this game broke on my wedding day, the cutscene wouldn't load. and I'm still pissed off about that. as a result of such, I do not recommend this game to anyone.
apparently this is fixable if you remove the DLC, but this issue can happen with other parts of the game. heard of it happening with the egg festival, and also happening in the mines. also, what if you wanted to marry a DLC character? bullshit. as a result of such an issue, I say this game kind of sucks ass, and is really not worth your time/money. even if you're prepared for the possibility of a cutscene not loading and being unable to progress, I still don't really recommend it. there are better games you can play that don't have this issue.
aside from that big issue, this game is okay. it leans into being a Stardew Valley-like, but that was unnecessary. as a result, I will bring up SDV a few times here. this game feels like a successor to Story of Seasons 3DS in particular. but that's better and more worth playing.
material management and crafting are obnoxious. while ore needs to be processed into bars in Stardew Valley, it's the single most used material you need to process. less relevant, there's also cloth, but it's much simpler, and processing it is one step, from wool to cloth. in Pioneers of Olive Town, you need to process basically everything. this means you end up with a big accumulation of lots of different stuff. wool gets turned into yarn, which gets turned into cloth. there's 3 types of these things. logs have to be processed into planks. there are like, 4 types of logs. coal needs to be processed for some things. clay has to be processed into bricks. the list goes on. it is very excessive, and with the limited amounts storage boxes hold, everything for crafting ends up taking up a massive amount of space. makers only doing stacks of 10 at a time sucks too. I heard they could only initially do one item at a time. for all you have to manage, that sounds like hell. I'm glad they changed it, but they should have made it a stack of 99 or something instead.
also much like Stardew Valley, there is limited animal food storage in this game. except it manages to be much worse here. you will eventually unlock a second food storage, and with one silo and one silage, you can store about 300 fodder total. the silage converts fodder into Deluxe Fodder. these buildings also take up a fair amount of space. letting animals outside doesn't require anything, they just graze on the nothing that's out there. so fodder only ends up consumed on rainy/stormy/snowy days. a bit less bad, but the annoyances persist.
gameplay is standard fare and perfectly fine outside of the material management and crafting. this game has sprinklers. later you get access to ponds, which are mostly a waste of space. I really don't know what they're exactly useful for. maybe you can fish at them for something special? I don't know. honestly, of all the things, the one I barely did was fish. mining kind of sucks. there are 3 whole separate mines. there didn't need to be. you do have to use all 3 of them to get all of the ores and such. the mines add these moles that become an incredibly annoying obstacle. it starts easy enough, but the biggest mine has so many moles and there's shockwaves to dodge and it just sucks. orichalcum is ridiculously hard to get a hold of, even via using the safe mining area you unlock, it's going to take you a while to get what you need. if you ship one, you can then buy it from the store, but it's expensive. you can also unlock it from the sprite shop, but it's still expensive there too, and getting the coins is a slow process.
I played on seedling mode. seeds were still pretty expensive, some being 400G per bag. and it's one bag per one tilled square. eventually you'll be making so much money that it hardly matters, but in the beginning it's kind of an obstacle. an odd choice overall.
this game felt way too easy to "finish." I was basically done by the end of the first year. the single thing I hadn't done was get married, but I could have if I'd made the decision on who to marry sooner. I also kinda kept forgetting to give Reina gifts...
in terms of how this game looks, I am really not a fan. there's a weird smooth and matte look to everything that I really dislike. and everyone has massive heads. once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I actually thought it was only the player model, honestly, but I see upon looking at screenshots that it extends to most NPCs as well. it's bad.
I know people say the characters in this game have... no character, but personally I disagree. I won't say they're not bland... most of them are, at least the marriage candidates. but I feel like it's standard fare for these games for the most part. eh. and it's not much, but I do appreciate that they can say more than one thing in a day. yes the dialogue gets repetitive, but all games like this have repeated dialogue like that.
there's a lot of interactions between different characters, and that's one of the things I really liked about this game. and those interactions are not solely related to the characters you can marry. and if you don't like it, all the cutscenes are skippable. this is the one aspect that other games should take notes from. it makes the world feel more... like a world. more interaction outside of cutscenes would be great... someday we'll get there.
the sprites are weird little creatures in this game, and I kind of love them. I would, of course, choose the little elf-like sprites any day, but I do love the weird little critters in this game. I wish the spirit lady was better. more interesting? something. there's so little interaction with her, it's a bummer. you cannot befriend her and she has way less dialogue than anyone else. side note, her voice clips are also way louder than anyone else's.
