So How Do You Like the Game So Far?

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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Melody Muse
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Now that the game's been out a bit, I'm curious what people are thinking of it. Do you like it? Do you like the three towns? How about the characters?
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Kikki
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To put it briefly (which is difficult for me), I love it.

The relationships between characters is great, and the events are nice and detailed and have continuity. The kids are all darling (though Schalk is a pain) enough that I'd love to see them get their own game in the future, though I'm not actually hoping for it as it's too unrealistic. The farming is interesting, though the 4 qualities of fertilization can get tedious and as always, the animals are a chore. But at least if you don't care about the clothing you can get through the whole game with only one cow and one chicken! :) (There probably aren't many who don't care at all about the clothes, though.)

I think I will like my second file even more, though, as I have often felt like I don't know what I'm doing with my first one, and I enjoy myself more when I feel like I know everything. I like ALL the regular candidates and could marry my MC to any of them, and might even actually do so, eventually. Choosing Ludus first felt like a 'safe' choice, almost, good for the first go-through as I like his casual way of speaking and his portrait is nice to look at. They're all interesting guys with fairly well-developed personalities, in my view.

It's the ugliest town, but I like Westown more than I thought...I got so comfortable with it in the slow first two game weeks that it really feels like the MCs hometown, to me. The music doesn't bother me like I thought it would...I got used to it and even like it a little (though I still think Westown's theme is ugly if I listen to it properly). I thought it was going to be too confusing or overwhelming once I got all 3 towns on the go, but somehow you get used to it and manage to balance all three.

I love the festivals...they're so easy to manage. I've won every single competitive festival from the very beginning thanks to being able to choose 'beginner' on ones where the judging was more difficult, so I don't have the frustration of working hard to water twice a day and fertilize every day only to lose at the end of the month. (RF4 was a wonderful game, but the festivals were a source of frustration for me...I found it hard to win ANY of them.)

Great game, glad I have two copies. :D Done one year so far, should start getting higher level stuff from now on, now that I can finally make some money.

One complaint: they actually devolved the cooking system. I loved that in SoS you could cook and it would automatically reopen the menu to your last cooked dish so that you could cook it repeatedly if you want. I would have liked to be able to do that with my 6 stacks of 99 milks into hot milks, too...reopening the menu and flipping to the recipe I need each time feels like a big drag after the streamlined system in the previous SoS. But I do prefer that you can get your max skill by cooking 10,000 dishes rather than having to cook 3,000 times individually. :)
Last edited by Kikki on Mar 05, 2017 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Blademaster_Aio
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Post  Posted:

I love it!

:heart: :heart: :heart:

I really love it!

Protagonist style Yaaaaaaay! (Hands up in the air hooray!)

I actually get really happy when devs improve on the game's faults and put out better and smoother gameplay next time.

:lala:
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OneLuckeyWife
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I really love it! The different towns are great; I like how you can go from one town to the next easily. In Harvest Moon: ToTT it took like an hour to go to the next town. I love how you can check the friendship of everyone, helps out to know where I stand with the none marriageable characters so I can do the events with them. I wish it was easier to get a bigger barn though; you need so many materials! :shock:
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I do enjoy the way the MC has some kind of past and relationships with other people, as opposed to the blank slate that we've often had for so many other games.
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Feather Qwill
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I'm mostly positive about the game. There are a lot of improvements and things that I like, but there are also some things that I find very irritating.

-I like quick-greeting.

-I like the characters and the variety of dialogue. I like the friend events and heart events. I like that wooing is locked behind a dating system, so you don't end up with everyone in love with you in the normal course of befriending them.

-One thing I like a lot is the simplification of the animal treat system. Even though there are more qualities to work on, it's much less confusing and you don't need to keep track of exactly how many of treat X Y and Z that you've given to each animal.

-On the same note, I like that crops and animals have multiple qualities now. I think it's fun and interesting.

-I like that fishing isn't so trash-filled anymore.

-The jobs are a nice option to have, except that the woodcutting job is horribly tedious, and I don't get why we can't use our own upgraded tools for the jobs like watering crops and brushing cows.

-I don't like the horse. He's more annoying/time consuming to jump on and off of than I'd hoped, and he wanders away. That's made worse by him not having an icon on the mini-map. I would also have liked to be able to call the horse, either anywhere with a whistle, or at least at the taxi stands in each town. I hate that you can't quick-greet people from horseback.

-I would have liked to be able to access my records, such as villager friendship, shipping list, trophies, animal friendship, etc, on the go. I would like to be asked if I want to save before I go to sleep.

-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).

-Mining feels unbalanced to me. It should be easier to get sufficient quantities of the basic materials such as iron.
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Post  Posted:

It's safe to say so far that this is my favourite entry in the whole series, and that's saying a lot, because I'm a long time fan of HM.
Up until now, Back to Nature and Sunshine Islands had been my favourites, but Trio of Towns comes with such a polished and complete game that it immediately took that title away.
Back to Nature will always and forever have a special place in my heart, but I can see now that Trio of Towns is the ultimate experience of all these years the devs had to perfect the series. :heart:

About the game itself, everything is lovable.
The cities are comfy and unique;
The townsfolk are friendly and you want to know more about them;
The link system is a wonderful "story" mode thing that will keep you with a goal in mind;
Part-time jobs are the quest thing that will keep you occupied on the early days when farm work is boring;
The farm tips with MC family is just a wonderful thing to have;
Festivals are just at the right difficulty that you are at the moment;
Marriage candidate all feel very unique and lovable, making it very hard to make a decision;
The quick greet system is a « Harvest Goddess »-sent feature and makes the game smoother and more less repetitive.

