Coral Island

Erg leuk spel met verassend veel onderdelen. Je bent voorlopig nog wel even bezig!

It's relaxing

A quick review for those who have played farm-life games before, such as Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley. This game is the same skeleton with a lot of gameplay that is exactly the same as what you've seen before, so I just want to touch on the differences that make it my PERSONAL favorite farm-life game. Most of the positives are related to the islanders themselves, which is always a big reason I play these games: + A huge cast of characters, all with an incredibly vast amount of dialogue that make the island feel truly lived in. + Speaking of the dialogue, it's probably my personal favorite in the genre, as it leans more toward real people then heightened archetype characters. It's also vast and a lot of it has to do directly with things you've done or events going on. + A large amount of marriable NPCs that are ALMOST all great. Also a nice spread of age, ethnicity and life-style compared to most of the genre, where every dateable is usually a very young college-age person or an anime trope. Here you have people with full on careers, lives, past relationships, and even past marriages and children. + The "hangout" and "date" system allows for a simple, but charming way to interact more with the NPCs, with a surprisingly large amount of options. + The character portrait art is the best in the genre hands-down. It's a godsend to have one of these games that isn't chibi or anime. Now for some non-NPC positives: + A huge amount of content to explore, you can really live in this world for a long time. I am 70-80 hours in and I just opened up the Mermaid stuff, which is like a whole 'nother segment of the game. Unexpectedly well-done and varied as well. + The game has a nice fast travel system that feels earned, as you unlock the various points by improving the island. You unlock a few key ones pretty quickly, this allowed them to make a BIG island without it ruining the amount you can do in a day. + Time passage is in a real sweet spot for me, unless you go out of control with your crops before you have the necessary watering cans and sprinklers set up, you are almost always left with some time each day to really just hang out with the townies. A big problem these games can sometimes have is feeling very rushed in what should be a cozy experience. + It's nice to have really good looking 3D farm-life game for once. I love some truly nice pixel art, but a lot of the genre's pixel art really isn't that great. It's just nice to see a beautifully realized town in 3D with some nice weather effects. + A truly modern setting that feels unique in a genre that is usually a fantasy-adjacent setting or a cottage core village lost to time. You will see modern homes, shops, and technology in the game, all while still retaining a cozy island lifestyle vibe. This isn't a perfect farm-life game, though: - While the core is strong, there is some slight jankiness in features added later in the game's life, mostly just the slightest little graphical glitch. Nothing game-breaking. - The combat just didn't need to be in the game. It's not obtrusive enough to be annoying, but it's just... nothing. The monster parts you get are only really used in combat-specific crafting recipes, so they don't weave into the greater game loop. The combat itself is just "hit x 3 times". I am sure they just did it to try and make it feel different from the diving and because Stardew did it. - The festival dialogue doesn't change each year, which causes a very weird disconnect in a game where it's ever-evolving dialogue is one of its greatest strengths. The Spring festivals always make it feel like you're the "new person in town" for example. - I personally not a fan of the "tiny machines all over my farm" style of crafting the genre has moved towards. I prefer buildings that house these things ina more believable and immersive way, like Mistria and older Story of Seasons games. At least you can build a shack and shove them in there to keep things looking cozy. - Dissapointing Ranching mechanics. You just buy animals pretty cheaply, pet and gather from them. It's not bad, but it's a bummer to no get to raise small animals into adults and be able to do husbandry. So basically, if you like Farm-life games games, this is one of the best. Where it truly shines over the competition is in its huge cast of well written and truly varied villagers. It's also nice if your eyes need a break from pixels, as its one of the very few 3D farm-life games that truly look great and has an amazing town design. I only don't recommend it if you like combat in your farm-life game. In that case I would go to Fields of Mistria or Rune Factory 3 or 4.

Coral Island is such a great mix of farming, adventure, crafting and life sim. I love anything ocean themed so this hit all of the feel good spots for me. I started playing on console and switched to PC this year. Both are great!

Coral Island ruined farming sims for me. I wanna preface this with; I have been playing Harvest Moon since I was a child and have over 600 hours of Stardew Valley with perfection. I also participated in raising money for Coral Island in backetkit 2021. I spent over 180 amazing hours in just my last save of Coral island (post 1.3 save, yes I ate the game up in 40 days, let's not talk about how many hours per day that is) I COULDN'T EVEN REACH THE END OF CONTENT IN THIS SAVE YET, there is SO much to do and you can pace it however you want. One of the best games in regards to settings customization and accessibility, as well as diversity. The characters have depth, they have flaws and are not perfect, they are 3 dimentional and the amount of information you learn about character A by talking to characters B, C, D, E is refreshing. There is just so much to see and do. There is an infinity of resources, if you like cooking, it is much more fun to cook in Coral island, the cooking mechanic is more interactive than other games in this genre, the recipe list is very long and they are gonna be adding even more. The game rewards you for exploring every house and building with more than just text!! As an avid Stardew Valley player, I don't think I can ever go back, it was worth waiting for Coral Island!!

I kickstarted the game and haven't been able to play a lot but I will say I am very happy that they finally added a manual save feature!! That was something that really kept me from playing so I'm hoping to play more now that that has been added!! I didn't like having to end a day early or completely restart a day if I had to quit out of the game. I hope they add more tattoos in the future and more character customization would be cool!! More eye options would be awesome like cat eyes, hair options or current hairstyle touch ups would be nice, and the ability to better shape your face rather than having to chose from three faces that are also attached to gender, all you can really change is the nose and eye shape when it comes to facial features, technically you can change the lips but the difference in lip options is barely noticable.

Fun :)

Meine Frau und ich spielen das Game sehr gerne zusammen im Coop, 80 Stunden keine Langeweile in Sicht und so wie es aussieht noch lange nicht alles freigeschaltet. Von den Beziehungen die man bei der Vielzahl an NPC´s die man zum teil wohl auch Daten kann haben wir bisher noch keinen auf mehr als 2 von 10 Herzen, ist aber auch nicht unser Focus. Wenn man das Genre mag z.B. Games wie Stardew Valley kann man hier eig. nichts falsch machen! Klare Empfehlung!