[European Portuguese - Nintendo Switch - Dated 08/07/2020]

"Seja a colher uma mão cheia de tomates, cortejar um interesse romântico ou participar num dos vários eventos da cidade, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town é um excelente jogo que faz jus a um adorado por todo o mundo. É uma fórmula simples e viciante que prende o jogador durante horas a fio a todos os pormenores que sacodem uma eventual monotonia e repetição. A vida em Mineral Town é divertida, encantadora e uma recomendação que se faz sem hesitar, tanto para fãs de longa data como para novos interessados."

See more @ https://www.starbit.pt/2020/07/08/story-of-seasons-friends-of-mineral-town-analise/

I honestly can't tell if I'm judging this game too early and harshly, or if it really is as simplistic and dull as it seems. I've spent at least ten hours on it, but there just doesn't seem to be much game there. You have a tiny farm that's really effectively only a crops field, as well as a couple of extra screens that are pretty boring, and all you do is boring or poorly balanced. Watering crops costs way, way too much stamina, doing a daily visit to the town to talk to everyone takes way too long and everyone has way too few lines (but must be done for relationship-growing), your worker elves are really slow, crops take forever to grow which leaves you broke and with little to do most days until it's crop time and you get a bunch of money at once. Fishing is too passive and slow. The dungeon is super boring and samey and they have to be kidding with that trophy for reaching floor 100. Worst of all is I think cooking utensils are unlocked at random, or maybe I bought the stove too early, because I can't cook anything because the store won't sell me a knife, but it did randomly sell me a pot so now I guess I can boil things. I don't know, I could go on, but really, I think more or less everything here more or less sucks. I guess because these games are 15+ years old, but this is a remake and this game just doesn't cut it in today's market. The other PS4 one is getting a shot too, but I'm really hoping that it's a major improvement on this overly simplistic game.

Harvest Moon on PS1 was a cornerstone of my childhood, so I was eager to play this remake. Honestly, it did a great job modernizing the game and trimming some unnecessary elements. Sometimes, I find the animals even cuter. Nearly all the changes were for the better, except for not receiving a puppy at the start like in the original. While this one might not carry the same emotional weight, and I've played better games in the genre like Stardew Valley and Coral Island, it was still a nice and enjoyable experience.

first things first: i am far from finished with this game, but i still decided i wanted to write a review for it already.

lets start off with the positive things: this game showed me that i actually really like farming simulations like these. i remember playing harvest moon on ds when i was younger but it didnt stick with me all that much. i am very happy i gave this game a chance and now wanting to get into this franchise a whole lot more. i tried playing stardew valley but it really wasn't for me, as a beginner in these kind of games.
but this one was a lot simpler and beginner friendly, making it easy to fall into this kind of "hole". tutorials are straight to the point and the game being restricted made it actually accessible for me.
now for the negatives.
this game looks pretty ugly. and, as far as i have seen thats not the only sos game having that problem. its sad because i also started playing the first game on the 3ds which already stood out just with its graphics to me.
i see what they were going for, it is kind of just the pokemon pearl remake style with a little less budget. maybe thats just me but the chibistyle is not doing it for me anymore and im pretty sick of it.
also the games characters are absolutely boring. i know that the dating aspects of these games are also a big thing in these games but after being interested in one person and wanting to get to know them more, just to only ever get the same textbox when talking to them EVERY.SINGLE.DAY... it scares me off.
ive read into it a little and know about the gift giving and heart events, etc.
but i still think this remake would have done a lot better if the characters had some or maybe even a lot more dialogue.

but for starters this is quite nice. c:

Sometimes it’s hard to grade a remake. See, the thing with Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is that Harvest Moon is so fucking good. It feels so good to see the money coming in; to sheer a sheep, to collect an egg from a coop, to brush a horse, to harvest crops. Seeing a grey heart turn to purple gives me more serotonin response than most entire games do. It is really impressive to create a gameplay loop full of monotonous tasks that build to a big enough prize to keep me going and going and going. Because of that, it is undeniable: I think Harvest Moon is fucking good. However, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town kind of stinks.

Now, when judging a remake it’s kind of hard, so let me set some parameters: okay, there’s really, mainly, only one. Has the team behind the remake made the quintessential way to play this game? With a remake, especially one that keeps so true to the gameplay of its origin as much as this game has, you can really only judge on presentation and added content. Now, I can't talk of all the additions to this title except for gay marriage, which legitimately accounts for an entire star of my rating. Mainly so because I honestly can see myself going to past Harvest Moon titles that have romancing only to disinterested in the romance portion of the game because there's no lesbians!

Okay, now presentation. While gay marriage accounts for an entire star being added to the rating, this game's presentation accounts for the missing two stars. The worst thing you can do is make an ugly Harvest Moon game, and from what I’ve seen of Marvelous’ modern work, this installment is far from its worst, but this art style isn’t doing the job for me. It’s that kind of smoothed-over 3D art that just squeezes all the charm out of designs that maybe would be cuter with less polygons, lol. I will say, though, the 2D watercolor-style portraits are really charming. Another big thing is sound design and response; something I can’t really put my finger on, but this is lacking a lot of polish, even disregarding plenty of small glitches that may or may not mostly revolve around navigating tight spaces while nearby an adult horse.

