Your grandfather has passed away and left you his dilapidated farm in the rural Mineral Town.
There is no story or ending, nor any goals to work towards aside from the ones you set for yourself. The player is free to decide what activities they engage in every day, limited only by the amount of in-game time and stamina the farmer has to spend on physical labors.
Farming:
The player's farm is of a predefined size and comes with a pre-built farm house, poultry barn, stable, and livestock barn. The buildings cannot be moved and new ones cannot be built, so there is not a lot of farm customization aside from the placement of seasonal crops. Two of the existing barns can be upgraded to hold more animals, but the lack of an automated feeding mechanism just creates more work for the player.
The farm is pre-built, and comes with all the menial toil of a real farm.
Crops are, as you would imagine, the main source of income for Mineral Town's biggest farm. You plant with the seasons; an in-game year has four 30-day months, one for each season. The season effects what crops can be grown or forage can be found for the duration of that month. Most seasons have four types of vegetable (fall is an exception with six) and a hidden seed that is unlocked after (highlight to read) shipping 100 of each crop. The quality and selling price of crops is determined by the player's field level, however, there is no way to improve the field levels without killing at least 100 moles, or paying Gotts a large cash sum in the second year. The 25 by 43 square field also has to be tilled, watered, and harvested entirely by hand - there is no automation. A group of Sprites can be asked to help out with the field chores and animal care for a set number of days, but they don't water everything and they sell everything they collect.
Left: Kill moles to fertilize your land. Right: There is no automation. Free laborers are willing to help out for a set number of days.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the farming aspects of this farming sim. There wasn't much variety in the types of crops you could grow or the animals you could raise. For comparison, the light farming sim/RPG dungeon crawler Rune Factory 4, which was made by the same developer, let the player till corn, clover, or weeds into the soil to improve it. The player could use chemicals they made themselves to enhance the soil, speed growth, increase size, or make the plants more resilient to foul weather. Plant quality could be improved through generations of seed collecting and selective breeding. I find it frustrating that a game only slightly focused on farming had better farming mechanics than a game that is all about farming.
Left: Animals will block bins that cannot be moved. Right: There are four types of cow, but only regular milk from a black and white cow can be turned into cheese or butter.
Mining:
There are two mines in Mineral Town: Spring Mine and Lake Mine. The Spring Mine is accessible all year long, but only contains rocks that don't sell for very much. The Lake Mine contains valuable gems, but only becomes accessible during the winter when the lake freezes over. Both mines have randomly generated floors with a hidden ladder leading deeper into the mine. There's no indication of where the ladder might be, so the player has to randomly till the dirt with a hoe, one square at a time, until the ladder is found. It's a tedious, time consuming system that relies on luck and an abundance of stamina or recovery items. There are no checkpoints either.
Social:
The inhabitants of Mineral Town all have their own lives and routines. By talking with them and giving gifts, the player can become friends with the townsfolk and even marry. Coming off of the developer's other light farming sim, I was surprised by how simplistic the Friends of Mineral Town residents were. They were charming enough, but disappointingly one-note. Gray for example, had one scene between him and his grandfather where they argued at the forge. I kept expecting there to be an arc for the two of them, something along the lines of learning to bond over a shared craft. Instead, Gray carried along with his daily routine, cycling through the same few lines of dialogue every time I stopped to talk. And it was like that for everyone in Mineral Town. The way the characters interacted (or didn't) with the player and the world killed the sense of community. A farming and life sim should have a little more depth and relationship building to its social aspects.
I never played any of the original Harvest Moon games (now called Story of Seasons), so I have no nostalgia for it, and the remake was clearly made for fans of the original rather than for newcomers to the series like me. It was missing all the innovations and sleekness of newer games in the genre, feeling every bit like an older game with a new paint job. Progress was slow and hard-earned. It was tedious at times, even mildly punishing despite harsher elements, like rival marriages and animal deaths, having been removed. It's still a great little game as a time killer with a cute aesthetic. It is just too minimalist and dated for my liking.
First posted to videogamegeek.com
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