I played a few SoS games and have enjoyed them. I never played a HM game in the post Natsume/Marvelous split era so I don't really have much expectations going in.
The graphics are great for a farm sim game and the environments are visually appealing. It's a very colorful game. The designs for animals and crops are great. The NPC designs are okay in comparison. Not bad, but not amazing either.
The music is pretty solid. Fits with the farming tone well even if they are mostly unremarkable outside of the game. Some standout tracks are the contests, the main theme and the special autumn town theme.
I don't expect much story from a farm sim game and WoA is pretty basic as expected. Although, I did enjoy the adventure/save the world type of story it was going for. It definitely did motivate me to progress the story.
The characters are a mixed bag for me. I did liked the romantic interests, the sprites and the Harvest Goddess. Everybody else feels too generic that it gets difficult remembering who is who. Their generic copy/paste designs didn't help either.
WoA's world is massive and a big highlight of the game. There's a lot of exploration and with good variety in design and landscapes. Some areas have interesting verticality that makes it less straightforward to navigate.
Content-wise, there's a ton of things to do. Every NPC gives out sidequests (which are sometimes recycled after a while). There's a vast amount of crops to grow and I really enjoyed the mutation crop aspects.
The amount of animals to tame and bring home is staggering even if their use is pretty limited outside of the mounts.
The festivals are enjoyable and the contents are interesting to participate. It is kind of annoying how festivals and contents are locked out until you complete certain parts of the story and sidequests first. This means that you can be late to experience them if you unlock them too late and have to wait for the following year.
My biggest issue with the game is the community aspect. The idea of multiple towns are interesting (and that each town are actually interesting to see and visit), it does inhibit a strong community presence. You're constantly traveling through different towns so you don't really spend all that much time in a single one. Every day in the town is pretty much identical from the next. This relates to the NPCs as well, but their schedule does have much variance. It's wake up everyday and stand around in a shop or outside until it's night. It does feel like a hollow experience in this aspect.
The romance aspect is decent, but not all that special. I say this as someone who didn't think many of SoS' romance aspect were particularly special either.
Overall, the game was a blast to play. I platinumed it in 140 years and really enjoyed the strong aspects of the game. Fresh off of SoS AWL which felt really lacking in content, WoA is the opposite with a lot of things to do.
The graphics are great for a farm sim game and the environments are visually appealing. It's a very colorful game. The designs for animals and crops are great. The NPC designs are okay in comparison. Not bad, but not amazing either.
The music is pretty solid. Fits with the farming tone well even if they are mostly unremarkable outside of the game. Some standout tracks are the contests, the main theme and the special autumn town theme.
I don't expect much story from a farm sim game and WoA is pretty basic as expected. Although, I did enjoy the adventure/save the world type of story it was going for. It definitely did motivate me to progress the story.
The characters are a mixed bag for me. I did liked the romantic interests, the sprites and the Harvest Goddess. Everybody else feels too generic that it gets difficult remembering who is who. Their generic copy/paste designs didn't help either.
WoA's world is massive and a big highlight of the game. There's a lot of exploration and with good variety in design and landscapes. Some areas have interesting verticality that makes it less straightforward to navigate.
Content-wise, there's a ton of things to do. Every NPC gives out sidequests (which are sometimes recycled after a while). There's a vast amount of crops to grow and I really enjoyed the mutation crop aspects.
The amount of animals to tame and bring home is staggering even if their use is pretty limited outside of the mounts.
The festivals are enjoyable and the contents are interesting to participate. It is kind of annoying how festivals and contents are locked out until you complete certain parts of the story and sidequests first. This means that you can be late to experience them if you unlock them too late and have to wait for the following year.
My biggest issue with the game is the community aspect. The idea of multiple towns are interesting (and that each town are actually interesting to see and visit), it does inhibit a strong community presence. You're constantly traveling through different towns so you don't really spend all that much time in a single one. Every day in the town is pretty much identical from the next. This relates to the NPCs as well, but their schedule does have much variance. It's wake up everyday and stand around in a shop or outside until it's night. It does feel like a hollow experience in this aspect.
The romance aspect is decent, but not all that special. I say this as someone who didn't think many of SoS' romance aspect were particularly special either.
Overall, the game was a blast to play. I platinumed it in 140 years and really enjoyed the strong aspects of the game. Fresh off of SoS AWL which felt really lacking in content, WoA is the opposite with a lot of things to do.