Marvelous Showcase Highlights (New Story of Seasons Announced)

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.
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Kikki
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It's nice to have something to look forward to learning more about. Olive Town and to a lesser extent, RF5, destroyed my expectations, which was disappointing at the time, but it means I basically have none left. (RF5 was actually fine, but it was basically just RF4, reskinned, and with rockier performance.) I HOPE they took more from the OT feedback than just 'we need to focus on graphics!' But if they didn't...I don't really care. With no remaining expectations, I can't be disappointed. Surprised, but not disappointed. After Olive Town I figured the series might just be headed in a direction that no longer targets me as part of their intended audience, which was disappointing then, but I got over it. Now it'll just be a nice surprise if the next game turns out to grab my interest. Same with Project Dragon, as that's by a new team as well. I have a few expectations left for RF6, I think, as I'm expecting it to be better/more original than RF5. I had already figured they were going to largely copy RF4 for their big comeback game, but I'm hoping they make things feel fresher for 6.

I don't know how much of the OT team is working on the new SoS, either. I know they brought in new writers for the update content on Olive Town.
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It’s truly scary not knowing what can come next. The worst part is we’re most likely going to wait a long time before knowing anything more so all we can do is just hope they’ve learned from their own mistake in this time. I wish they had addressed about gameplay complaints from PoOT for this presentation to at least not make this waiting period dreadful. If they got new writers for PoOT itself after the complaints, I hope they did get a better creative team alongside as well for this title, be it new staff or even ex staff that left.

I do have more hopes for RF6 if it is done by Hakama even if Project Dragon ends up being a mixed bag, because they actually did conduct a survey asking for the feedback from the fans. Third Rings did act on complaints too but I am worried they still haven’t found the right direction. The comment about making a title that will bring new fans aboard just gives me PoOT flashbacks all over. All they have to do is just study what worked so well for the most talked fan faves titles Animal Parade and Trio of Towns. It could be that the director feels nostalgia for the older games since he worked on the earlier games hence why we keep resetting even with the remake choices.

I guess this next title will decide whether I remain a fan of this series or not. I wouldn’t be too sad if it doesn’t cater to me, I’m glad that this series was able to produce top quality titles that I really enjoyed and were a huge influence to many farming sims. Besides, there are MANY upcoming life-farming sims that seem right up my alley. Sunnyside for one seems to have complex systems and characters with good writing that I want, Harvest Moon is constantly evolving and seems to know what works despite the limited resources, My Time At series will most likely continue and eventually do something different, Coral Island’s developers might try something better too and in future I’m sure other bigger game studios will try for this genre just like how Square Enix did for Harvestella.
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The only surprising revelation this presentation unveiled to me was that Hikaru Nakano is no longer a director for the series but a manager. I looked up for further information and Rika Hoshina seems to be the next permanent new director? She recently was the director for SoS:AWL and she was the one behind the PoOT DLCs. She seems to be a long time fan of this series who has just recently joined Marvelous and her favorite title is A Wonderful Life.
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Awesome Dog wrote: May 28, 2023 4:34 pm The only surprising revelation this presentation unveiled to me was that Hikaru Nakano is no longer a director for the series but a manager. I looked up for further information and Rika Hoshina seems to be the next permanent new director? She recently was the director for SoS:AWL and she was the one behind the PoOT DLCs. She seems to be a long time fan of this series who has just recently joined Marvelous and her favorite title is A Wonderful Life.
For me that sends up huge caution signs, as I do not at all like the older HMs, AWL included. But I already had the feeling that they're trying to drag the series backwards.

