Story of Seasons

3DS Game Review Written By: Adolph Vega

3D

The gameplay for Story of Seasons is from a top down birds-eye perspective, and you view your character’s avatar as he/she runs around the in game environment. The 3D within this game is mostly depth related as you’re looking down into the game’s world. As the player, you have the ability to zoom the camera in or out, and certain objects will appear closer or farther away from you. For example, you can clearly see how certain tree sections seem to be higher in elevation than others, because it’s deeper in the 3D. The game does have a few instances where the 3D visuals look great, and this is related to the extreme weather conditions. The heavy snow and heavy rain look fantastic in 3D, and you see the particle effects between levels of 3D popping out and falling into the screen. The stereoscopic 3D visual presentation does not slow down the gameplay in any significant way. Depending on the season, the visuals will have a similar look with the particle effect. The leaves will fall in the autumn; cottonseeds and pollen will fly around in the spring, etc. The stereoscopic visuals work for this game and I see that the developers of this game gave an honest and sincere attempt to make interesting 3D visuals, but honestly they are not impressive, or memorable in any way. I imagine most players will experiment with the 3D visuals and quickly turn them off, because the presentation is only adequate and not important for the gameplay or visually interesting for more than a matter of a few seconds. The 3D presentation within this game is a cheap gimmick and not a worthwhile aspect of the game.  

Final Verdict: Terrible 3D

Game

I have played several farming simulation videogames over the years. The first farming videogame that I played was Harvest Moon 64 on the Nintendo 64 in the year 2000. I loved that game and played it for hundreds of hours back at the turn of the century. I have occasionally played several other farming videogames over the last fifteen or so years and have enjoyed them. Recently farming video games have grown in popularity via Facebook or mobile phones. These casual farming videogames are meant to be addicting but shallow experiences that are focused on only one key element of farming and not the entire experience of running a farm. Story of Seasons is a deep, rich game and is incredibly polished.

As you begin your journey in virtual agriculture, a kind elderly lady teaches you the basics of farming. You start the game with very little money or resources, and as you play you gain new items, build relationships with town folk and keep striving for your own personal satisfaction and a bigger, better farm. For the purposes of this review, I played a full game year, so I could experience a good sample of what this game had to offer. It took me nearly 70 gameplay hours to reach a full game year. I am glad that I spent so much time in this game, because I have truly enjoyed my time playing this videogame, and where I started on year one where I stopped in year two were very distinct experiences. To my knowing this game has no end and will continue on indefinitely until the gamer decides to stop playing it. The game has many story elements involving the large cast of characters within the game. Some of the story elements are randomly generated and others are scripted to happen during different points. Your avatar can even get married to another villager and have children. Unfortunately for my play through, I was unable to experience the marriage aspects of the game and overall limited my experiences to the one-year in the storyline.

The game is slow paced and takes a while to get going and started. This slow pace actually fits this genre of game, but can be a turn off to many players as it takes a few hours of tutorial until you actually start to manage your farm as you see fit. The slow pace of the game is also part of the narrative, so certain story events may not happen right away for the player and may take several days or months to see. For example, it may take about two weeks for a chick to hatch from the incubator, and some crops like fruit trees may take several virtual months to see the first yield. During each season the game will showcase different seasonal events and festivals. The graphics will even change from season to season. You will see snow on the grass during winter, and the leaves falling in autumn. The graphics engine within the game has some fantastic character models and overall looks nice, but I wish the graphical detail was richer and were higher resolution. The crops you grow will be dependent by the season you play in, and you will have different fish or insects to catch in each season. The game has a limited insect catching element where you can go up to insects and catch them simply by pressing the A button, and these insects you can sell in the market. Fishing is more advanced, and you can either jump into a pool of water and go diving or use a fishing rod to attract fish. Fish can be sold or eaten and made into meals. Fishing may also yield some random valuable ores that may help you upgrade your tools and craft items. You can also set traps for fish and make bait to catch bigger fish, the system of catching fish is very simple and fun. As you play the game, you will hear many different musical compositions and sound effects. The music in this game fits the style of gameplay like a glove. The music is cheerful, upbeat, mostly out of the way and is also dynamic. The music changes depending on the situation and setting, so the music at night is different from during the day, and the music during the summer is different than the winter. The music isn't something that I personally enjoyed, but the compositions work well for this type of game and are high quality. Another aspect of this game that is high quality is the controls. The controls within this game are flawless and never gave me an issue. The game even has a quick pop down menu to help you select tools easily.

