DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I went in expecting expecting a top-down metroidvania, but I got a side-scrolling metroidvania instead. That is my fault, though, as I mistook this game for Crypt Custodian, which is this developer's upcoming project.

I find this game's upgrade system very interesting. Every time you find an upgrade point hidden somewhere in the overworld you get to choose between three possible upgrades. This makes every secret equally as important and valuable, be it in the begining of the game or close to the end. The only problem I find with this system is that the pool of upgrades does not match the amount of upgrade points in the game. If I understand corrwectly, this is so that you can always prioritize upgrades for the abilities that you commonly use, and ignore the ones you rarely utilize. But going into the game without this knowledge, I assumed I would eventually have to get the upgrades I didn't care about, therefore wasting points I could have spent on base stat upgrades like health.

Additionally to these upgrade points, you can spend currency to buy base stat upgrades (health, sword damage, and arrow damage) which increase in price with each purchase. This makes sense until you realize that the prize also increases when you upgrade these stats with upgrade points, therefore making it more profitable to buy upgrades in the shop first and only THEN getting upgrade points rather than the other way around. These shop upgrades also seem to lack a ceiling. This means that the game always has a place to sink your currency and also allows you to farm currency in order to get stronger in case you are struggling against a boss. This would make for a great accesibility option, but it should be advertised as such, because in my case I bought these upgrades without thinking much about it and, despite playing in hard, I still ended up demolishing through bosses before they could even change into their second phase. This made later fights a bit of a disappointment. I could have refrained from attacking in order to experience the fights correctly, but I believe it shouldn't be on the player to balance their own experience.

Currency can also be used to buy a couple upgrades for your map, like markers. But once you buy all three of them (which are quite cheap) money can only be used on stats. The only other upgrades you can buy are for your airship, but these take no currency and instead use macguffins, so they end up working just as metroidvania gating mechanics.

The upgrades your character gets generally improve your movement, which might be this game's greatest asset. You also get two different types of arrows which are needed to get through certain sections. They are, however, very cumbersome to use and quite useless during combat. I see this as a missed opportunity since the airship upgrades are definitely necessary during bossfights and they make for great attack patterns.

Most bossfights had interesting attacks and having healthbars is appreciated. Minor enemies, though, felt just like annoyances during exploration. The world was well designed with secret paths abound, though the puzzles were a bit lacking. Having islands connect together creating new paths where there were only dead-ends made for a great "explore-get upgrade-connect island-more to explore" loop, particularly during the third and fourth islands.

The story was mediocre, though there might be more lore than what I managed to gleam; but the characters, on the other hand, were amazing. Each of them filled with personality, backstory and character arcs. A smile came to my face every time one of them showed up. I never manged to unpetrify that one character, I don't know what I missed, but I still feel bad about it.

Overall, despite my complaints I enjoyed this game quite a bit. I recommend it to all metroidvania fans, just go in with two things in mind: Try to keep your shop upgrades to a minimum in order to not have a completely unbalanced experience; and when getting upgrade points, always prioritize the ones you care about and ignore the ones you won't use.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

NOTE: I got this game free on Epic so price is not a factor.

I went in expecting some sort of escape room game. I got a point and click diorama solving game that is more akin to puzzle boxes.

The puzzles are never too hard, more like a sequence of finding the next available item and where to use it with the occasional minigame to change the pace. Nonetheless, it was satisfying to see the dioramas unfold and open up more and more crevices with items to use elsewhere.

I did enjoy having to find collectibles "hidden" in each level. They were generally in very visible places, but they were sometimes cleverly hidden and I had to replay a couple of levels to find them. It's worth noting that you can find a collectible and quit the level and it will be saved without having to re-do all the rest, that is very much appreciated. There are 3 collectibles in each level: a blue and red gem, all of which are needed to unlock the final two level for the order and chaos endings respectively; and a scroll with some text.

The scrolls seem to be trying to tell some sort of story, but they are such short pieces of text separated by a whole level that it was hard for me to follow what they were saying. But you do get to choose the ending, so it might be something important like the fate of the world, I'm unsure.

