I'm pressing "Yes" on recommending this game because of the promise it very clearly has, and the fact that it's EA, so it's very possible that much of its issues can be fixed. I wouldn't personally recommend this game for a majority of people. I think if you REALLY loved SDV and would settle for a good bit less than what it offered, this game should suffice. I think a pros/cons + comparisons is best here. The game I'll be using as a comparison is, of course, Stardew Valley. Sorry for the long review. Pros: - Lots of mechanics that are very fleshed out and highly detailed - Perspective is configurable, as are a plethora of other options in the game (I highly recommend you change the perspective to an eagle-eye view, playing on a flat plane as shown in some of the steam previews is extremely impractical and, frankly, borderline impossible) - Very charming and beautiful characters - Cards system (Not just scratch cards, but also buff cards, teleport cards, mini-quest cards, etc.) - Fun cooking system I could write a bunch about why these are good, but pros are best experienced for yourself if you play the game, so I'll just stick to describing the neithers and the cons. Neither pro nor con: - Pets/companions. They're useful, but hard to understand, and finicky to control. - Compost/Fertilizer system. It adds a layer of depth to farming, but it's very hard to set up, and even harder to make sustainable. - Events. There are seemingly a LOT of events, but even just finding them is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. For comparison, Stardew asked you to simply enter X part of the map, and the cutscene would trigger; this game requires that you stand in a specific area that isn't even remotely hinted at, and then press a button to trigger the cutscene. Story quests are hinted at; all other events aren't. - Character personalities. I like the variety of character personalities, but there is an oddly large amount of hunk types, and an even stranger gamer/nerd/loser type that's prevalent in at least 4 different characters. There's also a bit of a post-modern touch in some of them and their dialogue (*cough* Taru *cough*); the latter bits really don't fit in a farm/village type of setting (at least the hunk types I can understand). - The mines are exceedingly simple. It's almost inoffensive, in a way. I can't really say they're bad or too boring, but they're very... average . Cons: - Variety of mechanics and items. I actually bought this game because of the allure of "Stardew Valley but with LOTS of more mechanics and items", but this has taught me a lesson in meaningful simplicity. SDV keeps its systems concise, yet impactful. You learn how to make jams and pickles, you try your best to optimize it. Some ingredients are better for cooking, some prefer to be wines, some are best as gifts. You may need some for a bundle later down the line, so you'll save it. You learn what you're supposed to do with something pretty much as soon as you get your hands on it. This game doesn't understand that kind of simplicity. Your storage shed will never become full, but you'll be throwing in hundreds to thousands of completely, or practically useless items inside of it. The 30 or so mushrooms that exist in this game could have been condensed down to 5-6 different types; and the same goes for the fruits, the berries, the trees, the flowers, and so on. Instead you just have this absurd amount of meaningless variety in items. I find myself spending half my time playing just managing my inventory; and it's not that you don't have a sizeable inventory space - you do, and it's cheap to expand as well - it's just that it's a lot of things to juggle around. The mechanics are also very obscure. There's very little uniformity in the exact same mechanic; the same fertiilizer raises the NPK of soil at highly varied amounts, the same cluster type, compost input, and junk input will output at highly varied times, rarity of output is nearly impossible to control (composts are at least semi-manageable, clusters and junk are impossible to predict), even fertilized land doesn't really guarantee a bountiful harvest. - The map is very ugly. Not in that it looks bad, but that everything is awkwardly spread apart and certain places that really need fast travel points (i.e. the Arcade, Sunflower Farm, the various player houses) don't have them. It's not hard to understand - you just look at your map and figure it out - but the fact that the very characters who introduce you to the game somehow manage to practically hide themselves in the center of the map is just... weird. They don't have a fast-travel point, either, even though their place is very big, bigger and more varied than the beachside, let alone the wizard's house, the lodge, the mayor's house, etc. - Character favourite gifts make absolutely no sense. If they're placeholders, then okay, that's fine. But if it's randomly generated, then I've gotta say, that's not a good idea. It's VERY weird that the nurse likes maggots, or that the sailor likes a lethally poisonous mushroom. - The festivals need a rework, because they're extremely stiff. The Spring ones all feel very same-y, save for the cooking festival. - It is EXTREMELY easy to skyrocket in money in this game. Before Spring ended, I'd already made over 100k, and I didn't know a single thing about the game. - There is some very cringe-worthy dialogue which really just seems like the manifestation of the writers' personal gripes/opinions. Magnus, Argus, Taru, Harold... some others I can't remember off the top of my head. All feels out of place, especially given the setting of the town and the personalities of the involved characters. There are some other minor issues like bugs and things I can't recall off the top of the domepiece, so this isn't a comprehensive faults list (nor a comprehensive list of positives). All being said, there's definitely something here. LOTS of work needs to be done to make this game really worth playing, however. If I didn't like specifically this exact type of game, I probably would've dropped it in the first day of playing.
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