STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town is a Nintendo Switch handheld game that was lazily ported to Steam. It's an unabashed, lazy ripoff of Stardew Valley (Copyright ConcernedApe, 2016). Many lazy "amateur" developers don't pay attention to morality, and get so lazy they just steal the ideas of actual, real game developers without credit, such as the "developer" here has done.
Putting aside the unethical intellectual bankruptcy of stealing someone else's game concept for profit, this is also breaking that unwritten law of stealing other people's game ideas... you should at least try to do better than the game you're ripping off. STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town is considerably worse than Stardew Valley, despite marginally better graphics (it's hard to do worse than pixelcrap).
But what made Stardew Valley shine (as much as pixelcrap can) was the writing, characterization and charm of the narrative that underpinned the experience. That's almost completely absent here with bland, forgettable characters, dry and unengaging narrative, and pathetically boring gameplay loops that you have to grind to get anywhere (and why would you want to?).
Of course, being a bad game is just one thing... wait until you see the absolutely insane price tag on this.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.
The game features low-polygon "retro" assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capability to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers. Should you buy this game? Is it among the best the Steam catalogue has to offer?
STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town has the greedy, completely insane cash grab price of FOURTY UNITED STATES DOLLARS, full AAA pricing. That makes this a cash grab, trying to get paid AAA bucks for a crappy Nintendo Switch game, heck, this more of a glorified mobile app. That's insulting.
There's enough defects and quality problems with this game that it's really impossible to recommend to gamers. The price is a slap in the face, ridiculous greed.
Remember what I often say... if you don't agree with what I've said about this game, by all means buy it and play it. My review is just here to inform your buying decision, and if you think I was wrong and you bought the game, then I've done what I really wanted to do... inform your buying decision.
