This review contains spoilers
I played this after all of the patches were released. Apparently there are significant quality of life updates in those patches.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.