Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

The two-person doujin circle Edelweiss is a circle I've been familiar with for many years, not as much for their releases like action-shmup Astebreed, but for their Comiket doujin work roundups (wow, who's that?).

Seeing the breakout success of their action/rice-nerd game Sakuna - in both Japanese and English, and including an anime adaptation and a plushie I purchased used from a K-Books in Ikebukuro for 300y - immediately landed the game on my backlog on its first sale.

After all, I was the international student who studied in abroad in 2012 and ate only rice at the dorm kitchen for 2 out of 3 meals on many days (The kindly old lady who worked the kitchen often slipped me some whole milk in an effort to get me any sort of nutrition).

And on the backlog Sakuna languished, firstly due to typical backlog proclivities (a band name if I've ever heard one), and secondly due to my comically low aptitude at any action game that involves combat and not just backwards long jumps.

Indeed, even though I put it on my backlog for 2025, I immediately nearly bounced off Sakuna a second time, due to a strong first-boss difficulty spike with attacks whose feedback I couldn't quite understand.

But one thing I learned in my 25-hour playthrough
is that while Sakuna often only tells you the bare minimum, it's much less intimidating than its translator-torturing collection of rice diseases would imply.

While its rice farming is intricate and intentionally only explained in 'water up to your ankles? probably?' vagueness (a choice I actually like a lot!), it rewards players significantly for making even the mildest Rice Efforts, providing consistent 10-20% year-over-year stat increases for even mediocre crops.

This means that being strong enough to overpower the action segments is just a hour or two of rice no-lifing away. I often believe in the game flow of 'grinding sections for when you don't have brain, and bar-raising sections for when you do', and Sakuna's rice / action genres split along this on my commutes well.

(Though yes, if you want to Rice Hard, you will want to plan and execute very carefully!)

Ricing up your stats also expands Sakuna's movesets and gear customizations significantly, which also serves to make the game more manageable and significantly more visually appealing - Rising Carp is the easy button that I enjoyed deploying liberally, though the game offers plenty of mobility and parry mechanics for more advanced players.

What I'm saying is that Sakuna the game gives you the liberty to either enjoy its action on its own merits or to leave them as brief romps that separate out the game's story segments.

And what a great experience Sakuna's story is!

The best word I can give it is 'heartful' - the journey of Sakuna the initially-lazy-and-spoiled-goddess-brat (and voice of Yuki Nijimura) follows the beats you would expect for that description, but the way that the cutscenes, dinner dialogues, and folk songs are laid out just have a certain amount of care to them that makes me feel warm inside.

Every conversation feels like just the right length, giving a little bit of a window into a character without feeling sluggish or convoluted, and all the characters are likable in their own unique ways.

Myrthe, the foriegn missionary with a comically strong accent, gets particular points for the contrasts she brings to the game, the ways in which she represents the existence of cultures and beliefs which can feel conflicting, but ultimately foster an inquisitive desire to better understand everyone's differences and commonalities.

And of course I'm fond of Kokorowa, Sakuna's more humble goddess foil. She butts heads with Sakuna halfway through the story - a Like-a-Dragon-esque tale of how Sakuna's haughty attitude overshadowed her until Sakuna was cast out, allowing Kokorowa to finally prove herself and ascend in the godly ranks, bringing her firstly a newfound sense of resentment towards Sakuna and secondly a disgust at that twisted emotion... will they mend their ways and remember their unbreakable bond?

What I'm saying is you should enjoy the story too.

Moreover, in its story, Sakuna is a game that feels like it doesn't waste your time, which is funny because there's one particularly bold plot swing in the third act that wastes a lot of your time - but it's narratively and mechanically earned.

Besides a few notable surprises, Sakuna is a game that trades on familiarity - themes and mechanics that are well-treaded, but treated with earnestness, love, and a surprising lack of 'please wrap it up' cut corners that often stick out so hard in indie games.

Also, as is already very obvious, Sakuna is additionally coated with a heavy dose of nerding out about the evolution of rice farming technique (as Sakuna will both improve her skills and fashion more advanced equipment as the game progresses).

Overall, it just *feels* like a game that was made with intent, purpose, and passion - and as someone who was out in Izumo last weekend thinking 'yeah that water level looks about right for rice plants in early summer', it's already sticking in my head in at least one way.

Oh yeah also this game is like, unexpectedly funny at times.

It doesn't scan like a comedy, but Sakuna's ability to both dish it out and flop like a huge idiot (along with the localization's excellent grasp of how to write a good barb) contributes to a lot of 'holy shit' belly laughs.

See you in a few years when the Kokorowa spinoff releases! It could be any dang genre but I hope they're spending way too long in the library researching ancient arts.

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