Regarding tools, each use requires stamina, which is a major aspect of this game. One of the early barriers within the game is the player’s stamina. The player can only do so much until the stamina meter goes down and the only way to refill the meter is to either eat something from the diner or go to the nurse in the hospital. If you run out of stamina you will collapse and appear in the hospital and miss out for the rest of the day. Losing out on the day may lead to some crops not being watered correctly, or animals escaping and not being able to do more work the next day. Sadly, both options to recover stamina cost money, which is hard to come by when you begin the game. Stamina becomes a major barrier in the game and you must plan out your day and activities to not be over extended. You can reduce the stamina your avatar uses by upgrading your items and tools. To upgrade your tools you must craft them, and to craft them you must have the correct materials and purchase an appropriate blueprint. For example, you will start the game with an "old watering can", and you can upgrade it to the bronze watering can, silver watering can, gold watering can and finally the master watering can. For each time you upgrade the watering can, the amount of stamina the player uses is decreased for each use. It's up to the player to forge items, purchase the blueprints and craft your items as you see fit. Unlike other role-playing videogames, you do not increase stamina by experience, and the only way to decrease stamina use is to upgrade the tools and items that you use. Early in the game, you must decide whether you want to spend time and stamina searching for materials to upgrade your tools or spend more time on cropping and saving enough money to purchase the new tools instead. Fortunately, crafting new tools is a strait forward and easy task. You can purchase more tools, items and blueprints from shopkeepers who visit your town on a regular basis. Slowly, the amount of shopkeepers will expand and give you more options to pick from buying and selling of goods and animals. The animals you can purchase include several types of livestock, such as cows, chickens, sheep, dogs, cats, rabbits and even an alpaca. It may take some time before new animals are available to purchase and you will even have the ability to buy different breeds of animals and mate them. Some of the equipment needed to take care of livestock can be purchased but others can be crafted too. The crafting element within this game is huge, and allows you to do many things including creating your own yarn factory or cheese factory to name a couple. Yarn can be used to make your own clothing and cheese can be sold, or used in recipes for making food in the kitchen. Recipes can be purchased from different shopkeepers and can be sold or used to recover stamina.

This game has so much depth and so many different things the player can decide to work on. Eventually, the player will discover the safari mode within the game. This safari mode gives your animals a mini vacation and allows you to more easily mine for ores. Taking your animals on the safari will decrease their stress level and increase the quality of their perspective yield. Mining within the safari area dramatically helps you craft new and improved tools and expand your home and make factories. The game gives the player a massive amount of customization, and allows you to select what your character looks like, what your farm looks like, which animals you own and care for, which characters you have relationships with, what factories you build and you even gain the ability to upgrade and alter the appearance of your town. Obviously, you are limited to what items you can make because of what blueprints you have available and what venders will sell you, but overall the amount of customization within this game is impressive and makes the gameplay experience truly your own journey.

