Mirthwood Review – Cozy Enough

Mirthwood Review

There are people who do lots of things pretty well. They play guitar and paint, or maybe are decent at both pickleball and golf. The thing is, they don’t do anything really well. They’re dabblers. Jacks of all trades and masters of none. They’re a bit like Mirthwood, a game that brings together lots of genres without truly excelling in any of them. Which is not to say any of them are a failure.

Start with the Farm

I guess that, at heart, Mirthwood is a cozy farming sim with some prominent RPG mechanics and quite a bit of combat. Generally speaking, the game does a good job of balancing those three aspects and letting them play off each other. 

Mirthwood kicks off with an interesting, RPG-like character creator with some basic cosmetic customization, land of origin, social class and profession. Each of these will give your character some specific backstory elements, perks and more negative traits. The range of professions is especially wide and interesting. Some are good at farming while others are talented at combat or trading.

The game’s prologue teaches the basics of movement, combat and questing. In its own way, it immediately sets the tone of the game and also suggests where one of Mirthwood’s weaknesses is: combat. While over time the power and variety of weapons grows, combat always feels basic and clunky.  This is largely due to the 2D isometric view and characters’ difficulty in facing enemies. There are some additional combat basics like ranged combat and magic, blocking and dodge rolling, but you won’t mistake Mirthwood for an ARPG.

A Whole New World

Outside of the unsatisfying combat, things improve dramatically. Post-prologue, Mirthwood starts you off with a run-down cottage and the rest of the experience is yours to literally craft. To begin, you can focus on all sorts of domestic chores and tradecrafts, selling your wares both locally and far afield. All of these work as you might expect: gather materials, craft tools and upgrades, earn money, rinse and repeat. It’s a familiar but relaxing loop and it works well.

If puttering around the homestead isn’t your thing, you can explore the very large open world’s six zones and questing. You’ll meet a pretty wide range of NPCs and many of them have tasks of one sort or another. They’re not all basic kill-or-fetch assignments, either. There’s a ton of loot to discover, and the game’s day/night cycle and dynamic weather add a lot of texture and life to the world.

Mirthwood’s tone, NPCs and dialogue are a mixture of the serious and cheekily humorous, with a few moderately suggestive situations tossed in for spice. Like the Sims, you can develop a range of relationships with NPCs, including raising a family. There’s a lot of creative potential to this aspect of Mirthwood. Combine the social and crafting mechanics and you have a very satisfying cozy game. It’s hard to avoid the story quests and combat entirely, however.

Picture Perfect

It’s hard not to appreciate Mirthwood’s hand-drawn, picture book art style. There are too many games in this genre with a pixel art aesthetic, so I enjoyed Mirthwood’s approach and detail. The world has a medieval character, and sometimes reminded me of illuminated manuscripts come to life. The colors are muted and there is a good deal of darkness — both literally and metaphorically — in the environment.

Mirthwood’s sound design is a bit disappointing. Aside from the voice over narrator acting a bit like a dungeon master, there’s no voiced dialogue. The environmental sounds and combat effects are underwhelming and although it’s lovely, the game’s music is mixed in the distant background.

Mirthwood was made by a very small team and there were a fair number of bugs at launch, most of which have been addressed or will be soon. There are a decent number of ways to dial in the experience in terms of accessibility and graphics, though I’m not sure how much of a difference playing the game on Ultra settings makes.

Cozy Up

I kind of wish that Mirthwood’s combat was either way better or entirely optional. Alas, it is neither. Aside from that, though, Mirthwood is an entertaining and engaging mashup of cozy farming and RPG adventuring. It’s easy to spend a lot of relaxing time puttering around, chatting up the townsfolk or combing the world for treasure.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***