Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

There is trouble in paradise. While fleeing war and famine in the Lowly Realm, a group of five humans have crossed the bridge connecting to the realm of gods and fed themselves with the rice in the Divine Garner. Attempting to chase away the rice thieves, harvest goddess Sakuna causes a bigger problem - she accidentally burns down the Divine Garner. Preeminent goddess Kamuhitsuki would take no excuse from Sakuna and for penance, she banishes both Sakuna and the trespassing humans to the Isle of Demons with the mission of reining in the isle into Kamuhitsuki's domain. No longer in a position to enjoy rice offerings from up high, Sakuna has to hunt, forage and grow her own food, all while fighting demons.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a game of two genres. While out exploring the Isle of Demons, you play a side-scrolling beat 'em up. Sakuna brings two sets of weapons for these stages: One-handed weapons for light attacks, two-handed weapons for heavy attacks. Sakuna's most notable ability in these stages is the use of her hagoromo - called "Divine Raiment" in this game. When Sakuna launches her Divine Raiment at an enemy, she swings herself around to the other side of them. With the Raiment Skills assigned to a directional button, she can do other things with the Divine Raiment like swinging the enemy around instead of herself. Enemies take damage from crashing with each other at high enough velocity and a significant part of the combat involves throwing enemies around. Raiment Skills share the same SP pool required to activate Fighting Skills, which rapidly refills when not being drained. Like Raiment Skills, Fighting Skills can also be bound to a directional button, but unlike Raiment Skills, Fighting Skills can be improved via repeated usage.

The Divine Raiment is also your platforming tool since it can attach to a static surface and pull Sakuna to that surface.

When Sakuna returns to the hub base on the Isle of Demons, the game switches to over-the-shoulder camera and you can engage in forging new weapons, weaving new garments and preparing meals to refill your Fullness meter, but most importantly engage in the farming simulation gameplay. The game simulates the full cycle of growing rice, from sorting rice in mud, to growing rice seeds in a seed bed, to tilling the field, to planting the seedlings, to mixing and spreading fertilizer, to harvesting, to drying rice, to threshing rice, to hulling rice. Throughout the stages of rice growth, you are expected to irrigate the field via 2 canal gates so that the rice temperature is kept in control, which is also affected by the weather and the seasons. Weeds can grow in your field depending on the fertilizer's herbicide quality, which must be plucked. Pests can infest your field depending on the fertilizer's pesticide quality, which must be caught. At the end of the harvest, on top of the rice itself as food, Sakuna also receives permanent stat growths depending on the nutritional value you have mixed into the fertilizer throughout the year and the ratio of white rice over brown rice. Hulling converts brown rice into white rice for a lower yield. Shinto deities receive white rice as offerings and as one such deity herself, Sakuna grows stronger from creating her own offerings. Aside from repetition of Fighting Skills, farming rice acts as the game's other progression system.