I really, really wish they'd take a more critical look at ALL of their games and recognize which features were best in each one and combine them ALL, or as many as can be made to work together. Makers were just burdensome in Olive Town, but they worked quite well in ANB (there were only 5 types...you could never have more than five...no duplicates possible. Plus you got a big bonus in function if you had all five.) Aging isn't really fun for me...I don't want my character to age or have children who age and take over, I don't like that at all...but I'd try anything new they wanted to experiment with. Trying a generational feature in a NEW SoS game would be interesting. I'd give it a go, even though it's not my natural preference. The dialogue and interactivity between characters and towns in Trio made the game really immersive. The town-building feature of ANB was...highly controversial, actually, but I LOVED being able to arrange the town entirely to my preference. Though I'd prefer Trio's feature of being about to BUY most building materials rather than having to forage or grow all your own lumber/stone/etc, so that people can choose if they want to spend money to save time, or spend time to save money, or whatever. The first SoS had really nice portrait style. (The eyes weren't as jarringly HUGE as in Trio, for one thing, and they looked slightly more watercoloury, slightly less cartooony.) Animal Parade had a good selection of marriage options. Etc.

I just wish we could get someone with a broad view. I don't want any director to be focusing on their personal favourite when it comes time to make a new game. (ESPECIALLY given how it's not one I like, lol...but I'd say the same even if their favourite matched mine.)

I hope they give us great QoL in the new game. Don't waste our time with glitches, lengthy loading, or badly-designed menus or other functions.
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I also do feel like that the new directors are playing favorites and creating games that fit their vision rather creating games that scratches the itch for every type of fans. Nakano kept boasting about how he was involved in the earlier games and we saw how PoOT turned out similar to the older games. I didn’t even notice he’s not the director anymore :lol: I wonder if they got this new female director because she’s been a bigger fan of this series so they’d thought she would know the direction of the series better? If she brought the 3DS era fan faves as DLC, she must know the popularity of those games atleast so I hope that means she will implement the features from those games. But again, we have no clue if their vision has altered at all or not. We’re gonna have to wait until they reveal more.
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I feel like trying to please *everyone* is also a sure route to failure. There's just no way to do it. Now, I get it. Stardew sold over 20 million. ACNH sold over 40 million. Minecraft has sold, uh...238 million? The life-sim genre is FULL of dollars, and Marvelous wants some of that! (I don't blame them; who wouldn't want to be a mega-success if they could?)

But I feel like they don't really have any clue what players actually want. Even though they've been TOLD, particularly by the Japanese market after Olive Town, and the primary point they took away from it was 'we need better graphics!' I was watching the whole thing on Twitter with the Japanese market, and almost no one was saying that the graphics were too low-quality, though many didn't like the style...but art style and graphic quality are not at all the same thing. It was surprising how nearly identical the complaints of the Japanese market were to our own. The biggest complaint about looks was that there were no portraits (and the 3D models were too expressionless.)

So I get that they want to bring in as many fans as possible, and I feel like they've been focusing on bringing in new fans much more than pleasing existing fans. To me, their approach has been unbalanced and strangely out of tune with the feedback they've been given.

Of course, maybe graphics is just their current speaking point, and the easiest thing to point to this early in the process. It's probably the only thing they can show, right now. Maybe when we get closer, or when it releases, we'll see that they really did take all the feedback from Olive Town into account.

I really want them to focus on performance quality, other QoL, and on making the farming and socializing strong (that includes festivals and events and any type of town-building or helping that you get to do.) but also giving players lots of options. I like when you can accomplish a goal in multiple ways, making room for those who like to spend their time farming crops, animals, socializing, fishing, crafting...whatever you're into. It'd be great if you could strengthen your town/farm/community by doing the things you like most, and that's different for everybody.
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It feels so odd. I remember years ago when these games were announced in low quality magazine scans showcasing the first new character reveals I would be so excited. Now we have a live presentation to announce the game and I just don't feel to excited... I know why, it's not a mystery. I want to see the character designs and art! Just interesting that a more grandiose announcement does not equal the same amount of excitement. Well I hope we won't have to wait to long to see some official finalized artworks and eventually real gameplay.

Natsume new Harvest Moon have actually got me interested though the designs are more lacking despite the artsyle being more lovely where in One World the designs were more unique but the art could be improved upon. Pioneers designs were like what Winds of Athos is appearing to be so far, but I think I prefer more unique designs overall so it feels like I'm losing ahaha! So hopefully, just maybe? This title will get it right on having inspired unique characters! I hope...
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Yeah, I got that a little incorrect. Usually in those cases, the game ends up being a jack of all trades but a master of none. PoOT can be used as an light example; attempting to appease both casual gamers while also catering fans resulted in a game where everything feels undercooked.

