This is the first story of seasons/harvest moon game I ever played and I must say it didn’t give me the best impression. If you have played stardew valley or animal crossing you’ll be right at home. Sadly, this entry in the long running franchise feels half-baked and has some truly questionable decisions that make the whole experience that more painful.
It’s fun up until the point where you fully renovate the town, then it becomes a mind-numbing grind. I love getting up in the morning, talking to my soulmate, checking up on crops, collecting and refiling makers, taking care of animals, possibly harvesting mushrooms or honey, occasionally getting fruits from the trees. Then in my spare time either fishing, mining, cutting, chopping and talking to the people. Ultimately hitting the hay and calling it a day. Rinse and repeat.
Speaking of people, every once in a while there are special events that you can attend, the execution is terrible tho, you’re only forced to watch what’s happening for the most part. One thing that the game is supposed to do better than everybody’s favorite stardew valley is the story - it’s better sure but not a whole lot, many of the characters are simply too shallow and forgettable.
The visuals are also an improvement, obviously, even though pixel graphics have their own charm. And overall, the game does a good job at explaining what you should do next unlike stardew which can be helpful for beginners in this genre. That’s where my praise ends. I already touched on the grindy nature, even playing the game on sapling difficulty, I just hit 50 hours and I still haven’t fully maxed out all the skills, it’s not only skills, there are other things that take ages to gather like the forsaken orichalcum - you see, instead of putting the ore more frequently in the lower levels of the mine it makes almost impossible to spawn anyway, so the best way to get it is by paying a visit to the stonebakery every few days and mining it from there, incredibly tedious process.
Besides that, the makers to process the ores and other things take up so much space on the farm, why do they have to be so big, and to be efficient you need as many of them as possible, same goes for chests. Not like you got a ton of options to furnish your farm and house with, I expected the game to have plenty of decorations but that’s not the case at all, the selection is quite abysmal and limited. On top of that, there are some clothing items but most of them are boring and look similar.
The game has sprites too, I assume a staple of the franchise, they provide you with generally useless resources, 2 sloppy mini-games and a couple of helpful maps to make your suffering more bearable.
I could go into more detail and rant for days, however, I’m going to stop it here, after all there are other reviews. Since it’s my first time in the story of seasons universe I’ll be kind and give the game a positive review but it’s a mixed bag to say the least - 5/10
