ChaosAzerothCat wrote:
Not true, I use all fields and there are requirements lime the processed that's a pain for one reason and wallpaper/garden items/etc that's a pain for other reasons.
Also to me tools are core game stuff, I'm not a giant fan of tool upgrades being hidden behind marriage in Skytree either. Tools are core HM/SoS stuff and when they hide it lime that I'm not a fan.
Clearly it all comes down to how people play, we're both equally valid here because there is no right/wrong. But felt the need to address that part because after being on my 2nd play I'm even finding that less true than before.
Again, I never felt the need to use all the fields but the ones that had exclusive items (so only the mushroom/honey one and the water paddy), and I unlocked every vendor, every golden crop, got every crop but a few golden ones to 5*, caught all the king fish, made every outfit while only having one of each animal and made a fortune without abusing flax much. Took me 5 years, but heh, I only got married in year 3, so I did it all while I waited for my children to grow up. I was not in a hurry.
It all comes down to how people play, and the last two tool upgrades felt as superflous as all the competition fields personally. For me, marriage is way more essential than tool upgrades, so locking marriage behing sprites and notes is way more annoying to me than unlocking tool upgrades. But I can completely understand the sentiment; let's just hope there's never a game that locks both features at the same time.
At least SoS offers a difficulty option, whereas other games in franchise don't. Boy, do I wish DS had that. I feel like seedling is fair for those who hate the grind. And at least in SoS, if you work really hard at it, you can sort of go at it at your own pace; I unlocked vendors fast because I abused the one crop dishes and used the grass trick to take care of the seeds, vesture and processed goods requirement in one go. I only used the most basic objects to unlock ice country, so all I did was use Eda's farm to grow tons of wood for about a season and a half and it was done before I knew it. I also bought the tools from Otmar. The most annoying requirement was honestly the outfits one, but I was done with it by the middle of year 2 without using all the other fields and blowing my stamina.
It's not like ToTT, where you can exhaust almost everything else and still be doing the storyline because the darn carpenter refuses to give you tunnel requests. Now that is padding at its best. But again, people have different tastes.
I can agree that SoS is the slowest game if people are talking about unlocking all the animals and some blueprints though, since you have to play until year 4 to get them all at minimum. Even more if you count the travelling salesmen's blueprints. That, I admit, is truly « Puppy Doodoo ». I liked how you could unlock the later animals in ANB by having your animals give birth a certain number of times; it's the only time I ever dove into breeding in these games save for a AWL.