Are the towns physically quite far apart?

Explore Lulukoko, Tsukuyusa, and Westown in this multi-cultural farming game for Nintendo 3DS. [ Game Guide ] JP release = Jun 2016. NA release = Feb 2017. EU release = Oct 2017.
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Kikki
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I consider the north portion of each town to be it's 'heart' and the south portion to be the outlying region. Each town is only one screen away from each other when connected by the north passage, so it's quite fast to go from Lulukoko North all the way over to Westown North. And of course, the screens all take the same amount of time to load (basically instant) so for me, there is no sense of them being the least bit far apart, but rather smushed right up against each other.

However it is repeatedly shown from dialogue that the towns are quite separate. A few characters visit every town (like Yuzuki, the dessert explorer, and of course Wayne who delivers to the entire region, and a few others as well) but most of the time you won't see them setting foot in the other towns. And only the town of the person you marry will come to your wedding and everyone else will say that they can't make it. I found it very weird when people kept saying they didn't know my fiance (Ford in this case) but were sure I'd made a good choice and etc... but they not only see Ford at every festival (except the town-specific festivals of course like the deity festivals), he also appears to be the doctor for the entire region, not just Westown. I still feel like either everyone, or at least everyone above X amount of hearts with the MC should have shown up at the wedding...it's weird that they don't, to me.

Am I supposed to assume that each town is actually a fair physical distance from each other? The game implies that the towns only actually meet at the (magical?) crossroads, so I guess that actually, the north passage is a long one and we just don't see the distance between the screens? For a long time I didn't think of it that way, but the cultural exchanges drove that feeling home even more. The towns are actually quite far apart, are they?
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I think they are, simply by the separate weather systems.
It can be raining on your farm, but dry in lulukoko, for example.
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Cal
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You see, I've always wondered this...

I never imagined the towns just being the parts that we see. IMO, the towns are a LOT larger than they are displayed in the game, but only the important parts are shown. For example, in Luluokoko, there's that weird trail that supposedly goes to some other part of town, right? I think that there is a lot more going on in the towns than what we see, simply by the number of random people walking around. Like where do they live? Where do they go? They can't just sleep on the ground, you know? So I totally agree with you. The parts of the towns that we see are more-so like the core of it all. I really wish that there was more but I can totally understand it getting to overwhelming for some people, especially in the beginning.

I always saw the towns being a lot more separate than you see them to be so, i guess it wouldn't hurt for you to see the same.
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I wholeheartedly believe the crossroads are magical and, in part, due to Dessie, Witchie, and Inari being magical gods/deities that are obviously close to each other. But yeah, it made me sad when I married Ford and no one seemed to know him despite him being the only doctor and even making the comment that he is the only one in the region himself. I know he treats people in Tsuyukusa, but Lulukoko? I am unsure.

The towns are definitely farther apart than they look, but I also feel like part of it might be the isolation aspect of each culture. Each town’s culture is very well-preserved so maybe part of that stems from deliberate isolationist tendencies? Like, since Stephanie, Hinata, Yuzuki, etc go from town to town, so could Ludus on his days off. So could Zahau. Kasumi could. Hector could. Etc.

So it could also be part of the safety the villagers feel in their own place and their lack of desire to see other places. Who knowssss????
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Hmm, I am now very interested in that north passage. Seems like it might have good fiction possibililties. I guess it's not so bad to have room to imagine an entire connecting region that must exist but that we have no details on.

I believe there is at least one event where the crossroads is referred to as being or feeling magical, or the waterfall being magical, or something. It and your farm always have the same weather, but that's different from ALL of the towns...so your farm must be magical as well. Pretty special that we got a magical farm. That's probably why we can grow cabbage and snowdrops on the same plot of land that we grow coconuts and plumeria. :)

Maybe the magic is the convergence of power between the Witches, the Harvest Goddesses and the Inari. It creates this super fertile, forgiving soil that has cross-cultural tendencies not available anywhere else...
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Cal wrote:You see, I've always wondered this...

I never imagined the towns just being the parts that we see. IMO, the towns are a LOT larger than they are displayed in the game, but only the important parts are shown. For example, in Luluokoko, there's that weird trail that supposedly goes to some other part of town, right? I think that there is a lot more going on in the towns than what we see, simply by the number of random people walking around. Like where do they live? Where do they go? They can't just sleep on the ground, you know? So I totally agree with you. The parts of the towns that we see are more-so like the core of it all. I really wish that there was more but I can totally understand it getting to overwhelming for some people, especially in the beginning.

I always saw the towns being a lot more separate than you see them to be so, i guess it wouldn't hurt for you to see the same.
THIS! 100% this!

