So, we're back in the world of recently released 3DS role playing game Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Season Fairytale once more, and through various circumstances we don't want to go in too much, poor little prince Pietro has ended up stranded, very, VERY far from home (for the rest of the story so far, check out our first diary). Kipping out in an abandoned farm house in the middle of nowhere, we can't help thinking that turnip soup a pair of kind brothers gave us earlier must have been spiked with something, because we awake the following morning and start hearing voices. And the voices are coming from the farmland outside. Not from someone standing on the farmland, you understand. From the land itself. Which is a suspicious shade of purple. So, Pietro did what any normal human being would do when confronted with some talking dirt, and tried to engage it in a conversation.
You see, this new world we find ourselves trapped in - Galariland, if you're interested - is not too unlike Pietro's home of PopoloCrois, in that it is also suffering from a problem with the aforementioned 'black beasts'. Except their problem is a thousand times worse, as the beasties have targetted the arable land, corrupting much of the fertile soil with a darkness that means nothing can grow - and Galariland's inhabitants are starting to struggle. Luckily, there is something you can do to take back control of these strange purple patches, although it is a bit... unique. With the help of your new-found fairy friend Connie, you can shrink down small enough to enter the corrupted land, navigate your way through the maze-like dungeon inside and take down the nefarious black beast lurking inside. Only then will the land be restored to it's former, fertile glory.
Let's get him!
Once you've got rid of your black beast infestation, you can start using your land for what it was intended - planting crops. From carrots to turnips, and from spinach to onions, there's a fair bit to plant, water and tend to, with more exotic seeds found in treasure chests, from quests, or as rewards in battle. The finished products can then be shipped out via the shipping bin to earn money, but, given the sheer amount of enemies we'd been battling up until that point, we had no real need for the cash, and left them languishing in our inventory for a while. As it turned out, this was actually a pretty shrewd idea, as instead of simply going rotten and filling our pockets with a spinachy mush, we discovered they make fab gifts for the folks you're trying to befriend. The lady loves turnips!
Once you reach a certain part of the story, you'll also be able to adopt animals, who'll reward you with produce on a fairly frequent basis. To begin with, you'll only have access to Cuckotti (chickens), but as time goes on you'll be able to expand into Sumoo (cows) and Pacapacas (alpacas) too, who'll pay you back in eggs, milk and fur respectively. So, we wasted no time in adopting ourselves a little Cuckotti called Muffin (auto-named, too - which is handy, seeing as we usually name all our animals after whatever we're eating at the time), and feeding him on the vast quantities of spinach we had saved up - perhaps we should have called him Popeye instead…
That said, there was an initial period of doubt with young Muffin, as the strapping young bird looks more than a little like a conventional cockerel, leaving us thinking we'd accidentally bought ourselves a guy chicken - a worry compounded by the fact that he seemed to take an age to lay anything. And then, when he/she finally decided to grace us with an egg, it turned out we could only flog it for the price of a turnip - and we'd had several turnip harvests in the time it took Muffin to lay one egg.
At least that's one of us, Muffin 'won't-lay-any-eggs' Cuckotti...
Weirdly, Pietro seems to have an almost spiritual connection to his farm. The needy plot of land will send you messages while you're miles away, in a forest and knee deep in enemies, to tell you that some produce is ready to pick, or that your spinach is thirsty, while your animals effectively text you to announce that they've laid an egg, or that they're hungry. Which puts you in a bit of a bind really, because, at least to begin with, there's no easy way to pop back without a long trek and umpteen battles - but fortunately, there are no changing seasons to worry about, and your produce doesn't seem any worse for wear for spending a prolonged time without any water. And once you unlock the handy fairydust, you can sprinkle some anywhere to quick-travel between previously-visited places as much as you like, letting you both farm and dungeon crawl with relative ease. Heck, the plants don't even seem to wait till you're miles away to start nagging - we've had them send you a message to say they're thirsty when we've mid-watering the little blighters before. Seemingly they weren't lying when they named the vegetable a 'Clingy Potato'!
Sigh... A farmer's work is never done...
While Pietro's little farmstead is all fine and dandy, there's always a bigger fish to fry, and those who are particularly ambitious may want to set your sights on something bigger - one of Galariland's four 'Farms of Light'. Blessed by the goddess Lady Galariel herself, these plots of land are the most sought after in the whole kingdom, with soil that's so fertile and magical that they're the only places some of the more pernickety crops will grow. It's not as simple as waltzing through the front gate and announcing you're taking over, though, as opening up these farms is a pretty big undertaking for little Pietro, and getting our muddy mitts on the first of the four, Sylvan Farm, requires a herculean effort. We had to purge the darkness and black beasts from no less than five different plots of land, scattered all across the so-far-unlocked map, then tackle a two story dungeon and a boss fight, followed by a run in with a particularly powerful black beast, before finally unlocking the farm - a challenge that took us several hours. That said, while this may sound like a rather long winded way of doing it, the game also makes explicitly clear what you have to do - and where you'll need to head next.
And what a farm it is. At a quick glance, it might not look that spectacular, but the crops, which as we mentioned earlier, can't be grown in Pietro's own farm, are something else. Each of the four Farms of Light have their own unique selection of vegetables to pick from - frosty napa cabbages for Sylvan, boomerang cucumbers for Terrene and so on, as well as a number of fruit trees too. The best part though is the price they go for when sold; the aforementioned cabbages go for 80 gold, while a single tree broccoli fetches 130, both better than your top turnips or perfect potatoes. Rarer seeds are even better, although appear to take an age to grow, as that Blue Dream Seed we got as a reward still has yet to grow. Liberating these Farms of Light is the key to moving the story forward too, saving Galariland from destruction and hopefully giving Pietro a way back home in the process.
You'll be doing a LOT of this during your time with PopoloCrois!
Stay tuned for our penultimate set of adventures in the world of PopoloCrois next week - where Pietro, now stranded away from his lovely Narcia, gains a bit of a wandering eye, what with all these bashful beauties Galariland has to offer. The swine!
