I used to be a massive Harvest Moon fan long ago. So long ago that most readers probably don’t know it, seeing as I started this blog in the twilight of my farming game career. I haven’t played one since I tried Harvest Moon: A New Beginning four years ago, and even that didn’t really count since 1. It sucked and 2. the 3DS started misbehaving for real right around that time.
The reason it’s been so long since I played a Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game is because I don’t really like them any more. But as the years since passed, I couldn’t remember why I stopped liking them. So, seeing as I’m running out of stuff to play on the 3DS anyway, I thought I’d give the series another try, see if I could recapture some of that lost magic.
Alas, the attempt ended in failure. I wanted to play for a full game year at least before saying anything, but I couldn’t last that long. Out of respect for my past love, I won’t bash Story of Seasons too much. I’ll just rant incoherently for a few paragraphs and then conclude this post.
Oh right, before that, I should mention that although I’m using “Harvest Moon” and “Story of Seasons” interchangeably, I am aware that Natsume stole the Harvest Moon name some years back and have been producing their own games since then. IMO it was an unethical move, but the truth is, I’m not a very loyal gamer. I don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘loyal’, if a game is fun I will play it. It just happens that word of mouth on the Natsume games is very negative so I haven’t bothered to try them. So in this post both “Harvest Moon” and “Story of Seasons” refer to Marvelous’s series of farming games, not to the uglier knock-offs.
🥕Now I think of it, the beginning of the end for me and the series was the change of the in-game clock so that 1 hour is 1 real-time minute. It’s too slow for me, especially once coupled with store openings and closings. I often found myself standing outside the general store or restaurant waiting for them to open, which is a massive waste of time IMO. Then you add in that stupid thing they did with watering crops twice a day for better quality and I’m just dead.
🥕Speaking of which, the focus on raising higher level crops through fertilizer/more watering/longer harvest times is something else that turned me off. I just want to grow my turnips and sell them, why do I have to have to bother with the rest of that stuff?
🥕In general it’s because the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series became such a slow but fiddly and annoying game that I stopped. It’s okay to be slow and relaxing. It’s okay to be a highly complicated management simulation. But Story of Seasons barely innovates from game to game, instead they keep adding more and more annoying elements like crop levels, wild animals and swimming, unfun distractions that take away from the core of the game.
Thanks. Get out of my castle now.
🥕It’s also because they started including random elements like random shop stock and random openings that I lost interest. I woke up with excitement on Summer 1 and ran down to the general store to get my summer crops and all the old man had for sale was a single bag of onion seed. ONE bag of seed. Am I a joke to you?
🥕The game also has this trading depot place which is the only place where you can sell stuff. They show up on a pattern I can’t discern. AND their stock is random. Why did they change the perfectly good shipping box system on the farm? It slows game progression considerably when I can’t reliably get the money I need when I need it.
🥕Plus Marvelous enlarged the world of the game unnecessarily so I have to walk or ride a horse for ages to get anywhere. Sometimes I really don’t want to go into town, I just want to putter around and sleep. But to get or sell any items I have no choice but to go, and the process is just so lengthy and tedious. You see what I mean about unnecessary additions and distractions?
🥕Having to trek to town every day also dampened my ardor for the waifu and relationship aspects of the game. Normally I enjoy giving people milk and eggs and stuff so they like me more, but the distance is too far to do so enjoyably. Not to mention I haven’t met any viable waifu candidates yet. Rich girl is too high maintenance (thanks for the horse tho), the nurse is too boring and all the other women are married.
No you can’t. Not until you win some stupid competition.
🥕The last straw, and the moment I noped out of this Story of Seasons was when the guild announced competitions for rental fields. I admit I was minorly intrigued when I saw the grain fields and beehives dotted around town. Not knowing the game wouldn’t let me use them freely. Instead I would have to “compete” for the right with other farmers. And not once and for all but regularly.
Luckily I was alone when this happened, so only I heard the expletive I muttered under my breath at that revelation as I turned the 3DS off and found better things to do with my life.
TL;DR
It’s not them, it’s me. I’ve changed too much. When I play a game, I either want a simple, no-fuss affair or I want to go all in with the systems in a properly-designed game. The current breed of Story of Seasons games seem to go out of their way to frustrate and slow down the gamer. Instead of letting us progress at our own pace, they throw all kinds of obstacles in our way. Long tutorials, large areas of nothing, random stock, dating events, pointless competitions. It’s slow, frustrating, unsatisfying. The reason why I say “it’s me” is because fans still seem to be happy with it. More power to them. I’m done here.
I’m exactly the same. I loved the series once. But now everything goes by just too slow, has too much micro-management and added bells and whistles, and progress often locked away behind dumb shit. That counts for both, Marvelous’ Story of Seasons and Natsume’s Harvest Moons btw, even if the later don’t offer as much superfluous content.
Stardew Valley is really amazing, tho, if one can look past how dead-ugly it is.
I’ll give Stardew some thought. I’m over the whole farming game thing, but I’ve heard a lot about it.
The Doraemon Story of Seasons game looks really tempting as well. I’m such a sucker for watercolor art.
Oh my, that sounds like a pure macromanaging nightmare… And I own that game! Maybe I’ll skip playing it entirely, pawn it and get Persona Q2 instead.
If you already have it, you might as well play it. But TBH this is really bad and full of inconveniences.