I enjoy this game but how do others feel about it?

Where're the crops?! Searching the world for seed wisps on Nintendo Switch, Steam Ps4, and Xbox. [ Game Guide ] JP release = None. NA release = Mar 2021. EU release = Mar 2021.
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Eemeena
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Post  Posted:

I enjoy this game a lot but I've read a lot of bad reviews. Do others love this game or areyou justtolerating it? One review I read described it as as a shell of it's former self.
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Kikki
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Beware of ALL reviews on Natsume products. They often start off with an axe to grind, raging about Natsume 'stealing the name' of Harvest Moon and ruining it with their 'cheap knock-offs' or whatever other things people say over and over, often baselessly.

That isn't to say that all negative reviews are biased, mind you. Some are quite fair.

There are currently multiple threads going on right now that will tell you how people are liking One World. :) The 'first impressions' thread, for example. In general it appears that most people who decided to try this game even though they had reservations have been pleasantly surprised. There are some complaints, of course...that will always be true of every game, in this series and any other, in any genre. I think this is a better game than their last one, or the one before that. Whether it's better than Skytree depends on what aspects you like most. If you liked being able to terraform, that's gone now. But the characters are much better, and the character graphics are also greatly improved...the candidates are quite appealing, imo.

They've really changed things up this time with the cast, and adding a portable farm and separate farms for each region, each with their own growing conditions to allow you to grow...I think it was over 230 crops (that includes mutations, of course).

I don't like all the constant running around you have to do to gather seeds and so on, and I like really involved farming and don't feel like One World's farming is satisfying. Basically I feel I spend too much time running from place to place and not enough time tending crops and animals. But that's my personal preference.

I definitely advise looking at the other threads to see all the opinions that have already been posted. :)
RodCopper Fishin
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I’m enjoying this game! I’m pretty easy to please though lol but I am actively enjoying it. The characters really brought it to life and I’m enjoying discovering mutations and collecting seeds a lot. Currently working towards having the baby, so that’ll be another feature to enjoy! Music is pretty good too. I usually play all games on mute because of newly developed sensory issues, but I’m able to play this one with sound on.
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I like the story, and having several towns of their own unique characters is nice. The graphics are decently good. I'd prefer the game be less challenging in gameplay.

Keep on improving, Natsume.
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« Harvest Goddess » i read a review that just pissed me off lmao. they kept comparing it to older harvest moon games (Specifically, they bring up a wonderful life) after acknowledging this isn't from the same devs? like if you acknowledge it isn't the same people you can't be like "WELL IT WAS BETTER BEFORE"

also i feel like if what you want out of SOS is a wonderful life all the newer ones are real dissapointing lmao
RodCopper Fishin
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This is my first time actually perusing game reviews, and I’m shocked by all the criticism. Not sure if it’sa new trend or what.
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Mikodesu
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I'm fairly sure a large part of the community still doesn't understand the "Harvest Moon" name shenanigan. Any review has to be read with that question in mind: how much does this person understand about what they're playing?

As for me I would say One World is a very worthwhile experience. It still feels unsteady - if I can put it that way. If Natsume could afford a programmer who can really get their games running well they would be in a lot better shape, because the IDEAS are there. People today are really unforgiving about graphical fidelity, which is probably the hardest selling point for Natsume's Harvest Moon games.

If I could summarize it quickly I'd say One World is an improved iteration of Skytree Village, which was an improvement on Lost Valley. The only people who would disagree (imo) would be those who really enjoyed terraforming.

I've enjoyed my time enough that I'm considering getting the DLC. :)
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The sad thing is, a lot of people who *think* they understand the name controversy don't actually know as much as they think they do. Marvelous is the one who decided to release the series under a new name, not Natsume. They're also not the original Bokumono developers any more than Natsume is, yet they're frequently referred to as such. The gaming press has always treated the Natsume games unfairly, unfortunately. That's not to say there isn't legitimate criticism, but there's a lot out there that's said in bad faith. Which is really a shame, since Natsume is clearly working hard to improve on each new game. I wish more people could view this as "now we have TWO awesome farming series to play," especially since this has been an under-served genre for so long. Personally I'm loving OW to bits and hope people will give it a chance.
AcornLady404
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Lirishae wrote:The sad thing is, a lot of people who *think* they understand the name controversy don't actually know as much as they think they do. Marvelous is the one who decided to release the series under a new name, not Natsume. They're also not the original Bokumono developers any more than Natsume is, yet they're frequently referred to as such. The gaming press has always treated the Natsume games unfairly, unfortunately. That's not to say there isn't legitimate criticism, but there's a lot out there that's said in bad faith. Which is really a shame, since Natsume is clearly working hard to improve on each new game. I wish more people could view this as "now we have TWO awesome farming series to play," especially since this has been an under-served genre for so long. Personally I'm loving OW to bits and hope people will give it a chance.
Huh, not to argue, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Marvelous and Natsume had a falling out but that since Natsume had the copyright to the Harvest Moon name (at least stateside) that Marvelous had to start using Story of Seasons.

