Very like an axe, sickle, or hoe, nostalgia is a robust software. In Story of Seasons: A Great Life, it is what leads your farmer to return to Forgotten Valley in hopes of making a life just like the idyllic one led by their dad and mom. It is also what led me–clad in my best, rose-tinted glasses–to revisit A Great Life with its current remake. As I downloaded this new model of a sport I as soon as sunk a number of hours into for my Nintendo Change, I reminisced concerning the first time I performed the sport 20 years ago–the really feel of my grandparents’ itchy carpet, the satisfying “click on” of my purple GameCube closing earlier than it kicked right into a delicate whir… It was by no means my favourite Harvest Moon game–that spot was reserved for Again to Nature–but it was one which I discovered distinctive and pleasant.
In some methods, I additionally really feel that approach about its 2023 remake. Story of Seasons: A Great Life is a really totally different sort of farming simulator in that it is one which focuses extra on relationships, household, and legacy than farm work. It is a idea I can get behind, and A Great Life’s emphasis on streamlining gameplay and eliminating tedium is a breath of contemporary air. Nonetheless, regardless of social-sim dynamics being on the forefront of A Great Life, participant interactions and the group itself really feel shallow. Though the character creation course of is perhaps extra concerned than ever, few NPCs are memorable, dialogue is scarce, and the sport’s idyllic setting turns eerie rapidly because of the city’s vacant ambiance. But if I issue out this less-than-wonderful content material, not all that a lot is left, making A Great Life really feel dated and empty–especially when in comparison with different video games within the now-highly saturated farming sport style.
Like most farming sims, A Great Life begins with a letter–only this time it is despatched from your character moderately than to you. After rising bored with life within the metropolis, your character pens a letter to your dad and mom’ former good friend, Takakura, informing him of your intention to return to Forgotten Valley and take over your dad and mom’ previous farm. Upon your arrival, Takakura gives your farmer a cow, an honest sum of cash, and a tutorial that fantastically walks the superb line between overbearing and uninformative, earlier than supplying you with whole management over your character and farm.
This tutorial–and how simple these notes are to entry in any respect times–comes in clutch on account of how dramatically totally different A Great Life is from different farming sims. Whereas video games like Stardew Valley and the overwhelming majority of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons video games offer you a big, dilapidated subject, your A Great Life farm begins in a neat and tidy state with solely two small plots of land–one with poor soil high quality and one with common high quality, an element which continuously comes into play. The majority of your farm is a fenced-off subject your livestock can graze upon, which rapidly informs you that animal husbandry needs to be your focus and is the most important money-maker; it is a dramatically totally different strategy to farming sims, which typically depend on crops to get your money flowing. In the end, these qualities really make A Great Life an excellent farming sim for style newcomers to get into–there’s much less to handle, much less to do, and rather a lot much less to fret about.
Nonetheless, for these extra acquainted with the style that is solely the start of the lengthy listing of variations. For instance, you can not ship any objects you forage or collect in A Great Life–that bin is reserved solely for objects you harvest. As a substitute, it’s essential to wait till the touring salesman Van involves city or arrange your personal stall within the middle of city, in hopes that your wandering neighbors will see your sales space and slowly enterprise over. Moreover, a yr in A Great Life is just 40 days lengthy, with every season representing 10 of these days and containing one vacation. This implies time goes by rapidly and duties that you’d typically do daily–such as watering your crops and milking your cow–can and ought to be carried out twice a day on this sport. This additionally offers the sport the room it must span a number of years, giving gamers the fantastic alternative to look at their group change and their future youngster develop.
And whereas there are a handful of issues you may improve in your farm and in your stock, there’s zero useful resource amassing and attaining these upgrades does not really feel like a lot of a spotlight. In actual fact, moderately than having any type of farming or monetary targets, the sport emphasizes that it’s essential to get married in your first yr of residing in Forgotten Valley–or else the sport will finish.
That is the place you begin to expertise some friction. Whereas a streamlined farm and shortened calendar sounds nice in concept, its execution in A Great Life leaves rather a lot to be desired. Exterior of tending to your farm and choosing random herbs and flowers, there are primarily 5 issues you are able to do: Go to the town, go to the Harvest Sprites to seize a recipe, socialize together with your neighbors, mine, and fish. That seems like an honest quantity, proper? This is the issue: Every one among these actions is extremely shallow and boring. To go to the town, you go to the outskirts of city, point out that you’re prepared to spend six hours visiting the town, after which the display screen goes black and you come back six hours later. I’m nonetheless undecided if it really does something.
Visiting the Harvest Sprites entails consuming a mushroom, getting into their dwelling, after which speaking to one among them to get a recipe. Should you strive speaking to the opposite two, they’re going to simply repeat that they do not have a recipe for you at the moment. Mining consists of getting into a tiny dig site–probably made up of 15 squares–being handed a shovel, and repeatedly digging on the similar squares in an try to seek out fossils. And fishing sees you forged your line, wait on your bobber to sink, after which maintain down a button. That’s it.
Nonetheless, socialization is perhaps probably the most irritating half. Seeing as I’m instructed emphatically and continuously that I must marry somebody as a way to stay in Forgotten Valley, which in fact feels unusual in itself, attending to know somebody is clearly an enormous precedence. However there are just a few issues with this: The parents you may marry are largely stationary and uninteresting, coronary heart occasions are transient and never notably gripping, and items and dialogue really feel impersonal. Whereas I’m delighted developer Marvelous added same-sex marriage to the sport, it does not make up for the truth that the candidates aren’t probably the most full of life group of individuals. I gravitated in the direction of Matthew and Molly in my playthrough, as they exuded probably the most persona, however everybody else felt kind of one-note. Whereas I in the end married Matthew, the romance did not really feel participating or earned. Although I loved Matthew’s Darcy-esque persona, it did not really feel as if we acquired to know each other, bonded, and fell in love. And perhaps I am simply sappy, however that is a sense I am fairly keen on in any video games with a romance factor and would have most popular to expertise as a substitute of the pressured state of affairs we’re provided.
Even with reference to friendship, the city is simply… vacant. It is a phrase I preserve coming again to, however one which aptly describes Forgotten Valley, a spot the place issues like a common retailer, library, faculty, museum–any type of full of life and purposeful constructing, really–don’t exist. Dialogue is usually recycled, the townsfolk seldom work together with one another, and the city is extra full of unusual scientists than individuals who really feel like a part of a tight-knit group. Whereas there’s this core of sentimentality right here, you need to look extraordinarily laborious to see it–and that in the end makes for a very isolating expertise. Oh, you can even full merchandise requests on your neighbors, however it occurs so occasionally, it is one thing I am solely simply now remembering exists. To be fairly sincere, there have been a number of days I went to mattress earlier than the solar had even set–there was nothing to do, nobody to see, and standing by a river hitting a button to reel in a fish each 20 seconds simply did not sound tremendous interesting.
Some issues break up the monotony–holidays, occasions together with your youngster, and watching them develop up (which might be the best function and makes the short calendar value it) are good. The sport’s graphics and music are beautiful sufficient, gameplay is considerably smoother than it was within the unique, and its streamlined strategy to farming and quality-of-life updates, equivalent to including NPC icons to your map so you do not have to look very laborious to seek out individuals, are good options. Sadly, the complete package deal is simply not sufficient.
Again in 2003, A Great Life provided a refreshing and mawkish tackle the farming sim style. Nonetheless, even then, it felt a bit empty when in comparison with what many different simulation video games have been doing. Whereas Marvelous added better inclusivity, readability, and extra occasions and dialogue, it does not preserve this 2023 remake from feeling empty and caught prior to now.