Do you create your own challenges for your HM/SoS games?

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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Rose Petals
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I have started doing this with my games, and I find it such a blast. Kinda like the legacy challenge for the sims games.

I start with one game, where this farmer is my "founder," and choose what the farm name will be in all of them. Then when their child is born, when I have achieved all game goals, I take note of the child's name and birthday, then use that for the next game. I did it before with Sunshine Island, Grand Bazaar and ToTT, when I wanted to play as male farmers to get to know the bachelorettes mostly because I am bored with most games' bachelors. That was the legacy of "Lucre Farm." Each generation would find money gaining exploits to get money fast, like the flour and rice trick for ToTT. But I lost my DS, and couldn't really finish it.

I've started a new one, when I started with Rune Factory 5, my character's daughter Sarah, I pretend that some magic happened where she got sent away to the future and is adopted, now starting up the legacy of Rune Farm in Trio of Towns. I plan on her having a son. When she achieves all her goals, her son will "move" to Echo Village in ANB to continue the legacy of Rune Farm. Not sure how many games or "Generations" this legacy will go through, but the goal is to beat 3 generations. Eventually, I will draw a family tree of all the generations.

So, what challenges do you come up with to keep the game fun?



Edit: I added the rules I put together for the legacy challenge here; HM/SoS Legacy Challenge.
Last edited by Rose Petals on Jun 23, 2022 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Shan O 123
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I really don’t have the strength for challenges cuz I’d lose interest instantly. But lol a legacy thing isn’t a bad idea.
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Yes, sometimes I do create some sort of goal or challenges for me to do when I play these games. I don’t do the generations thing though because I’d personally just like to think of my character and their family living happily together and doing whatever in the future, not everyone has to be a farmer. Also if you marry certain characters certain future entries might be a little awkward due to reused casts and returnees, for example if you marry Cam in Tott and their descendant in SoS marries or even does heart events with Kamil (No Kamil, please don’t say “ciao babe” to your granddaughter on Spring Harmony day!). But that does sound like a cool idea of connecting all your games together and creating one set storyline.

As for me, I am going to do a no marriage run of HM tree of tranquility after I finish RF5 and I am really looking forward to that.

As for other challenges outside the main objectives, it depends on the game, sometimes I work on certain aspects of my farm to make them to my liking, like in trio I grew enough flowers to decorate my farm in a certain style. In the original SoS, I aimed to decorate the town with as many cherry blossom trees and fountains as possible (which required a lot of materials). Hmm… it looks like most of my challenges have to do with farming or customisation.

Perhaps an interesting challenge outside of farming would be how low can you keep everyone’s friendship levels in a year without giving disliked gifts or dumping trash? Or maybe how far you can progress in a game without farming? I would like to try these in another playthrough but that kind of slows down the game a bit.
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Rose Petals
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Somerandom wrote: Jun 10, 2022 5:39 pm Also if you marry certain characters certain future entries might be a little awkward due to reused casts and returnees, for example if you marry Cam in Tott and their descendant in SoS marries or even does heart events with Kamil (No Kamil, please don’t say “ciao babe” to your granddaughter on Spring Harmony day!).
:lol: That would be awkward! Luckily, I won't have that problem. I worked out the kinks where "crossover" romantic interests are off the table. I was never a big Cam or Reina fan anyway, or even Dirk. I did sorta pre-plan who they might marry. I have at least two options for each game/generation and see what happens there. I already pre-planned who I would marry in SoS. My 3oT character Sarah, her grandchild will be a girl, and will marry Fritz. Then if I do get to ToTT, I think I will probably be a girl and probably marry Kana or Ash. Or if I make them a boy farmer, probably Georgia. If I get that far. At the moment, my goal is just 3DS games, then back to SoS: FoMT on Switch for gen 4. Then see where it goes from there, legacy wise. The way I'm planning, it will go as RF5 as my founder, then 3oT (I'm doing now,) then ANB, then SoS, then SoS: FoMT. I'm giving PoOT a miss, mostly because I didn't like it. If I want to go further, it will probably be HMDSCute, and then let the gender of the child decide the next generation's town/game. I need to do some work around with both DSCute and SI, because child's gender is random and difficult to influence.

A no marriage run in ToT would be interesting! :O A game I think would be interesting for a no marriage run is AP, because it kinda forces you to for New Game+. On my saves, I'm usually married and got both kids before I ring the last bell.
Shan O 123 wrote: Jun 10, 2022 5:36 pm I really don’t have the strength for challenges cuz I’d lose interest instantly. But lol a legacy thing isn’t a bad idea.
Legacy challenges are fun. Even if you don't do the extra stuff, it could be over in 2 game years. Just get married, and get to at least the birth of the kid.
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Lol I even didn’t have enough games to do that XD
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How many games do you have? It doesn't have to be that many. You could even do a legacy with one game, just pretend that everyone is identical descendants, and choose a different spouse each time. Pull a whole A Wonderful Life and HMDS/Cute with the xerox copy ancestors thing.

I only have so many options because I've collected them all since FoMT first came out. I did try two HM games after the SoS and HM split, but didn't like them so I carried on collecting SoS. I do have a couple GameCube and Wii HM games, but I sadly can't play them. I have all DS, 3DS and a couple Switch games as my options.
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On a first playthrough the most I think I would ever do is to is limit myself on system exploitation (like, easy ways of making money). I'd rather explore the game slowly then, and I've played enough of these that I don't feel like making things easier on myself is going to benefit me.