I admit that I'm banging my head against the wall at the moment at the end of first year because I chose Veteran, and the very high prices are making me go crazy about money management, but I guess that can be a good thing too.
As a con, I think initial difficulties are a bit misleading, Seedling should be named "normal" and Veteran should be named "hardcore", along with their initial descriptions, that would certainly discourage most people from chosing the frustration from veteran on a first file.

Overall, 10/10 game.
Worth every single day of waiting.
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Tabby935
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Kikki wrote:It's the ugliest town, but I like Westown more than I thought...I got so comfortable with it in the slow first two game weeks that it really feels like the MCs hometown, to me.
I am glad i'm not the only one. I became sooo attached to this town, to the point it really does feel like the MCs home town in some ways. I thought that it was my least favorite, but it grew on me a lot quicker than i thought. in some sense, this kinda sucks because now all my love goes to Westown and not the others, haha.
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Shan O 123
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-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).
Noooo don't make it harder :3 I play for relaxation, I don't want to over think lol.



Anyway I'm loving it so far.
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Hisagiluv
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This entry has managed to keep my attention longer than the previous ones which is something to be proud of since the last game I played attentively was Animal Parade (lol). I'm actually excited to unlock things! I like that the MC has a family that actively communicates, I think it's something I never knew I wanted.
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Feather Qwill
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Shan O 123 wrote:
-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).
Noooo don't make it harder :3 I play for relaxation, I don't want to over think lol.

Anyway I'm loving it so far.
I would personally find it more relaxing to have bigger goals that were nevertheless achievable at any point in the game -- not just if you'd either rushed to get to the request early enough or else looked everything up on line so you knew ahead of time exactly what to hoard. That's what I call stressful.

And then you get through all those goals so quickly only to get stonewalled with something that isn't available until year 2+ no matter how much planning you do.
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Beedlebud
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It's one of the best HM/SoS games in awhile. Was really afraid that this wouldn't live up to the hype, but it has.

I dunno, I just really feel like this is the first HM game in the longest time I felt Marv put sincere effort in to make the town (s) more lively. I really feel like I want to get to know more than just the candidates in this game, which is something I haven't felt for an HM game in awhile.

The QOL improvements and kicking the grindiness of SoS to the curb made this game so much more enjoyable than the last few games. I feel like almost nothing in this game is extremely difficult to get even on Veteran which makes things a lot more fun for me.

It's not perfect though, there's still a few things that bug me
-*insert lack of same-« Chicken Hugging » marriage gripe here*
-Beginning is still a tad too slow
-MC worship is a bit too much... I think this is part of why I ended up dating Iluka
-Models are pretty bad looking, and some of them are very different from their portrait
-lack of skin tone options
-I miss the old mining still
-I feel like fishing is kind of...pointless in this game outside of the first season? Like the issue with 3 towns is that it's very rare that I get any time to do this and it doesn't look like it pays too well in comparison to something like mining. It's a shame because I like the new system a lot.

This isn't really a complaint but this is the first game I was actually bothered by the lack of rival marriages and it's mainly because of Ford's initial friend event. Because if you're playing as a guy he really will be girlfriend-less forever lol
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Shan O 123
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Feather Qwill wrote:
Shan O 123 wrote:
-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).
Noooo don't make it harder :3 I play for relaxation, I don't want to over think lol.

Anyway I'm loving it so far.
I would personally find it more relaxing to have bigger goals that were nevertheless achievable at any point in the game -- not just if you'd either rushed to get to the request early enough or else looked everything up on line so you knew ahead of time exactly what to hoard. That's what I call stressful.

And then you get through all those goals so quickly only to get stonewalled with something that isn't available until year 2+ no matter how much planning you do.
You know what's stressful? Shipping 10,500 dishes for tropical country. I'm still on that requirement. I'm glad this game isn't like that.
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Feather Qwill
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Shan O 123 wrote:
Feather Qwill wrote:
Shan O 123 wrote:
-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).
Noooo don't make it harder :3 I play for relaxation, I don't want to over think lol.

Anyway I'm loving it so far.
I would personally find it more relaxing to have bigger goals that were nevertheless achievable at any point in the game -- not just if you'd either rushed to get to the request early enough or else looked everything up on line so you knew ahead of time exactly what to hoard. That's what I call stressful.

And then you get through all those goals so quickly only to get stonewalled with something that isn't available until year 2+ no matter how much planning you do.
You know what's stressful? Shipping 10,500 dishes for tropical country. I'm still on that requirement. I'm glad this game isn't like that.
Well yes, SoS was terrible and extreme with its unlock requirements. I certainly wouldn't go that far!
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Shan O 123
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Feather Qwill wrote:
Shan O 123 wrote:
Feather Qwill wrote:
Shan O 123 wrote:
-I would like to feel less pressure to get things done quickly quickly quickly. For example, it would be nice if any mission/request would be adapted to the current season so that players didn't have to choose between spoiling themselves & gluing themselves to online resources and risking getting stuck for 3/4s of the year before they could advance. Or maybe the requests could be harder (200 of a crop instead of 20) but more general (any vine crop instead of eggplant).
Noooo don't make it harder :3 I play for relaxation, I don't want to over think lol.

Anyway I'm loving it so far.
I would personally find it more relaxing to have bigger goals that were nevertheless achievable at any point in the game -- not just if you'd either rushed to get to the request early enough or else looked everything up on line so you knew ahead of time exactly what to hoard. That's what I call stressful.

And then you get through all those goals so quickly only to get stonewalled with something that isn't available until year 2+ no matter how much planning you do.
You know what's stressful? Shipping 10,500 dishes for tropical country. I'm still on that requirement. I'm glad this game isn't like that.
Well yes, SoS was terrible and extreme with its unlock requirements. I certainly wouldn't go that far!
Ice country was no better with the wood. So....many....trees......never again.
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