It's more difficult than I expected to check out the Japanese side of this series. The majority of the hashtags are filled with screenshots from either AWL or 3DS games. The only criticisms I saw were on the tweets promoting the new game's announcement. It's kind of strange how everyone agrees that PoOT was not an enjoyable experience with both the Japanese and international fans for the same exact reasons. I was confused why the translation kept showing the word "Industrial story" but I think they were simply mocking PoOT. :lol:

Given how they continuously promise to bring in new fans to the franchise, I believe they actually want to repeat the success of SDV. PoOT's impressive sales, I believe, fueled them even more. From a business standpoint, I see why they'd do that, but they're alienating fans of the series by changing the game's essential identity. SDV was one thing, and SoS is another thing. I think they're trying to get the fans from those games into this game. I'm not sure if that's a wise idea considering this game has always been fairly niche and supported by a dedicated fanbase. I'm sure if PoOT was something more like Trio of Towns, it would've sold even better. No one would've complained and more people would flock to check it out. 3OT did well for a 3DS game for a reason, so I don't get their obsession with being more accessible.

Crystal Power wrote: May 29, 2023 5:10 pm It feels so odd. I remember years ago when these games were announced in low quality magazine scans showcasing the first new character reveals I would be so excited. Now we have a live presentation to announce the game and I just don't feel to excited... I know why, it's not a mystery. I want to see the character designs and art! Just interesting that a more grandiose announcement does not equal the same amount of excitement. Well I hope we won't have to wait to long to see some official finalized artworks and eventually real gameplay.
Yeah, it really didn't feel impactful at all. Something about seeing the gameplay screenshots revealed in a magazine felt more exciting and made you anticipate for more information even more. A part of me wants them to take as much as time to create a good game but a part of me wants to play it as soon as possible :lol: I wish they revealed this footage closer to its proper announcement.
Not sure if I should talk about Winds of Anthos here, but I am worried that this new title will face the same socializing issues as PoOT. The characters look bland.. and that's really odd for Natsume. I guess Westley and Aolani look decent enough for me on the first glance. I do wonder how the marriage candidates for the next SoS game will look like. I hope they're interesting. I still find PoOT's marriage candidates line up extremely questionable. The bachelorettes were okay but I will never forgive them for that boring bachelor line up. I proceeded to give all of them a try but none of them clicked with me at all. I think being put against the DLC characters, who were added to game very lazily, made them feel even more bland. Ludus being my fave choice in PoOT speaks volumes :lol:
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There's definitely a share of people who didn't like Trio of Towns at all, so even making it like that wouldn't please everyone. You can't please everyone, not even within fans of the same genre. *shrug* And Olive Town did at least have a very good gameplay loop. It was shallow, but also addictive...much like a mobile game, which has to be addictive to get you to pay $0.99 over and over for this and that to be able to continue playing, until you realize you've spent $300 in a month on a game you thought of as more-or-less 'free', lol. I think the fun gameplay loop is nice, but to be memorable, it needs to be deeper, imo. I also liked the graphics well enough, personally, though I didn't care for the 3D models that much. That or I just didn't like the character design, not sure which.

I do know people who really liked Olive Town, even loved it, and I do feel a bunch of new fans came in on it, but not because of Olive Town itself. More because life-sims have simply blown up as a whole. And of course, those who loved Trio of Towns were eager to try a new SoS game, but those who loved Trio were the ones who were largely disappointed, expecting Olive Town to build on what was good about Trio, and they ended up having very little in common at all (probably because a lot of the dev team changed after Trio, and the direction was entirely different.)

I've yet to hear anyone call Olive Town their favourite Bokumono game, though I'm sure there must be some. But to me, it just wasn't deep enough. Nothing about it was memorable to me. It had decent graphics and an addictive (though limited) gameplay loop, but to me, the performance wasn't great, the makers were tedious and required for everything, and the characters, town and events were all so forgettable I can't remember a single one of any of them. I can't even remember the name of my MCs husband! :shock: That's never happened to me before. (He was the one with long dark hair.)

