Opinion on the Recent Harvest Moon/SoS Games on Switch

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
xeiroedawn
New Seedling
New Seedling
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I'm just going to go out and say it - Stardew Valley is mediocre. It's not bad, but it's not great -just merely "okay" in everything. A ton of the dialogue was really phoned in(go and read un-modded Shane's marriage dialoge if you disagree...or any unmodded dialogue to be honest), the festivals are bland, NO festivals about animals or crops in a bloody farming game. The only reason SDV has been elevated to the heights it has, is because it's a one-man operation, and because of the astounding talent of the mod community. Unfortunately, Olive Town tries to emulate unmodded SDV. Boring dialogue, boring love interests, Festivals that are complete time-wasters and are better skipped, the horrendous dlc and the lack of inclusion into the actual game, the makers, and the fact nothing really matters- want to ignore your LI for a season and gift them nothing but rubbish items? They will still love you, in their own boring way. Nothing matters. I played through the entire rubbish story, where you upgrade the town, and it still looks exactly the same. If you had a gun, pointed at my head, I could not point out the supposed upgrades. Three Rings are inept hacks and I will never purchase another game made by them.
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Burning Spear
Snazzy Sheep Sweeper
Snazzy Sheep Sweeper
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In my opinion, the BokuMono franchise ended with Trio of Towns. There is no longer a human development connection to the games that made this franchise great, so what we’re getting now is a barely competent knockoff. That’s the TL;DR in advance.

Before I get nasty, I’ll add that the first Doraemon game isn’t included in what I’m about to say, but largely because it wasn’t developed by the same team developing the mainline entries. That game felt like Marvelous had said to the development team, “Go play the original Friends of Mineral Town. Learn it. Then copy it and add the Doraemon cast.” Mission accomplished. Unfortunately, the sequel seems to have been pulled from some of the team that developed the original, replaced by the Three Rings circus bent on adding the things that turn me off about the current games.

What I see from Marvelous now is, unfortunately, a cash grab. Prop up the Story of Seasons name with sketchy development and churn out the product cheaply so we can make money off of pre-orders and then hit them later with lame DLC. The love and charm that Wada and Hashimoto poured into the games seems gone, replaced by a lifeless misunderstanding of what made the franchise compelling. There are still a good number of older titles I haven’t played, so I’ve largely resigned myself to rationing them throughout the remainder of my days to replicate the experience of having REAL new BokuMono games to play.

Surely there must be one or two people on Hashimoto’s team who would be up for coming back as creative supervisors; someone to create the general theme for each game and ensure that the Three Rings circus doesn’t go off script.
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simside
Wacky Weed Puller
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Joined: Nov 28, 2009 10:57 pm

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Someone upthread mentioned no longer being the intended audience of the HM/SOS games, which is painfully me. I still really like to play them, but I feel like a lot of them aren't really for me. Weirdly, I find the new ones hard to recommend - my two huge favorites are Doraemon and One World, but those aren't games a lot of folks will play, for various reasons.

I really loved the remake of FoMT, as I really loved the original FoMT. The QoL improvements and additions were all very welcome, and the mechanics still made for an addictive gameplay loop. I wasn't the biggest fan of the cutesy graphics, but I don't hate them either (though I liked them okay when I played the game). This one is hard to recommend though, because I feel like it's a bit too... old? Like there isn't a lot to grab modern players. It's a good game, but I wonder if I love it because I loved playing FoMT/MFoMT on my Gameboy Micro.

I skipped PoOT for the time being and played OW instead, which I don't regret. I'll probably like Olive Town okay, but nothing about it really pulls me in. I LOVED One World, the farming mechanics were the best and I wound up really liking the characters and the different areas/travel mechanic. I'm excited to see Natsume's next game, because I feel like they get better every time (full disclosure, I only played a bit of LoH on PC, but I also plan on going back to that on Switch). It was a lot different than the other farming/life sim games on the system, and I crave novelty.

Doraemon is also different, in that it is far more story-based, and I wound up really liking the story. It's ridiculously in-depth in that way. I'm really looking forward to the sequel, but a bit hesitant because it's being developed by a different team. Hopefully it'll be just as good!

I may put off the Doraemon sequel a bit and play Olive Town first, but I'd like to play one or both before SOSAWL comes out.
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Code_Name_Geek
Tubular Turnip Farmer
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I'm generally happy with the recent games in the series! But then again, there hasn't really been a game in the series that I wasn't a fan of (though there were a couple that didn't match my mood at the time I tried them that I hope to go back to later). There is a temptation to compare the recent games to Trio, which was definitely more complex and polished (in the case of PoOT), but even with Trio I can think of a few things that I didn't like as much compared to other games in the series.

The FoMT remake was good in my opinion. I liked HM64 more than the original FoMT (though I liked that as well!) so I actually really liked that they redesigned the villagers to give them more of their own look, it helped me see them as separate characters in my head instead of shadows of the HM64 villagers I prefer. I love that they added s/s marriage, and I ended up really liking the new bachelor, Brandon. I'm neutral on rival marriages so I wasn't too bothered by those being gone. The graphics were cute, and the environments were so faithful to the originals that it was clear it had been done with a lot of care. I loved the special cows they added too. My biggest complaint is that I really didn't like the animal breeding system, since I hate selling my animals, so that did affect my enjoyment of the game a little. But overall I still enjoyed it!

I also enjoyed PoOT. I do think the social elements of the game were a little lacking, but it had a very addicting gameplay loop so that kind of made up for it. I did miss not having a big wild area to forage outside of the farm though, but I had the same complaint with Trio. I didn't end up playing to marriage but I'll probably go back some day and do it. The breeding system was a little more manageable in this one (I just ignored the product upgrades entirely), but I would still prefer if it wasn't there at all. All the patches did discourage me a little since I'd rather play something that was entirely finished from the beginning, but I am happy that it shows they were listening to feedback and will likely incorporate some of that into the next game. The graphics were nice and I liked the music as well. I didn't have too much trouble with performance, but Tale of Two Towns had a lot more lag issues in my opinion and it's still one of my favourite games in the series. Overall I definitely don't regret buying it, and I got the special edition as well.

I haven't played the Doraemon spin-off yet, but I got it on sale and the graphics are absolutely beautiful so it's definitely on my list. I'm not super interested in the Natsume games, though... their marketing strategy feels a little too much like trying to pass their games off as the "original" series which doesn't sit well with me. And despite the huge amount of farming indies, to me there's something special about Story of Seasons that has yet to be replicated in another game (even Stardew Valley, which I still enjoyed as its own thing).

I'm definitely looking forward to the AWL remake! I love everything I've seen so far and I never finished the original so I will be more than happy to visit it again, especially because I'll get to share it with my mom this time.
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