Replays though, challenge runs can be fun! Like trying to set a 'theme' for the farm. Maybe it's an orchard, or a ranch, and you have to limit yourself on whatever else you do with the farm. Can't really get away with that as much in newer games since you have item checklists to get through the main story. But if I can build up my farm as much as I want without bothering with the story, I won't worry about it.

It's definitely a way to get more out of the game, that's for sure. :) Has anybody ever tried speedrunning a HM/SoS game?
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Theme farms are so much fun! I did that with the first Story of Seasons game. Mostly because I wanted to test just how customisable the farm was. The maker buildings make this so easy to do. In my experimentation, I had a cheese farm, where I only had cows as animals. Then a textile farm, that grew cotton, flax, and had animals that produced wool or fur to turn into cloth.
Mikodesu wrote: Jun 10, 2022 9:19 pm Has anybody ever tried speedrunning a HM/SoS game?
I kinda did this! I tried with the first release of FoMT for the GBA. I was crazy obsessed with this game. I literally played it for like 5 hours a day for years. I forgot what my shortest time was. I think my goal was to see how fast I could win every single festival in a year complete. If I got even one loss that year, it was a fail that year. I might actually try that again in another game.
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I force myself to spread out upgrades so I'll have things to unlock later in the game. Same thing with cosmetic stuff, such as furniture and costumes. Wear or display them for at least a full season (sometimes longer, depending on the game) before moving on to the next. It lengthens the experience.
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That is fun! I used to something like that in Animal Parade, where I would choose a specific outfit for my farmer and the kids for each season and change them into them. Jewellery and everything. Or redecorate the whole house based on the season.
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Okay I figured out how to do the Legacy challenge with only one game. The DLC areas in PoOT are separate from the main game and isn’t connected . So if I start with the ANB candidates, and work may way up in game order, the child I’d end up with one of the Trio candidates will marry someone in Olive Town
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Oh! That is handy. I don't use DLC personally, but that is really useful for other players that do.

My legacy reached the next generation! I finished all the Farmer Tips. Sarah's son Wade is still a baby, but I don't need to play until he is "all grown up." I don't mind not getting all towns to S rank. I went in to the game just planning to focus more on farm tips. Now onto ANB! :D
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Since money is usually so much easier to come by than raw materials in these games, I make it a rule not to buy anything I could conceivably make or find myself. This makes the game go by much more gradually and I find that I still have goals to aim for years into a run.

On my current run of HM DS Cute for example, I'm wrapping up saving the last few sprites and the ones that require the combined construction of (I think) 8 barns and chicken coops are keeping me occupied now that I'm finally patient enough to wait to marry Cliff. Each barn takes around 500 stone lumber to construct, and while, yeah, I have enough money to buy the materials directly from Gotz 100 times over, it feels much more rewarding, and a much better use of my maxed out tools, to collect them myself.

I've also been experimenting with making the romance system more challenging, like barring myself from giving any gifts and purposefully giving all the incorrect answers in heart events. Island of Happiness had a really interesting system where each time you gave the wrong answer, the next event would be totally different than the "correct" route. I hope they try something like this again, it really makes repeat playthroughs more interesting!
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GenesisLove wrote: Jun 15, 2022 10:20 am Since money is usually so much easier to come by than raw materials in these games, I make it a rule not to buy anything I could conceivably make or find myself. This makes the game go by much more gradually and I find that I still have goals to aim for years into a run.
I am going to try this when I get around to Sunshine Island! It gets way too tempting to just pay more to not have to collect lumber or material stone. It does seem like fun. Kinda like how in ToTT, you can only upgrade once a season and had to collect your own materials. That is probably the only HM game since the first release of FoMT, where I had fun playing for years after the child was born. It takes like 8 years to fully upgrade both farms. Sunshine Island gets boring for me really quickly, which is a shame because it has the best range of bachelors and bachelorettes than some games. I adore Julia, Lanna, Natalie, Shea, Vaughn and Denny.
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Shan O 123
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GenesisLove wrote: Jun 15, 2022 10:20 am Since money is usually so much easier to come by than raw materials in these games, I make it a rule not to buy anything I could conceivably make or find myself. This makes the game go by much more gradually and I find that I still have goals to aim for years into a run.

On my current run of HM DS Cute for example, I'm wrapping up saving the last few sprites and the ones that require the combined construction of (I think) 8 barns and chicken coops are keeping me occupied now that I'm finally patient enough to wait to marry Cliff. Each barn takes around 500 stone lumber to construct, and while, yeah, I have enough money to buy the materials directly from Gotz 100 times over, it feels much more rewarding, and a much better use of my maxed out tools, to collect them myself.

I've also been experimenting with making the romance system more challenging, like barring myself from giving any gifts and purposefully giving all the incorrect answers in heart events. Island of Happiness had a really interesting system where each time you gave the wrong answer, the next event would be totally different than the "correct" route. I hope they try something like this again, it really makes repeat playthroughs more interesting!
I personally don’t have the patience to get or craft anything that I just can easily buy lol
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