I think their sales will continue to grow for a while at least, because the life-sim genre is just getting bigger and bigger, and the looks alone will probably draw any fans of the category in for a try. I still hope that the graphics aren't really their main focus, and that that is only what they are focusing on right now, when the graphics are all they have to talk about/show. Though if they did turn out to have absolutely knockout great-looking character design, that'd be a HUGE benefit even if nothing else about the game was different from Olive Town and I'm sure it'd draw reams of players in for a try. But I honestly have no idea what to expect them to look like, this time. I'm expecting Olive Town but a little more refined and either with better expressions and camera direction, or with portraits, one or the other (probably not both.)

It's probably too early to even speculate. I have no idea where the series is headed, right now. I didn't hate Olive Town, I was just indifferent to it, I guess. Which is almost more unpleasant than openly disliking a game for some reason. I guess a strong impression feels better than no impression at all? Or I'm just an oddball, I don't know.
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I think they announced these games way too early to get excited about them. 3 out of 4 of them have placeholder (as in, probably not final) names or less, and the only one that has its final name is Rune Factory 6, which, while in line for the series, isn't a super creative or descriptive name. I would not be surprized at all if 1 or even 2 of them either gets cancelled or fused into another title. They gave us practically nothing to work (to speculate or get excited over) with at this stage, with the RF: Project Dragon game having the most shown about it. Marvelous boasting about their new graphics when SoS:PoOT's graphics weren't among its main problems also does not instill confidence.

I can't help but think they were forced (either by the higher ups at Marvelous or maybe Nintendo) to do this Direct with how little actual game they have to show. The multiplayer one only has concept art, for crying out loud! (And RF6 only has a logo, to my knowledge, which is just as bad as just concept art, in my opinion.) This Direct all feels either misguided of half-baked to me.
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Cute enough little direct thing. Obviously way too early to judge most of this since I doubt any of it will come out for at least a year/year in a half or so. I could see RF Dragon coming out next year at least in Japan, maybe 2025 in other regions. The rest, no clue, but could also see RF6 coming around for the series 20th anniversary in 2026 as someone else mentioned.

SOS new entry: looks cute so far. Animals look cute, I like that the landscapes actually have nice visual changes between seasons, and I like that this seems to be a bit more cel-shaded... at least when it showed the crops and tools. Still seems a little too bright, but eh who knows.

SOS multiplayer: I figure this'll be cute in some regard. My brain automatically went to Grand Bazaar because that game was slightly built around its multiplayer haha or Stardew Valley multiplayer which I love playing with friends. I don't even wanna predict much about this yet since I have no idea where it could go but I'd enjoy this at least somewhat I'm sure.

RF Dragon: The one thing I really like about this game is that it'll be expanding the RF universe. I liked the spin-offs well enough (RFF especially) but they were just like another RF in another random town. I like that it LOOKS different too, though I'm undecided on whether or not I like how it looks tbh. Nice that the combat seems to be switched up a little bit too, finally some bow & arrow action in the series!

RF6: Obviously we know the least about this so lol idk what to even say. Logo looks cute. I just need the bachelor lineup to be as diverse and good as RF5's was and for the bachelorette lineup to be WAY more diverse than RF5's (we finally got someone with a little facial hair with Murakumo and Lucas... so it's about time for the ladies to get a MILF option come on).
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Count me among those who can't get excited about the Story of Seasons announcements. Unless they tell me Hashimoto's team is coming back, these games fall into the same bucket as Harvest Life, Farm Together and all the other BokuMono knockoffs flooding the marketplace. The Marvelous name means nothing because 1) it's a novice development team and 2) Marvelous is clearly about bleeding this series for every dollar it can get. When I hear they're going to cherish the historical elements of the game ... HELLO ... that's what *every* long-running franchise does. And what this one did until Marvelous brought in a (Three) ringer to design the game. So, little hope here. I'd rather play the past installments I haven't gotten to yet.

