Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Review – Putting The Past In “Pastoral”

Much like an axe, sickle, or hoe, nostalgia is a strong device. In Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, it is what leads your farmer to return to Forgotten Valley in hopes of making a life just like the idyllic one led by their dad and mom. It’s additionally what led me–clad in my most interesting, rose-tinted glasses–to revisit A Wonderful Life with its latest remake. As I downloaded this new model of a recreation I as soon as sunk a number of hours into for my Nintendo Switch, I reminisced in regards to the first time I performed the sport twenty years ago–the really feel of my grandparents’ itchy carpet, the satisfying “click” of my purple GameCube closing earlier than it kicked right into a comfortable whir… It was by no means my favourite Harvest Moon game–that spot was reserved for Back to Nature–but it was one which I discovered distinctive and pleasant.In some methods, I additionally really feel that means about its 2023 remake. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a really totally different kind of farming simulator in that it is one which focuses extra on relationships, household, and legacy than farm work. It’s an idea I can get behind, and A Wonderful Life’s emphasis on streamlining gameplay and eliminating tedium is a breath of contemporary air. However, regardless of social-sim dynamics being on the forefront of A Wonderful Life, participant interactions and the neighborhood itself really feel shallow. Although the character creation course of is perhaps extra concerned than ever, few NPCs are memorable, dialogue is scarce, and the sport’s idyllic setting turns eerie rapidly as a result of city’s vacant environment. Yet if I issue out this less-than-wonderful content material, not all that a lot is left, making A Wonderful Life really feel dated and empty–especially when in comparison with different video games within the now-highly saturated farming recreation style.The farmer and Takakura discover two canines.Like most farming sims, A Wonderful Life begins with a letter–only this time it is despatched out of your character fairly than to you. After rising bored with life within the metropolis, your character pens a letter to your dad and mom’ former good friend, Takakura, informing him of your intention to return to Forgotten Valley and take over your dad and mom’ previous farm. Upon your arrival, Takakura affords your farmer a cow, an honest sum of cash, and a tutorial that superbly walks the superb line between overbearing and uninformative, earlier than supplying you with whole management over your character and farm.This tutorial–and how straightforward these notes are to entry in any respect times–comes in clutch on account of how dramatically totally different A Wonderful Life is from different farming sims. Whereas video games like Stardew Valley and the overwhelming majority of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons video games offer you a big, dilapidated discipline, your A Wonderful Life farm begins in a neat and tidy state with solely two small plots of land–one with poor soil high quality and one with common high quality, an element which regularly comes into play. The bulk of your farm is a fenced-off discipline your livestock can graze upon, which rapidly informs you that animal husbandry must be your focus and is the largest money-maker; it is a dramatically totally different method to farming sims, which typically depend on crops to get your money flowing. Ultimately, these qualities really make A Wonderful Life an incredible farming sim for style newcomers to get into–there’s much less to handle, much less to do, and quite a bit much less to fret about.However, for these extra aware of the style that is solely the start of the lengthy listing of variations. For instance, you can not ship any objects you forage or collect in A Wonderful Life–that bin is reserved solely for objects you harvest. Instead, you have to wait till the touring salesman Van involves city or arrange your individual stall within the middle of city, in hopes that your wandering neighbors will see your sales space and slowly enterprise over. Furthermore, a yr in A Wonderful Life is barely 40 days lengthy, with every season representing 10 of these days and containing one vacation. This means time goes by rapidly and duties that you’d typically do daily–such as watering your vegetation and milking your cow–can and must be accomplished twice a day on this recreation. This additionally provides the sport the room it must span a number of years, giving gamers the fantastic alternative to observe their neighborhood change and their future little one develop.And whereas there are a handful of issues you possibly can improve in your farm and in your stock, there’s zero useful resource amassing and attaining these upgrades does not really feel like a lot of a spotlight. In truth, fairly than