In regards to the main topic, I'm enjoying the game more than expected. I stopped with Natsume games after seeds of memories and lost valley as everything that came after seemed to be seeds of memories again and again. Not a big fan of crop mutation but it is interesting. My main complaint is the time issue and the wisps (while cute and fun ) would prefer if that after finding the wisps the seeds would be available in the shops afterwards (at least the base seeds). Time needs to slow in general, and freeze when inside a building or mine.

And make it easier to get from town to town on foot or riding (winding roads are pretty but annoying against a fast clock).
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Kikki
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AcornLady404 wrote:Huh, not to argue, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Marvelous and Natsume had a falling out but that since Natsume had the copyright to the Harvest Moon name (at least stateside) that Marvelous had to start using Story of Seasons.
Yep, that's incorrect, in that there was never any discussion on the matter, and it wasn't really a falling out...it was just a flat out dropping of Natsume by Marvelous, and Marv never even asked for the name. Marvelous specifically went right up to Natsume and said they weren't going to use them as localizers any more and that they (Marv) would be localizing the game from then on with their own subsidiary under a new name. Which is perfectly in their right and probably the most sensible business decision for Marv, but it left Natsume with the greasy end of the stick, and everyone blames Natsume for it all, when it was all done by Marvelous' will, not theirs. (Though you could argue that Natsume shouldn't have tried to carry on on their own with the name Harvest Moon, even though Marv didn't want it...but they were in a tight spot and even though I hate the confusion it caused, I really can't blame them.)

A quote from Hiro Maekawa (Natsume president) from an interview on the topic from 2015:
Hiro Maekawa wrote:Roughly three years ago, Marvelous notified us that they were not going to license their Bokujo Monogatari series to Natsume anymore, and that they were going to release the series by themselves under a different brand name. Needless to say, we were surprised by this decision.
Btw, seeds do become available to purchase in shops. You just have to ship enough of them to unlock them for sale. I think Lirishae said the base crops are 15 each (to ship) and first level mutations are 30.
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Getaris
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Yeah some fans and random people online seem to like the narrative that natsume somehow spat on the face of marvelous and ripped the harvest moon name out of their poor vulnerable hands, with malice and evil intentions... But the truth seems to be a lot more boring than that.

It all points to it all being more of a “kthxbye” on the part of marvelous. They no longer saw the need to work with natsume, and so decided to stop doing business with them.

On the subject of One World, I don’t often play a game for 5 hours on release day. So that’s a good indicator I liked it, I think. I do hope they update it and tweak the little things to make it better, like the time being so fast, sprinklers malfunctioning, and the performance issues here and there.
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Kikki wrote:I think Lirishae said the base crops are 15 each (to ship) and first level mutations are 30.
It's the other way around :) The base crops take 30 sales to unlock, and mutations are 15. So far, first and second tier mutations all seem to be fifteen sales each.
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Lirishae wrote:I wish more people could view this as "now we have TWO awesome farming series to play," especially since this has been an under-served genre for so long. Personally I'm loving OW to bits and hope people will give it a chance.
This this this. I'm always weary when I say I enjoy the Nats HMs and people act like I therefore can't like SoS, or vice-versa. I just like growing tomatoes and wooing pixel spouses, y'all. It's fine if you don't like it, but you aren't doing anything by dogpiling because of that, especially on people who express interest. If one more person on Twitter tells me, "this isn't a REAL Harvest Moon game." :roll: Just. Stop.

As for me, I'm at 100 hours in the game now, somewhere in year...4, I think? (I stopped paying attention to the dates a long time ago, lol.) I think that should say it all? Lmao
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to be honest, the only reason i haven't gotten one world is i want PoOT. and i'm broke as hell right now. AND. Natsume tends to put their « Cow Poopoo » on sale more often/frequently so i'm hoping to get it for Not Full Price at some point.

also if i can actually wait other folks gripes will probs be sorted to some degree--
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PaleSunflower
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To all the people who people who explained the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons split, I thank you. So many reviewers don't understand that a different developer often means a different product and I'm annoyed by them, especially since, in this instance, Marvelous is still around, making the same kind of games as they did before the split. It's not like the evil Natsume stole Marvelous' main source of income, causing poor Marvelous to shrivel up and go bankrupt.

Taking about reviewers, a lot of the reviews I saw mentioned the game having significant lag and pop-in and crashing a lot. While the game does have some lag and pop-in even on a good day, they are not significant (in my opinion). The crashes are likely from the common reviewer practice of binging the game for a whole day in order to finish the review as fast as possible. HM:OW does have a significant glitch, but it's easy to avoid by turning the game off every once in while. I'll post what I know about these issues from a different thread.
PaleSunflower wrote:Update:
Anna_Lynn wrote:I recall reading a YouTube comment in a review video for this game that the memory cache doesn't clean itself out while playing, which is why it frequently crashes if you play for 10+ hours straight. Closing out of the game entirely "empties" the memory cache, and powering off the console helps too. So word of advice, try not to simply put the switch in sleep-mode with the game still running. :lol:
While this information has not been confirmed, many players have noticed that the game runs better when the game is turned off every once in a while. If you are suffering from frequent crashes or freezes, turning the game or the console off and turning it on again may help.

Edit - I misunderstood something. It turns out that Marvelous is not the original developer of HM/SoS, as Lirishae pointed out. I have edited my post to reflect this.
Last edited by PaleSunflower on Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
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