The only other thing that would interest me would be if they gave the series to the crew that handled the first Doraemon game. They figured it out and hit it out of the park the first time. It *can* be done if the developer is competent and cares. But I can't say that's the case with Marvelous and Three Rings.

Sorry to bring down those who are hopeful.
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JustABeautifulGuy wrote: May 29, 2023 6:12 pm
Crystal Power wrote: May 29, 2023 5:10 pm It feels so odd. I remember years ago when these games were announced in low quality magazine scans showcasing the first new character reveals I would be so excited. Now we have a live presentation to announce the game and I just don't feel to excited... I know why, it's not a mystery. I want to see the character designs and art! Just interesting that a more grandiose announcement does not equal the same amount of excitement. Well I hope we won't have to wait to long to see some official finalized artworks and eventually real gameplay.
Yeah, it really didn't feel impactful at all. Something about seeing the gameplay screenshots revealed in a magazine felt more exciting and made you anticipate for more information even more. A part of me wants them to take as much as time to create a good game but a part of me wants to play it as soon as possible :lol: I wish they revealed this footage closer to its proper announcement.
Not sure if I should talk about Winds of Anthos here, but I am worried that this new title will face the same socializing issues as PoOT. The characters look bland.. and that's really odd for Natsume. I guess Westley and Aolani look decent enough for me on the first glance. I do wonder how the marriage candidates for the next SoS game will look like. I hope they're interesting. I still find PoOT's marriage candidates line up extremely questionable. The bachelorettes were okay but I will never forgive them for that boring bachelor line up. I proceeded to give all of them a try but none of them clicked with me at all. I think being put against the DLC characters, who were added to game very lazily, made them feel even more bland. Ludus being my fave choice in PoOT speaks volumes :lol:
Same for me and now that they've announced it I want to see more, especially the character art to at least get a vibe on what to expect going forward. As with Winds of Anthos I think two bachelors and two bachelorettes have been shown and while they already look less unique than One World the style is improved. I'm realizing we don't even have a title yet so that's a sign the wait is perhaps going to be longer than I hope, eheh..

I really wish the series would have expanded on the foundation created in Trio of Town going forward.
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Crystal Power wrote: May 30, 2023 8:27 pm Same for me and now that they've announced it I want to see more, especially the character art to at least get a vibe on what to expect going forward. As with Winds of Anthos I think two bachelors and two bachelorettes have been shown and while they already look less unique than One World the style is improved. I'm realizing we don't even have a title yet so that's a sign the wait is perhaps going to be longer than I hope, eheh..

I really wish the series would have expanded on the foundation created in Trio of Town going forward.
I do wish they gave us the art for protags but I guess they're in a stage where the art isn't even finalized. I think the character art might be very similar to the concept art of the upcoming multiplayer game they've shared since they seem to be taking a similar art direction for their titles lately. I just hope they fix the proportions of the character models this time and match them to look like the art.

If SoS AWL wasn't in the plans, I'm sure we could've gotten this by spring next year. I know there are two separate teams working but I'm sure the production of this title was slowed because of the planning team focusing on SoSAWL rather than this.
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Honestly, thinking about it, I may be even less excited for the games that I initially thought. Given the atmosphere of the gaming industry the past couple of years, I've been rather skeptical about getting excited for anything, even if it's a franchise I enjoy. Pokemon, Disgaea, Story of Seasons etc...I just can't get very excited about the new installments. Maybe it's just because of my own depression or something, but I'm always wary of buying a new game. Even Story of Seasons AWL, I'm wary about getting or even preordering. I know and am glad others are excited, and I myself am interested, but it's hard to be hyped. I've also read some certain comments and I've come to realize that maybe the series won't get better for me personally, though I did like PoOT well enough.

For example, I'm already dreading the multiplayer game for multiple reasons. I get why people like this in games, but at the same time it's a type of gameplay mode that can ruin a game. Also, I'm not sure about the Rune Factory games either. While the showcase was okay, nothing was really shown. I just hope the games will be more than decent. They don't need to be amazing, but please better than PoOT.

At the end of the day I think I'm just not sure how to feel. Really sucks when I can even be too sure on how to feels on things I enjoy.
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