Overall, It's an ok, short and easy puzzle box-like game. Nothing extraordinary, but a good time killer.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

NOTE: This review reflects only my playtime on a new farm in the newest 1.6 update. My true cummulative playtime is currently about 500 hours.

Despite loving all the time I spent playing this game, I was not planning on playing any more Stardew Valley even with the 1.6 update on the horizon, but after having a quick look at the big change log with loads of new content (among which were new achievements) I figured it was actually time to do a playthrough in which I actually manage to reach perfection.

I, therefore, went in with high expectations for all the new things this update would bring and, although they all work together to improve on the base game experience, nothing stands out as big or as important as 1.5 felt. They all feel like minor quality of life features scattered throughout the progression.

The bulk of the new content comes in the form of "Masteries" which are basically a final level for each of the five skills that can only be unlocked by gathering tons of experience from any source after having reached max level. I say "tons of xp" but you get so much of it by doing literally anything that it doesn't take that long to achieve. It literally took me longer to get my foraging level from 7 to 10 to unlock masteries in the first place than it took me to get the experience needed to have all masteries. The rewards vary from good to mediocre, but none stand out as amazing. I feel like some of the items normally unlocked and bought in Qi's Wallnut Room would fit better as mastery rewards, but I also understand not wanting to change the content from previous updates.

I, personally, do highly enjoy the new festivals. Both fishing mini-festivals are cool in concept and require strategy to reach their golas effectively, however I feel they are lacking in useful and worthwhile rewards. The desert festival, on the other hand, is actually very good. Having multiple quests that test different skills and reward you with a currency that you can spend on the items of your choice instead of random rewards feels very good. (I might be a bit biased as I just so happened to get the last artifact I was having trouble getting by having Vincent show up in one of the vendor booths on the third day of the festival selling me the Skeletal Hand I so desperately needed.) And most of all I loved that Year 2 had different layouts and dialogues for all festivals (along with new dialogues after quests, events, bouquets, marriage, etc.) made everything feel fresh and townpeople more alive and less robotic and repetitive. Made me wish There were even more layouts for years 3 and 4, but I also understand that the first two years are what is considered the main story.

Regarding things that weren't from the update but it was my first time doing them: I married Sam, so that was a blast; I got as many events as I could and I actually read all of them instead of skipping the ones for NPCs I didn't care about; I finally beat Fector's Challenge (although I had to resort to the save-scummy method); I played and beat the new and improved version of Junimo Kart and I loved it, I don't know why it gets so much hate; I found all Golden Wallnuts and it's still my favorite part of 1.5, they feel very much like TLoZ:BotW Koroks; I did many Qi Quests, Special Requests and Help Wanted Quests, so I always had some goal or another I was working towards; I managed to use Farm Warp Totems more effectively than ever before; I built the Farm Obelisks for the first time in my life and didn't use them even once, I'm simply not used to them; and last, but not least in the slightest, I farmed the money to buy the Golden Clock.

Either my money farming set-up was very inefficient or I'm stupid, but I just do not understand why the Clock is so goddamn expensive. It was taking so long to get the money and I was long done with any other non-repetitive task that I simply gave up playing through each day and started sleeping through them. And even like that it took seasons for me to get to 10 million gold. Had I actually played through all that, my playtime would have been shot up to 200 hours easily. I think it's an unreasonable amount of gold and not worth at all other than perfection and it should be removed or at the very least its price should be significantly lowered.

With that rant out of the way, I finally achived perfection, reached the summit, watched the short cutscene and then came the credits... Wait, what?! This game has credits scene after you reach perfection? How did I not know about this? And why was Cow (White) included but not Cow (Brown)? That just seems unfair. Anyway, that was a nice surprise I did not expect at all and it really made everything worth it. I can now say that I am done with Stardew Valley once and for all. (or until I decide to do a run with remixed bundles enabled, if I ever get around to it)

Overall, what can be said about a game like Stardew Valley that hasn't been said before? It's good, great even. It's the epitome of farming simulator games. It's so good it's capable of hooking in players who are not normally fans of the genre. Highly recommend it to everyone with no caveats.