[h1]Yes, it is grindy.[/h1]
At the time I am writing this review, I’ve only been a little over 10 hours in and already plucking my hair out over why I am so frustrated with this game. Googling “why does Doraemon Story of Seasons feel grindy af?” only leads me to comments saying “you should have known better, this is a HM game, they are made to *last long*” and I think this is where it clicked for me.
“Made to last long”… is that how you make a game last long, though? Maybe 20 years back when memory was scarce, grinding was a way to make a game last long, but today there are endless opportunities.
My main concern is the game’s imbalance.
[b]Friendship[/b]
You want the player to take two to three in-game years to befriend a villager to max (10) hearts? That is fine and there are ways to do that, but don’t make the player run up to the villagers every day, giving them 5 points for a greeting, 25 points for a follow-up talk and 60 points for the present they love best (25 points for a good present, 10 points for any present they don’t hate and -10 points for the one single item they hate; in this HM game, it is quite hard to lose friendship again which shows a little kindness from the devs). 10 hearts require 10,000 points. You do the math.
HM devs, if you want people to connect with the villagers and have them walk up to them and talk with them every day, give them some dialogue! Don’t have them tell me to scoot every day because they are “too busy to talk”, “the weather is so-so” and “the season is blah-blah”. If the devs are at a loss as to what I would like to see instead, go check out the “Rune Factory” series. Every villager has unique dialogue for every single day, there are tons of events making you connect with the villagers. You want to walk up to them every day and talk to them, not to raise some points, but just to see what’s up in the village that day.
[b]Balance[/b]
When you start this game, you will be right where you started for the first 10 hours, there is no sense of progression even if you google stuff and play this with an aim in mind.
[b]Story progression[/b]
The game starts some cutscenes seemingly at random. To trigger most cutscenes you need to increase your friendship level with the villagers, for some to progress you need to collect an item and give it to them later. Some of those items are out of your current season, and even though they are early triggered cutscenes, they already prompt you to put a pin in that (side-)story line. To make matters worse, the game does not keep record of what you were supposed to collect and to whom you are supposed give the item. Your only option is to revisit the cutscene at the mayor’s office, instead of listing it with the other quests. I was initially very confused over the “Quest”s category, until I grinded my way up to a few level 3 friendships. Those ‘friends’ I made, but knew little about, then started giving me generic quests like “give me [item], I give you [another random item]”. I was not able to find out anywhere if fulfilling a quest improves relationships, so unless you like the item they give you (like “butter”), is it worth going through the trouble? There is also a time limit on those quests, while the ones that have no time limit and progress the story are not recorded anywhere.
You mostly run around aimlessly, not knowing your current quest and having new ones triggered at random. It almost seems like the game does not care about that — just focus on farming instead and live each day to the fullest! And I’ve tried doing that.
[b]Farming[/b]
You want to make farming last long without it getting boring or repetitive? The beautiful crop animations whenever you’re watering your crops are a great start! However, for some reason the player character seems to water the crop itself and not the field. With e.g. wheat, which regrows when harvested, you can end up watering a crop 3 times a day: first to make it grow to ripe; after harvesting it, the soil is dry, so you water again; and at the end of each day you can water your crops once more. Even when it rains and you harvest the crop, the field is dry. Which means you’re standing there in the rain, watering your fields.
Devs, there are multiple options to make farming interesting! For starters, offer a more extensive selection of different crops, flowers and trees the player wants to explore. With Stardew Valley, players were profiting off the great modding community that gave us even more crops. Without such a community supporting this game (there is not even one for simple cheats), the devs need to provide those crops themselves.
Another way is to make the crop level system more interesting. In Doraemon Story of Seasons, you add fertiliser to the crop every day, which means you “interact” with your crop 2-4 times a day. Devs, go check out “Rune Factory”. There it is all about the soil beneath the crop which you have to take care of. It’s quite a complex system making it more engaging than having you add fertiliser to a crop every day. In Doraemon, later in the game (autumn) you can apparently unlock a seed maker (8k money, 100 stone, 100 copper, 125 iron, 25 silver), which means you only fertilise one crop till the end, put it in there, get a better seed and then repeat. The system is fine but why does it have to come in so late and be so expensive?
Just like decoration for your farm, even just flooring, is so expensive pushing decoration into the late game experience but why does everything have to be a late game thing? They leave nothing of the cool stuff to the early game experience. There is only talking to villagers, foraging the map, fishing small fish, 3 animals (chicken, sheep, cow) and farming 5 crops to the early game.
I have been playing these types of games from my childhood and kept away from HM since the first one (which I loved as a silly child, even though it was grindy af but weren’t all games grindy back in the day?) so I thought all comments on this game being “too grindy” were just made by people who aren’t into this type of game. I should apologise now, you all were right! You can rejoice for I have paid my price for not having listened to all of you, this game is expensive and I have not gotten the enjoyment out of it I was hoping for, only frustration. Playing a game you are supposed to love brings a special form of frustration: “Is it ME who is wrong?” “I thought I am the target audience, I am supposed to be like all the people in the comment section that say they like this game, why do I *hate* it even more now?!” I am here to tell you, it’s the game, not you. Yes, it is grindy! The game wants to lengthen the game play artificially, and not with actual content. It wants you to talk to villagers for 2-3 years but not deliver the dialogue.
You want to make a long game? Then
[list]
[*]let me have meaningful connections to the villagers,
[*]give me 100 different crops (and not 35 across all seasons),
[*]let me decorate the farm early on,
[*]give me some cool and interesting gadgets right away! Let me go crazy with them. They aren’t game breaking.
[/list]
Let me experiment and build a farm the way I like it without having to grind my way to it. I want fun! With a mindset of “games are a coping mechanism through escapism”, I can have grinding for money “at home”, so let me leave “real life” in [i]real life[/i], and let me have a good time in the game.
I hate to take apart a game like this but they have been making this game series for how long? I don’t see any huge improvements from their very first Harvest Moon game. Do they even play their own games? Maybe they do and they just enjoy it this way, after all there are people who enjoy this game, but that sure isn’t me.
