Sun Haven - Ishvii Reviews

Sun Haven is a clone of Stardew Valley (which is a clone of Harvest Moon). Fans will try to deny it, but with a practically identical art style it's hard to ignore. You inherit a farm and proceed to farm, cook, upgrade tools, mine, donate to the museum, forage, fish, buy friendship by giving gifts and take on side quests. There are some nice differences too though. There are MUCH larger skill trees than SDV, no stamina bar, an adjustable day length, magic spells and a main story. On the whole I would highly recommend it if you're looking for one of those farming life sims to get lost in. I've enjoyed 50 hours so far, but am giving it a rest until they fix the bugs.

Pros

Lots of different races. Although they're all weird except humans. I wanted to play an elf, but you can't disable having wings. There are very limited customisation options, especially for non-human races
No stamina bar
It's Stardew, so it's satisfying to farm, mine, craft, fish etc
Large skill trees for each profession
There are a number of pets you can collect that hang around on your farm
There are combat bosses, and several seasonal event bosses
Has jumping and movement abilities
You can exit at any time and it saves. No need to end the day
If you want to replay the story for any reason, you can reset your story progress, but keep your character, farm and relationships
Nice big farm with lots of space for crops, buildings and decorations
Loads of achievements
Lots of basic crops can be grown in any season, then there are also season-specific crops
Winter has it's own themed crops so it's not just a dead month

Cons

Ok, so my main con here is what I think is a design oversight. Eventually you get 3 farms - which I think is great. They're in different areas, and you can fast-travel between them. However, you lack the time and tools to manage those farms, which means you either have to spend 100% of your day rushing around each one to keep everything going or you just abandon two of them at a time. The fact that there are no sprinklers make this worse, and would have been a good way to help manage them. As it is, you're forced to physically visit each farm you're growing crops in. There's fertiliser that can keep crops watered, but there are also "seasonal effects" which prevent some of your crops growing each day unless you go there to fix them. They also added an adjustable day length from 15 to 40 minutes which I imagine is a workaround, but I feel like there should be better tools to help you manage three large farms.

Multiplayer is extremely buggy
Released as"1.0" without the main story complete
Tools don't gain AoE as you upgrade them, they just get faster (but you do get spells like earthquake for tilling, and raincloud for AoE watering)
There are no sprinklers in the game. There's a Rain Cloud spell, which takes a lot of mana, but having sprinklers would make the "having 3 farms" easier to manage
There's no way to see what you have donated to the museum without going there to check
There are skills left in the game which have no effect anymore. For example, they removed fish quality before 1.0 but there are still several skills related to fish quality
Decorative floor tiles have very poor artwork. They're flat textures that don't change the environment at all when you place them
Marrying an NPC does absolutely nothing. They don't move in with you and you can't have children
The wiki is missing information on at least 50% of the in-game items
The recently added museum barely collects half the items in the game. It's disappointing to discover something new, then find the museum doesn't want it
Spells always cast in the direction of your mouse regardless of which way your character is facing. This makes sense for Fireball, but spells like Rain Cloud often cast in the wrong direction, or miss half your crops because it's unclear which tile you're standing on
When you kill a monster, the body persists for half a second or so and you still get damaged for touching it even though it's dead
Animals in a barn can't go outside. You can place animals outdoors, but they never move into the buildings
Time passes when chests and shop windows are open
By the time I got to the first week of Fall in the first year, the music was driving me nuts. I ended up muting it and listening to Spotify.
Lots and LOTS of bugs (see below). There is a channel in Discord for reporting them which is just a constant stream of clearly untested issues
They've started to release €10 DLCs for in-game clothes... in an indie farming game

Bugs

When first creating your character, some of the items you can start with don't have tooltips, which breaks the currently displayed tooltip and keeps it on the screen permanently. I had to restart the game to get the tooltip off the screen
When you first buy and start the game, the "skip intro" button is pre-checked for new players
When you start the game, you have a "place your house" item in your hot bar. After placing my house, it didn't disappear
When you've accepted a side quest, the exclamation mark stays on the map as an available quest still (Calvin is bored)
When I completed the "40 wheat" quest, my character froze and I had to restart the game
They seem to be the only game on steam who've managed to upload the achievement icons at half the required size, which means they're all fuzzy on the main achievement list, and very small in the overlay
When I walk over a specific patch of dirt on my farm, all other dirt on the farm goes invisible
If you eat a Jam with the Experienced Artisan perk, you're meant to get 10xp every hour for the rest of the day. If you exit the game and load back in, that buff disappears and stops giving you xp (but the other buffs stay)
The skill that allows you to get two bars from the furnace also affects the alchemy table
It's 6:20pm and Lucia is still in her office. We're meant to meet for a date outside her house 2 hours ago. So I walk to her house, and she teleports there
You can "dodge" fall damage
The "Miner's Luck" buff that's meant to stop you from taking any fall damage in the mines doesn't do anything

Back to all games