STORY OF SEASONS: A Wonderful Life

I do NOT recommend this game! [6/10] At first, it feels like your typical cozy farming game. Then you realize just how grindy everything is. You earn very little money, while buildings, tools, and upgrades cost a fortune. It can feel like you're constantly working just to make the smallest amount of progress. But that's just the surface of why I didn't enjoy it. As the years pass, you slowly realize you're trapped in this quiet, lonely village where everyone around you grows old and eventually dies. You spend your life building your farm, starting a family, and raising your child, only for your own character to suddenly pass away at the end, leaving your spouse and child behind. And if that wasn't depressing enough, you wake up afterward in what feels like a limbo version of this village. Everyone is alive again, but they're not really the same people anymore. They're more like echoes or mirrors of who they once were. To me, it felt like my character was trapped there forever with people who only looked familiar. I know a lot of people love this game for its message about the cycle of life, but it just left me feeling empty. I went in expecting a relaxing farming sim and came out with an existential crisis. If you're looking for something emotional and bittersweet, you might appreciate it. If you're looking for a cozy farming game to unwind with, this probably isn't it.

The game is good but i have to give it a thumbs down solely for the body type bs, and the addition of same sex marriage when it was never apart of the original game. It's sad that these body type 3's have infested and ruined an entire genre of games simply due to the popularity of stardew valley

So, ngl friends, this is one of my "braindead" games. The kind of game I zone out while playing while also catching up on my Youtube lineup or my Netflix list because the game loop I've established just allows it. That being said, when I was a kid, the OG version of this game was one of my favorites. I played it over and over again. So, when people say this game is one of the grandfathers of the Life Farming Sim, they mean it. This game is iconic. Its fingerprints are on virtually every Life Farming Sim in existance now. That being said! While I do recommend the game, I also want to stress that, even in a remake, this game is dated. Broad brushstrokes, this is an improvement on the OG in every way. The inclusion of festivals is probably my favorite major change. The world is so much more lived in now thanks to them, but even compared to other giants in the genre like Stardew or Coral Island, they're bare bones. They're cutscenes, no interactions. The remodeling of the characters is great, they all look amazing (even though I will never forgive them for taking away my scruffy greaser Marlin and replacing him with Matthew). However, there are minor changes made that I question why they were included and they all, strangely, revolve around the digsite, which was my favorite part of the OG but which now just seems like a headache. Like, why the hell, WHY THE HELL, can I not dig in a square where Flora and Carter are around? What does the 'X' button (I use an Xbox controller) have to do with the 'A' button? Why do they cancel out each other? Then we get to the issue of sometimes having to dig in one spot upward of 4 TO 5 times to uncover a relic once discovered. And your horse, which is made to cut down on time traveling around the town, will fall asleep randomly for upwards of 15 to 20 seconds sometimes. Multiple times I've just abandoned it and called it later. In a game that literally passes time in seconds, these are ridiculous changes that should be patched out. Tl:dr while I do recommend this game and do consider it a success of a remake, there are small nitpicky changes that over time prove almost too much of an annoyance to ignore. And while the loop is satisfying once you establish it, I'm afraid that modern audiences won't find much to latch their teeth into. Get this game on a discount.

Story of seasons: A wonderful life Welcome to beautifully rendered and ghost-like atmosphere of the [i] forgettable valley! [/i] The bachelor choices will leave much to be desired, and the town folk will be slightly more interesting! But fret not for you can escape for 6 hours to another town where nothing happens except for the time passing. I think you will get where I am going here…but still be curious as to why I have so many hours in this game… Simple, Vinny -_- Pros: 1. Hybrid crops are an innovative idea but Vinny -_- 2. Journey through different phases of life but Vinny-_- 3. Cute baby that grows with you but Vinny-__- 4. Cute farm animals but Vinny -_- Cons: 1. I agree with my child and some of the younger residents about how forgettable the valley is…which does not help with my review of the game. 2. Vinnie has no LIST of previous hybrid combinations; I went ahead and made an excel sheet to keep track but come on, this is supposed to be a casual game. Developers ought to have more forethought on how to make gameplay not tedious. 3. Travelling to different towns is pointless. 4. Using superior ingredients in recipes results in similar selling price. 5. Vinnie combines only 1 crop at a time making the process tedious. 6. Buying from Vesta’s gang requires one crop purchase at a time and then a dialogue that ask you whether you’re finished; dumb mechanic. 7. Inability to deduce the likes of each resident even after talking with their family and friends. 8. No indication of likes, neutral and dislikes of residents as you interact with them and gain friendship points; need to show them random items and then see their response. 9. No guidance on how to improve child’s likes and interest. 10. Why does the fishing program mention taking three days to catch carp and that salmon can be found at the widest part of the stream when THEY DON’T exist in the game. 11. No lady of the forest. 12. What’s the purpose of the different coloured mushrooms scattered throughout? 13. Why is mining so tedious? 14. Why Vinny was not updated in this remastered…. This is my worst Story of Seasons game to date and I recommend not buying it unless you are into a casual game where you can pass time while listening to songs/podcasts which is what I do… Again I feel like I played an unfinished game AGAIN… Score: 4.5/10 MoonlightQ

不推荐任何非牧场物语情怀玩家购买此游戏，这是我玩过最烂的种田游戏，不论是玩法，剧情，角色动作，音效，npc塑造等等都非常糟糕，无法理解为什么重置这款老游戏，也看不到重置的诚意，简直是圈钱之作。

You had me until "non-binary pronoun option". Unfollowed, unwishlisted, and blacklisted. Shame on you....

Politics is what you get before the game starts.

It's kind of crazy how often this game crashes during loading screens. My guess is that it's a Steam compatibility issue, rather than a base game issue. For the most part, I love it because I love AWL and it still captures the heart of AWL. (I only just started Summer 1, Year 1, though so this might be too early to say.) Since it crashes anyway, I decided to download a mod that gave it textures similar to the original AWL since SoS mobile game style graphics felt like a major downgrade. And honestly? It was such a big game changer that it made me glad to buy the steam version of SoSAWL even with the crashes. SoS devs: PLEASE - your player base really doesn't like the cheap, oversaturated, childish mobile game style you've been going for with your games. Can you please consider going for more natural, almost watercolour aesthetics like we see in Back to Nature and A Wonderful Life. Even now, generations later, Back to Nature is far prettier than recent gen SoS games. And A Wonderful Life for Game Cube is probably the most beautiful SoS game there is. Lean into those vibes. And this is just a personal opinion, but I'd also like to see slightly more mature stylisations of characters and character portraits, too. Honestly, I'd be fine with like what we see in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom. (Preferably not with the stubby little legs, though, lol. Hopefully my meaning's understood.) [Update] I'm now at the end of Chapter 4, my character's kid is a teenager. I like how they handled the kids a lot more in this version than in the original version. It's largely the same, but the dialogue feels a lot better and more plentiful? I also love that the child adopts a middle ground skin tone between the spouse and the player-character. Also, Gustafa is amazing. This is my first time playing AWL with bachelors, and he's fantastic. My favourite marriage candidate by far. I kind of wish there was a proper female equivalent goes around playing music or painting in plein air, etc.