Poot Poot Poot! A mainline Bokumono game set in a resort town that wants to be more resort-y. Available for Nintendo Switch, Steam/PC, and Ps4/5. [ Game Guide ] JP release = Feb 2021. NA = Mar 2021. EU = Mar 2021.
Oh man, I hate it so much. The animation is so slow and the sound is just...grating. (Grunt, grunt, grunt.) It doesn't ruin farming for me but it certainly doesn't incentivize it.
I do like the idea of leveling skills as you use them in a game like this, though! I'd really rather you be more likely to get quality crops from your skill level than boo-boo RNG. And I'd happily forgive the animation speed if we didn't have to use a bunch of different fertilizers this time...
The harvesting animation doesn't look bad, I've seen worse. The speed looks about standard for the other console games honestly. I assume watering can/hoe upgrades will be more important again as a result. Not that I minded the way they did things in SoS1/Trio, but there wasn't much of a... Point to upgrade them other than stamina consumption, and stamina was easy enough to manage. There's a lot of things I can't judge until I get my hands on the game to "feel" it. They're showing off the beginner level farming mechanics, but I kinda want to see what the progression is like. They keep showing off massive fields in the promo material after all. I wonder if sprinklers will be more of a convenience thing vs. a necessary thing. If the watering can, fully upgraded, can handle things just fine, I don't think I'll use sprinklers honestly because I like watering the crops by hand.
Also the animation speed in the video was kinda inconsistent. Like towards the end there was a row that they harvested really quickly. I think levels might influence things. Which is fine. It reminds me of Rune Factory but with more... tangible benefits.
I like the idea of leveling up my skills and getting better as it goes along, it's a touch of realism I like, that you naturally get better and faster at something as you learn to do it. I'm sure it's going to be annoying as heck at first, though.
The dlc is probably going to push me over the edge to get this game. The marriage candidates are just so meh.
Going after Raeger again, now that's a different story. I just started SoS again, playing as a guy which I'd not done before. I didn't really like any of the female candidates but every time I went to the restaurant... sigh. I restarted as a girl and am stalking and giving Raeger all types of goodies.
Although I feel like I've seen a few buildings with... "emptier" (not the right word I'm looking for, exactly) interiors, I absolutely love how the hotel looks in that video. I like the more modern take on the town design—at least this time around.
I love how much DLC there's going to be, though. Don't know if I['m interested in all of the marriage candidate dlc's, so we'll have to see how many I get. I'm at least getting the Neil one, though, since I couldn't really get into ANB but liked his character.
It does feel like some effort went into giving Olive Town interiors a pretty distinct style. I like the look of the first shop - everything on the table looks GARGANTUAN. Those crates have to be at least as long as the MC is tall. I'm reaching, but having crystals to display in the house would be awesome.
(And I must be playing too much Genshin Impact because at 10s the character at the counter, my first thought was...Diluc?)
Does it seem like we'll be getting a hotel restaurant? I know we've had inns that have served food but this feels more formal, somehow.
Fortunately the one at a time harvesting can be sped up by levelling up your field skills. The more you harvest, the faster you'll be, as you can see in that video clip of it. You can even see a difference with just one level up, though it's pretty small.
I do wonder why the video says 'Day 5' a one point, though. Did Marvelous write that on? Day 5 of the turnips growing, maybe?
Shan O 123 wrote:What’s up with going back to harvesting one at a time lol
Old school Harvest Moon! Lovin' it!
From someone who started playing in the Sunshine islands aura, I’m no stranger to the classic harvesting system. It was just surprising to see after SoS and trio went with harvesting in batches XD
That's the way, though, Shan...Bokumono always does this. Introduces great new mechanics, and takes them again again in the next game. Like having the cookbook reopen to the last recipe you used, instead of setting back to page one, recipe one, forcing you to tab over to the right category and then scrooooooooll down to the right recipe again and again, if you were trying to make multiples of the same recipe.
How could that ever be a good idea? Why ever change that back to the more inconvenient, time-consuming way? But they did. In Trio they went back to resetting the recipe every single time you opened the menu to cook. Just like they actually had sprinklers in the game before, but they've been gone for ages, to the point where many people think they are a new introduction to the series. But they existed once...they just got taken out. (I don't know what game they were in, originally...Kirie is the one who told me this.)
Though I don't mind harvesting one at a time if we have skills that level up and cause us to become faster/more effective. The first upgrade alone showed a small speed increase, so if you can upgrade multiple times, maybe you'll be able to harvest more than one at once, eventually.
At least if there's a mechanic tied to it I don't mind harvesting one at a time. Tbh it probably pairs a lot better with sprinklers, since I imagine we'll be working more in rows than 3x3's anyway. (Realized that as I was typing - it all ties together pretty nicely.)
The cooking mechanics don't make any sense, though. (Being fair, though, it's not just Marvelous. Nintendo makes similar doo-doo mistakes with the Zelda series. Example being having fairies unable to heal you if your health is full in one game, and then rolling that back in a subsequent game.)
In the age of social media it feels less like a mistake and more like blatant stupidity, though. Even if they don't realize before release how much better something feels for players, with social media I feel like they SHOULD, well before the next game. If they can afford a social media team, but aren't making use of it, that's on them.
Japanese players on Marvelous posts seem to be relentlessly complaining about the clock being too fast and not stopping indoors. Another person said they wanted a return to being able to control the passage of time (I don't know which game they refer to, but I do know you had food effects that could alter time passage in Trio, at least.) So you definitely get loads of feedback via official posts on social media, and quite quickly, too. Many of these thing would be quite small changes (like the menu reopening at the last recipe used.)
Well...since they're doing DLC, there's a tiny chance that we may get QoL upgrades with time if they are not native to the game itself on release. Practically every comment on the most recent MarvJP posting was complaints about the passage of time, so it can't be going unnoticed. Maybe some of the feedback will be taken under advisement.
I can't help but wonder if it's an issue surrounding the culture at Japanese game studios? :/ This sort of stubbornness around fan feedback seems to be chronic with a lot of the major ones. It's 2021! There's no excuse anymore for not providing QoL updates. Every game has at least some digital element, and if itty bitty indies can afford it, even studios the size of Marvelous should be able to.
I wouldn't even ask for some major overhaul. Just a few things that are simple enough to change. (Tying cooking to your last cooked recipe should be nothing.)
We did at least get...was it a bug fix? with the Trio DLC so...maybe you're right, Kikki.
The animation is so slow and the sound is just...grating. (Grunt, grunt, grunt.) It doesn't ruin farming for me but it certainly doesn't incentivize it. 
sigh. I restarted as a girl and am stalking and giving Raeger all types of goodies.
