Mirthwood misses the Forest for the Trees

I'm a sucker for most crafting-type games, be they cozy farm-sims or more survival focused, so Mirthwood should be right up my alley as it combines a bit of both with a charming art style and medieval setting. Unfortunately, by trying to jack several trades at once it fails to master any, and that results in a fairly middiling game that can't find a compelling focus.

Mirthwood starts with a brief (and thankfully skippable) introductory segment, but honestly it feels unnecessary. There's a basic introduction to combat and picking up items, but it also for some reason establishes a family for your character rather than leaving your past blank to fill in. You don't spend more than a minute with these people and I have yet to see them become relevant again, so it just falls flat as a presumed attempt to add some stakes or a sense of desperation to the story.

From there you can begin your new life on an untamed continent. Well, mostly untamed. You actually start in a pre-built cabin right next to a quaint village pretty indistinguishable from the one you just left. You'll need to find your first tools, and there's a mysterious stranger with a quest for you, but otherwise it's business as usual for these sorts of farm-sim/crafter games. You can start gathering materials to upgrade your tools and craft better equipment, plant some crops and begin slowly building some capital, or you can explore around a bit for items and enemies to fight, perhaps even stumbling on some quests or caves to explore.

Whatever you turn your hand to, you'll end up earning experience in a relevant skill where you'll eventually get equippable skill cards. Each card grants a bonus like a chance for extra resources or a slowed rate of hunger but you can only have a few at a time and it takes a day to swap them back again. It's actually kind of a nice system that lets you tailor your perks to whatever you feel like doing on a given day.

But actually grinding out those skill levels is significantly less compelling. There's precious few interesting new items to craft even as you progress to higher tiers, they mostly just give you flat upgrades or let you gather more uninteresting materials. There's no sprinklers or new types of tool that change the way you play. There's a Charisma skill and a fairly involved conversation system too, but since there's so little actual detail about the various village NPC's there's little reason to bother talking to them. And then there's the combat, which has a level of depth with dodges and parries but is so fast and imprecise as to become frustrating. It actually motivated me to craft better equipment just so I could brute force past those encounters easier.

And it's here the art style actually starts to hurt the game. While it does bring a distinct, almost storybook-style aesthetic that reminds me of Wildermyth, it also makes the game world appear very flat which makes it difficult to judge distances for attacks and dodges. Combine that with a fairly close player camera, and the environment ends up feeling quite same-y and indistinct, as one small copse of trees blends into another when there's no roads or buildings to orient yourself around.

Ultimately, while inoffensive, Mirthwood fails to find its footing as either a crafting game or a lite, exploration-focused RPG. The uninspiring crafting and rudimentary combat don't manage to get that gameplay loop turning, and the lukewarm story can't cover for it either. While it might serve if you're craving a simple material grind, there are better games out there that do the same thing.

Mirthwood is immediately available for PC via Steam.

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