
Standard farming sims have some kind of bulletin board in the center of town where your character can go pick up odd jobs for the townsfolk. These quests are minor fetch quests that you can do in between larger goals or story beats to gain rewards–typically money–and relationship points with the NPC being helped. Fields of Mistria has this as well, with one key exception:
No. Time. Limits.
This small tweak of removing time limits on gathering resources for NPCs makes the world of a difference in keeping the game cozy and relaxing. Sure, the day/night cycle still exists (and does feel quite short, even for us), but it ultimately doesn’t matter because it does not impact your ability to turn in a quest. Reina’s relationship won’t decay if you aren’t able to bring her 3 duck eggs in two days because, well…she doesn’t need the duck eggs in 2 days. The NPCs will give you recipes, items, or tesserae (money) whenever you manage to round up what they need, even if it takes all season. We love this twist on town requests because it truly makes Fields of Mistria the perfect farming sim to chill out with at the end of a busy day.
Want to focus on decorating your farm with all the cute farming sets you’ve unlocked before responding to everyone’s quests? Go for it! Want to hoard all of the completed quests and turn them in to everyone when they hang out at the inn on Friday night instead of trying to track them down one-by-one? No problem. When there isn’t a time limit on anything, the freedom of choice really opens up. In our playthrough, we managed to complete the early access story content in the last few days of Winter Year 1, and still had several bulletin board and relationship quests on our to-do list.
Should you buy Fields of Mistria?
In short, yes, you definitely need Fields of Mistria if you:
Love farming sims and you’re looking for something new to play
Don’t like time-bound quests
Love cutesy, colorful, pastel art styles
Enjoy the relationships in farming sims
Have a Steamdeck (it runs GREAT) or PC and $14 to spend
Want to provide feedback on the game that could get incorporated into the full release
The only reason we would say no to buying Fields of Mistria right now is if you are someone who does not like to replay farming sims. With early access games, it’s safe to assume that at some point when the full release is out, it’ll be a new experience to start a fresh save file (even when it’s not required) and see all of the elements of a game from start to finish. When playing in early access, the content is drip-fed to you as new updates are pushed. The Fields of Mistria team has done an exceptional job with communicating the roadmap to gamers so we know what to expect. If you don’t mind going through lulls while waiting for the next update, great! But if you want to experience the game in its entirety when you purchase, then we recommend waiting for the estimated year until the full game is available.
There’s so much to love about Fields of Mistria, even in its early access state. While we do have a wishlist of features we’d like to see over the course of the next year, what is available now is a promising look at what could possibly be one of the newest cream of the crop farming sims.
Field of Mistria Review: The Nitty Gritty Review Stats & Performance Details
For the sake of transparency and perspective, we are going to add some key stats at the end of each review. As consumers, we’ve often run into the problem of looking at a game review and not knowing where and when the game was played. For Cozy in Pixels, you can expect our reviews to always include the details about the state of the game when our review went live, as well as a minor blurb about how the performance was throughout our gameplay.
Performance is important to know at a point in time as you’re making the purchasing decision, but it can quickly become outdated as any issues are typically fixed in future patches. As such, we’ll try to keep it short and sweet unless gameplay is severely impacted by its performance, and our reviews will contain the version number at the time of writing.
What We Played
Game reviewed: Fields of Mistria (Early Access)
Game version: v0.11.4
Hours played: 43.5 hours
Platform: Played nearly exclusively on Steamdeck
The Performance
Can we just say, the performance was exceptional! Grace is given with early access games because it’s expected that we’ll run into a few bugs or performance issues, but we were pleasantly surprised with how well the game not only ran, but ran on Steamdeck. With the exception of maybe an hour or 2 of gameplay on a gaming laptop, nearly all 43.5 hours of our first year in Mistria was played on a Steamdeck OLED.
The game felt extremely polished, only experiencing a few slight delays/stutters in late winter when it was snowing and we were clearing out the farm too quickly. We didn’t experience any crashes, though we have seen others report crashes here and there, and all but one cutscene played as expected. Sadly, we love Ryis and did not get to see his 2-heart cutscene as the screen went black and we could only hear the music playing. We had to skip the cutscene to progress, which was the only “major” bug we encountered in our playthrough. All in all, it is a very solid game that is clearly made with love, even down to the great performance.
Cozy in Pixels will not rate our reviews with any kind of numerical scoring system, but suffice to say, we definitely recommend picking up Fields of Mistria.