When I got a Playstation Vita, it was mainly in hopes to play, for cheap, all of the Playstation-exclusive JRPGs that had stayed away from Nintendo and Xbox. I played a lot of classics for the first time on that beautiful handheld that had such a thankless job. One of those classics was Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. I played a lot of it just willy-nilly, and the thing about this series is that it is not friendly to casual players (or teens with no sense of a series’ particular vibes). You better have a notebook, ready, motherfucker, and even with a walkthrough at the ready telling me what to give Ann everyday to get her to like me, I just did not have the discipline to live a successful farm life.

So, even though I thought this game, as a remake of one of the quintessential Harvest Moon titles, was just average, it still was such a joy to be able to tackle this as an adult and really develop the fuck out of an anime farm. I was racking up the coin, raising animals that loved me back, and I got freaking gay married, whores!!! It wouldn’t be the first time I sunk a bunch of hours (I had one day where I did 10 hours straight) into a fun game with rough presentation (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), but I wanted to clear this from my backlog, since I’ve had this for nearly two years lol, before getting into older installments that I hear good things about on here. I went through two full years in this game, and I definitely am excited to get into this series a lot more and see what's out there in its past installments after playing this one.

I never had a GBA growing up. I tried playing the GBA More Friends of Mineral Town emulated a long time ago, but found it to be anything but enjoyable. the GBA being limited to so few buttons, the very small amount of backpack space, and so on made it really painful to play. I know there's the basket item, but that's honestly just another nuisance. my first Harvest Moon experience was Another Wonderful Life, which has no inventory limit, and way more buttons to work with. hearing that Friends of Mineral Town was so good, I totally didn't get it, honestly. it was cute, but... eh.

after hearing about how this remake improved things, I decided to just buy it. and playing it, it finally... kind of clicked. kind of. this game still isn't that great. but it's not actually bad, either. just, compared to others old and new, it's... dare I say... mid. sorry! I married Huang and played until some time after my character had the baby. so, I did put a lot of time into it. and I'm sure I'll play it again someday, it's a chill time. can't hate that.

this game has a lot of content that requires putting in a lot of time and effort. but it's not even anything really worth having. there's the town villa which requires 10 million G, there's the mountain cottage which requires you to play the game for 50 in-game years... there's also a beach cottage, but that one only requires giving the harvest goddess 150 presents. won't take you as long as those other two things, anyway.
anyway, then there's all the stuff in the mines. there's a lot of stuff in the mines. both mines. you can unlock elevators for these mines, but it does require giving the harvest goddess 100 gifts. and even then, it only takes you to certain levels. so unless you've made it to at least floor 50 in either mine, it's not going to be of any use. so that really sucks tbh. there's lots of stuff in the mines. none of it is really needed. but it's there!

basic gameplay is like... well, pretty much any other farming sim. as this is a remake, there's a lot of QoL here compared to the original, but it's just fixing problems of the original. the really nice thing about this game, for a Harvest Moon title, is you can marry whoever you wish regardless of the player character gender you choose. it's a shame I am... personally not a fan of most of them. wasn't in the original, either. I do like the newly added ones, Jennifer and Brandon... especially Jennifer. Huang is cute and great once you marry him, but that's about it.
the other special candidates besides Huang require ridiculous amounts of time and effort to make it happen. I like, half get it... and half don't. even worse, they don't live at your house or anything. I don't get it, really. even as a "just for the heck of it" thing, for all the effort, it's a shame. I know that is just how the original games had it but I think that makes it even worse somehow. but that's just what I think, soooooooo

the graphics... well, they work. nothing special. some of the chibi models look terrible. the redesigns of characters is something I'm mixed on. some of them are very cute. some of them are... uhhhhhhh.(Duke and Harris.......) I'm not sure why some of them were changed as much as they were, namely Jeff. I dunno, just feels weird. music is ok. as with many remasters/remakes, the vibes of the new music are not the same. but in this instance, it's closer than what other games manage.

overall, underwhelming, but not an actually bad experience.

The original Back to Nature is by all means one of the greatest games I have ever played. I love that game dearly. This is a decent attempt at recreating that feeling but it feels lacking. There's a charm that is lost with a lot of the modern touch ups. Harvest Moon always felt at it's best with the clunk. Something about fighting the system to grow your farm added to the experience. The important atmosphere is still there. The characters still breathe the same air of quality. It's just not quite the same.

A pretty rudimentary entry but it's an incredibly faithful remake as far as I know. Character portraits are sweet and expressive, there probably won't be a townsfolk you don't vibe with. Being able to enlist sprites as your laborers instead of waiting until your child is just old enough to walk is a nice addition. Time flies in this game so it'll take half the time to get to noteworthy events than you'd expect. This won't blow your balls off or anything but it's still charming and cute and very cathartic.