So, the game is adorable and fun! It was all I had the energy for during some really rough days lately. I've found a bug or two but nothing game breaking or frustration causing. If anything, the few bugs I've found are hilarious- placed two crop spots on each other, accidentally dug a crop spot in a cuttable tree when I had the hoe and not the axe out. Had many laughs as I grew a plant in mid-air. 10/10 best bugs. I love the plant variety and I like that it DOESN'T overly complicate the potion process. There are 6 plant "types" and between 4 and 11 individual plants in each. I've enjoyed picking out a favored plant to minimize inventory clutter, but I adore the different cute flowers! I have noted spring/summer plants seem to grow fine in fall/winter, but I'm not sure if this is a bug or if that's just in relation to when the wild plants spawn.
I DO have a few critical critiques for quality of life upgrades.
1: Tool upgrades feel meh at best right now. As a looooong time player of farming sims I can admit to being a little spoiled, but how do you not increase area of effect of an upgraded hoe? How do you not decrease the number of hits it takes to down a tree with an axe? At the very least decrease the stamina drain! But JUST durability and NOT by a significant margin- MEH.
2: They HAVE to do something about stamina. There is currently NO way to upgrade it and paired with the fact upgraded tools only improve durability you can stagnate fast. Right now I feel a player can have 33 active plants before they need to eat or drink an energy potion- ASSUMING they don't sprint at all or farm anything else. As an energy potion is currently made with one of the RAREST PLANTS IN THE GAME, this can completely halt your farm. And even stamina objects get old: "Plant 33 plants, shove 9 pineapples in my gob, plant 33 MORE plants, shove 9 more pineapples in my gob," I suppose the alternative would be to keep tilled spots tilled for more than one use, but even that would have a hard limit of plants at later levels as harvesting burns stamina as well.
3: I feel the seed shop SHOULD be hard set for the first day- as it's currently possible to have 0 potions to sell during your first week if you're unlucky with wild plant spawns. Each time I've started a new game I get warriors, so I feel 2 food plant seeds and 5 health plant seeds would be a strong start. Alternatively a box with those as starter seeds in your stater shop (much like most Farming RPGs give you a few seeds to get going) could offset garbage luck with wild plant RNG.
Right now seeds are a random drop from wild plants and you can go through a whole season and NEVER get a way to regain stamina and could go DAYS without selling your first potion. As I DID because I couldn't find a single health plant and kept unlocking explorer potions. My RNG was so bad I didn't even know food plants DROPPED seeds! As previously mentioned- this can leave you without stamina and restricts your farm completely. This COULD be solved with suggestion 1, or 2- though you could still end up straight out of luck with RNG like I am,
4 Time management could use some tweaking: such as the clock could be slower and stopping time while in menus. It takes me until 16:00 to just set my garden, sometimes more, I can spend literal hours trying to find the right potion to craft in menus or find the right item in a box.
There are 24 total land plots you can buy in game. I'm using 4 for my garden. I could expand so much more but right now it's impossible- and even if all the suggestions were adopted I can't imagine having the time to use all the space for planting. I don't think it's used for decor as the game presently lacks the sort of outdoor decor that would appeal to the "Customize your garden" folks.
5: SORT BUTTON. For the love of ADHD, I need to SORT the potions I am attempting to craft in the cauldron- as there is no way in this world or any other that I'll remember 31 different recipes. It'd be AMAZING to have a sort either by ingredient type, cost, or by the "used by character type" section.
6: Badly in need of a "quick stack" or "add 10" buttons for stocking shelves or unloading in storage boxes. Having to take the potion OFF the shelf and then re-add it one at a time because the "add all" is a speed-based trigger is a pain. in. the. petunia. Additionally, split stack is always in half, and it'd be much better for everyone if they could choose how many to separate.
7: Editing for added ideas: I'd love a scythe for harvesting multiple plants and sprinklers for watering plants on sunny days so I'm not just frantically trying to harvest, till, re-plant, and then water a whole set of 63 plants daily. All one at a time, except for watering.
I'm really glad with how far the game has come since I first got it, and I like it just as is! But it would benefit from some quality polish!