Remember how the game would take you to unfamiliar places for certain events? I think there’s hidden paths that leads farther in town. Like the spot next to the Garden Grill npcs would disappears from like Ethan.
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Each town has a passage that people disappear into when going to festivals. Kasumi also uses it to go to and come back from work, iirc. I can't remember where Westown's is, though.
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Kikki wrote:Each town has a passage that people disappear into when going to festivals. Kasumi also uses it to go to and come back from work, iirc. I can't remember where Westown's is, though.
It’s next to the big bell and the restaurant.
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I was confused about this for a while as well, but then someone in Lulukoko once mentioned something along the lines of wanting to visit Tsuyukusa but it's just so far that they can't. After that I just decided to settle on the fact that they must be pretty far apart. Also, in the DLC events where
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the deities have the marriage candidates visit each town, some of the candidates mention having never visited/very rarely ever visit the town that they go to.
Although, the towns can't be too far apart considering Wayne is able to make his rounds between all three of them within a day. It most likely takes a couple of hours by foot to travel between each town.
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JayDucky03
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This is an awesome theory! Magical convergence rocks! Your farm is the Avatar of farms.
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Yeah, I've been kind of assuming that maybe the distance between each of the separate maps is actually further than it seems. I'd been picturing something like there being empty pastures between the crossroads and the first part of the towns, and then maybe a more suburban housing area between that and the town's central area.

I remember in Animal Parade it could take quite a while to get from place to place, and while the towns weren't as separated as they are in Trio, I kind of imagine them being a similar distance apart or having natural features that block off certain ones from each other. (Westown being a mining town could easily have features like mountains or canyons getting between it and Tsuyukusa, and it seemed implied to me that there was a whole river running between Tsuyukusa and Lulukoko.)

I wonder what a map of them would look like if it was to scale...

I like the theory that the three deities might be granting some unusual ability to the crossroads in order to facilitate the three towns bonding though!
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Anna_Lynn
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If you tap on the bottom screen to view the entire map, you can see that all the town's really are somewhat far away. Westown appears to be the farthest from the crossroads, with Lulukoko being the closest.
Also seems like Tsuyukusa is elevated, which makes sense, since:
-The rivers in Tsuyukusa lead to the crossroad waterfall and Westown waterfall.
-From Westown to Tsuyukusa, the path looks like it goes up a canyon.
-The weather is more "violent", or at least in my game, it rains and snows more often in Tsuyukusa, which is logical if it's on a hill/mountain.
-To get from south Tsuyukusa to north Tsuyukusa, you take a nice, grand staircase.

I guess another factor to note is that Lulukoko can't have a high elevation, since it's a coastal town near an ocean. To me, Westown always seemed like a town hidden in a canyon/valley somewhere, with parts being built into the side of a mountain filled with minerals, hence the mining opportunities. I hear more comments from Tsuyukusa villagers/NPCs about the town being more windy/cold in the winter compared to any other place, so that makes me think that it's high up on a hill.

And if you think about it, your farm doesn't look close together on the touch-screen map either. The river plot of land is more west to meet a river (probably from Westown?) and the southern plot of land you get is completely rotated on its side. Kind of a weird layout for a farm, if you ask me.

Edit: One more thing I thought of was the fast taxi travel at the signboards. If the town's were close together, it wouldn't really make sense to have the taxi service take you place to place. But it probably exists more for the player's sake, rather than the actual geographic sake of the three town's locations.

So that's my long theory on the three towns. :-|
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Robinstar
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I've been under the impression that the towns are indeed far apart, but not so far that a walk from one to another is absolutely ridiculous, but more like a little bit exhausting for some characters. Our characters are used to moving around a lot, so that little hike is no big deal.

I don't think of the crossroads as magical. I just think that the paths to town are longer than we think, and probably have curves in them instead of going straight to town.
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Kikki
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Some of the characters actually comment that the crossroads and/or the waterfall at the crossroads seems magical. :) I feel like they wanted to plant that idea. Though I don't think that has anything to do with distance in the game, or anything like that.
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Anna_Lynn wrote:If you tap on the bottom screen to view the entire map, you can see that all the town's really are somewhat far away. Westown appears to be the farthest from the crossroads, with Lulukoko being the closest.
Also seems like Tsuyukusa is elevated, which makes sense, since:
-The rivers in Tsuyukusa lead to the crossroad waterfall and Westown waterfall.
-From Westown to Tsuyukusa, the path looks like it goes up a canyon.
-The weather is more "violent", or at least in my game, it rains and snows more often in Tsuyukusa, which is logical if it's on a hill/mountain.
-To get from south Tsuyukusa to north Tsuyukusa, you take a nice, grand staircase.

I guess another factor to note is that Lulukoko can't have a high elevation, since it's a coastal town near an ocean. To me, Westown always seemed like a town hidden in a canyon/valley somewhere, with parts being built into the side of a mountain filled with minerals, hence the mining opportunities. I hear more comments from Tsuyukusa villagers/NPCs about the town being more windy/cold in the winter compared to any other place, so that makes me think that it's high up on a hill.

And if you think about it, your farm doesn't look close together on the touch-screen map either. The river plot of land is more west to meet a river (probably from Westown?) and the southern plot of land you get is completely rotated on its side. Kind of a weird layout for a farm, if you ask me.

Edit: One more thing I thought of was the fast taxi travel at the signboards. If the town's were close together, it wouldn't really make sense to have the taxi service take you place to place. But it probably exists more for the player's sake, rather than the actual geographic sake of the three town's locations.

So that's my long theory on the three towns. :-|
This is a really well written theory on the geography of each town and how separated they are. It makes perfect sense and explains a lot. I'm adopting this as my headcanon, at least.
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