related, I am not so keen on the voice clips. thankfully this game lets you turn them off, the player ones in particular got really grating.
apparently this is fixable if you remove the DLC, but this issue can happen with other parts of the game. heard of it happening with the egg festival, and also happening in the mines. also, what if you wanted to marry a DLC character? bullshit. as a result of such an issue, I say this game kind of sucks ass, and is really not worth your time/money. even if you're prepared for the possibility of a cutscene not loading and being unable to progress, I still don't really recommend it. there are better games you can play that don't have this issue.
aside from that big issue, this game is okay. it leans into being a Stardew Valley-like, but that was unnecessary. as a result, I will bring up SDV a few times here. this game feels like a successor to Story of Seasons 3DS in particular. but that's better and more worth playing.
material management and crafting are obnoxious. while ore needs to be processed into bars in Stardew Valley, it's the single most used material you need to process. less relevant, there's also cloth, but it's much simpler, and processing it is one step, from wool to cloth. in Pioneers of Olive Town, you need to process basically everything. this means you end up with a big accumulation of lots of different stuff. wool gets turned into yarn, which gets turned into cloth. there's 3 types of these things. logs have to be processed into planks. there are like, 4 types of logs. coal needs to be processed for some things. clay has to be processed into bricks. the list goes on. it is very excessive, and with the limited amounts storage boxes hold, everything for crafting ends up taking up a massive amount of space. makers only doing stacks of 10 at a time sucks too. I heard they could only initially do one item at a time. for all you have to manage, that sounds like hell. I'm glad they changed it, but they should have made it a stack of 99 or something instead.
also much like Stardew Valley, there is limited animal food storage in this game. except it manages to be much worse here. you will eventually unlock a second food storage, and with one silo and one silage, you can store about 300 fodder total. the silage converts fodder into Deluxe Fodder. these buildings also take up a fair amount of space. letting animals outside doesn't require anything, they just graze on the nothing that's out there. so fodder only ends up consumed on rainy/stormy/snowy days. a bit less bad, but the annoyances persist.
gameplay is standard fare and perfectly fine outside of the material management and crafting. this game has sprinklers. later you get access to ponds, which are mostly a waste of space. I really don't know what they're exactly useful for. maybe you can fish at them for something special? I don't know. honestly, of all the things, the one I barely did was fish. mining kind of sucks. there are 3 whole separate mines. there didn't need to be. you do have to use all 3 of them to get all of the ores and such. the mines add these moles that become an incredibly annoying obstacle. it starts easy enough, but the biggest mine has so many moles and there's shockwaves to dodge and it just sucks. orichalcum is ridiculously hard to get a hold of, even via using the safe mining area you unlock, it's going to take you a while to get what you need. if you ship one, you can then buy it from the store, but it's expensive. you can also unlock it from the sprite shop, but it's still expensive there too, and getting the coins is a slow process.
I played on seedling mode. seeds were still pretty expensive, some being 400G per bag. and it's one bag per one tilled square. eventually you'll be making so much money that it hardly matters, but in the beginning it's kind of an obstacle. an odd choice overall.
this game felt way too easy to "finish." I was basically done by the end of the first year. the single thing I hadn't done was get married, but I could have if I'd made the decision on who to marry sooner. I also kinda kept forgetting to give Reina gifts...
in terms of how this game looks, I am really not a fan. there's a weird smooth and matte look to everything that I really dislike. and everyone has massive heads. once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I actually thought it was only the player model, honestly, but I see upon looking at screenshots that it extends to most NPCs as well. it's bad.
I know people say the characters in this game have... no character, but personally I disagree. I won't say they're not bland... most of them are, at least the marriage candidates. but I feel like it's standard fare for these games for the most part. eh. and it's not much, but I do appreciate that they can say more than one thing in a day. yes the dialogue gets repetitive, but all games like this have repeated dialogue like that.
there's a lot of interactions between different characters, and that's one of the things I really liked about this game. and those interactions are not solely related to the characters you can marry. and if you don't like it, all the cutscenes are skippable. this is the one aspect that other games should take notes from. it makes the world feel more... like a world. more interaction outside of cutscenes would be great... someday we'll get there.
the sprites are weird little creatures in this game, and I kind of love them. I would, of course, choose the little elf-like sprites any day, but I do love the weird little critters in this game. I wish the spirit lady was better. more interesting? something. there's so little interaction with her, it's a bummer. you cannot befriend her and she has way less dialogue than anyone else. side note, her voice clips are also way louder than anyone else's.
related, I am not so keen on the voice clips. thankfully this game lets you turn them off, the player ones in particular got really grating.