having any form of farming or monetary targets, the sport emphasizes that you have to get married in your first yr of dwelling in Forgotten Valley–or else the sport will finish.One of the city’s bachelorettes, Cecilia.This is the place you begin to expertise some friction. While a streamlined farm and shortened calendar sounds nice in concept, its execution in A Wonderful Life leaves quite a bit to be desired. Outside of tending to your farm and choosing random herbs and flowers, there are basically 5 issues you are able to do: Visit the town, go to the Harvest Sprites to seize a recipe, socialize together with your neighbors, mine, and fish. That appears like an honest quantity, proper? Here’s the issue: Each considered one of these actions is extremely shallow and boring. To go to the town, you go to the outskirts of city, point out that you’re keen to spend six hours visiting the town, after which the display goes black and you come six hours later. I’m nonetheless unsure if it really does something.Visiting the Harvest Sprites entails consuming a mushroom, getting into their house, after which speaking to considered one of them to get a recipe. If you strive speaking to the opposite two, they will simply repeat that they do not have a recipe for you right now. Mining consists of getting into a tiny dig site–probably made up of 15 squares–being handed a shovel, and repeatedly digging on the similar squares in an try to seek out fossils. And fishing sees you forged your line, wait to your bobber to sink, after which maintain down a button. That is it.However, socialization is perhaps essentially the most irritating half. Seeing as I’m informed emphatically and regularly that I must marry somebody in an effort to stay in Forgotten Valley, which in fact feels unusual in itself, attending to know somebody is clearly an enormous precedence. But there are just a few issues with this: The of us you possibly can marry are largely stationary and uninteresting, coronary heart occasions are temporary and never notably gripping, and presents and dialogue really feel impersonal. While I’m delighted developer Marvelous added same-sex marriage to the sport, it does not make up for the truth that the candidates aren’t essentially the most energetic group of individuals. I gravitated in direction of Matthew and Molly in my playthrough, as they exuded essentially the most character, however everybody else felt roughly one-note. While I in the end married Matthew, the romance did not really feel participating or earned. Though I loved Matthew’s Darcy-esque character, it did not really feel as if we acquired to know each other, bonded, and fell in love. And perhaps I’m simply sappy, however that is a sense I’m fairly keen on in any video games with a romance factor and would have most popular to expertise as an alternative of the compelled state of affairs we’re provided.The farmer and Takakura go to the close by farm.Even with regard to friendship, the city is simply… vacant. It’s a phrase I preserve coming again to, however one which aptly describes Forgotten Valley, a spot the place issues like a common retailer, library, college, museum–any form of energetic and purposeful constructing, really–don’t exist. Dialogue is commonly recycled, the townsfolk seldom work together with one another, and the city is extra crammed with unusual scientists than individuals who really feel like a part of a tight-knit neighborhood. While there may be this core of sentimentality right here, you must look extraordinarily arduous to see it–and that in the end makes for a extremely isolating expertise. Oh, you may as well full merchandise requests to your neighbors, but it surely occurs so sometimes, it is one thing I’m solely simply now remembering exists. To be fairly trustworthy, there have been a number of days I went to mattress earlier than the solar had even set–there was nothing to do, nobody to see, and standing by a river hitting a button to reel in a fish each 20 seconds simply did not sound tremendous interesting.Some issues break up the monotony–holidays, occasions together with your little one, and watching them develop up (which might be the good function and makes the fast calendar price it) are good. The recreation’s graphics and music are pretty sufficient, gameplay is considerably smoother than it was within the unique, and its streamlined method to farming and quality-of-life updates, resembling including NPC icons to your map so you do not have to look very arduous to seek out folks, are good options. Unfortunately, the whole package deal is simply not sufficient.Back in 2003, A Wonderful Life provided a refreshing and nostalgic tackle the farming sim style. However, even then, it felt a bit empty when in comparison with what many different simulation video games had been doing. While Marvelous added higher inclusivity, readability, and extra occasions and dialogue, it does not preserve this 2023 remake from feeling empty and caught prior to now.