The journey of this game is broken up in day increments within the four seasons. Each game day takes about 10 minutes to play through, depending on the player and what they do. The shops will only be open during specific hours and on specific days of the week. You can spend your time in the game as you see fit and spend your time farming, fishing, catching insects or talking to the various villagers that is your own prerogative. The game allows you to save anywhere at practically any time. This save anywhere feature is an amazing feature to have, especially for a portable handheld video game. The experience of playing this game and being able to save anywhere really gives this a pick up and play mentality. You can even abuse this save anywhere feature to cheat and save before you mine. If you don't like what ores or minerals you collect, you can reload the save file and see if you can collect better ore in a second, third or fourth attempt. Usually, having the ability to easily exploit a game would be a negative, however in this game it actually makes it an easier and more enjoyable experience.  Now speaking of the difficulty, the game has two options when you begin. You have the “normal" and "seedling" difficulty to pick from. The seedling difficulty is considered the easier difficulty because it lowers how much stamina is used and lower prices for specific items in the store. Being an experienced farmer, I chose the normal difficulty and I regret that choice. The normal difficulty makes the slow start of the game even slower, so I can't recommend the normal difficulty, as the enhanced difficulty only makes the game more tedious, boring and slower paced. I found only a few elements of the game annoying and needing further polish. The first element is how you select items in your inventory. Within the inventory, the graphical user interface doesn't allow you to highlight multiple objects at the same time. This is especially annoying when you want to sell several items to shopkeepers. Inventory management is a major part of this game and not being able to select multiple items is an annoying oversight. Another oversight within the game is about traveling with the horse. Once you acquire a horse you can ride it all around the town. The horse makes travel between areas in your town dramatically faster and easier. The problem with the horse is regarding the element of warping. Warping makes travel instant and is very convenient. If you have a carrot in your inventory you can go to different signs and warp to different locations instantly, however warping causes you to use the carrot. You can either grow more carrots or buy them from the store, but this process of warping is nice but annoying because of the need to have carrots. I have no clue as to why they limited warping in this carrot fashion. I would rather be able to just have a special item, or something that allows warping than this method that seems very arbitrary and strange.

Sadly, the online multiplayer is the weakest element of the game and is a totally frivolous addition. When you play online, you can either travel to other farms or allow other farmers to travel to your farm. When visiting other farms, you can explore the area and have the ability to wave a magical wand on crops or animals. The wand gives the crops a boost in value and relieves the stress of the animals slightly. You also have the ability to give and receive a few items from someone when you play them online. This element is totally subjective and the other players may decide not to give you items, or give you garbage items or if you are lucky they may give you something of value. Once a connection is made, you can communicate with the other farmers via text message via touchscreen, and it runs smoothly without any connection issues or lag. The online multiplayer matches may take some time to connect, because not many people are online wanting to play. The limited online player base can easily be explained, because the online multiplayer mode in this game is completely shallow and underdeveloped. Why would anyone bother? The most obvious online component is absent, which is the ability to directly sell and/or barter your items or crops. This absence is even more perplexing because the single player game even allows you to set up a mini store to sell your goods, so why this element is absent from online multiplayer is confusing and disappointing. Sadly, the online multiplayer game doesn’t even have mini-games to play either, so the online mode is essentially a waste and is ultimately forgettable.

The game does not have a local multiplayer mode, but it does have a street pass mode, which is actually more interesting than it appears at first glance. When you’re active, that street pass element within the game and your 3ds comes within close proximity of another gamer that also has a 3ds with an activated street pass for this game, you automatically trade your in game avatars. The other people will just appear in your town and walk around. You can talk to these street pass avatars, and they will give you some basic information about the player. The interesting element of this is that these other avatars can actually compete with you and enter contests during the various festivals. Let me give you an example of this element. During the summer season, you may have a crop festival. During this festival if you choose to compete in it, you can select a specific crop and the quality will be judged compared to other town folk. Sadly, most of the time you will loose these festivals because the other town folk have pre-established farms and are much more likely to have better crops than you. However, with the street pass avatars in the mix, they may enter the contest too and give you a higher probability of winning the festival. Having new people walk around the town is also interesting to keep things fresh and different. I actually really like this implementation of street pass within the game, and it's a very nice addition.

I can totally understand how some people will not find this game fun as you don't have enemies to kill, a world to save or a princess to rescue. Farming simulation videogames, like Story of Seasons, are more about you the player and slowly becoming more successful over time. It's disappointing how shallow the online multiplayer mode is. It’s a shame this game starts so slow because it may turn off many people before they can really get the full scope of what the game has to offer. The issues I have with this game are minor and the vast majority of this game is incredibly polished and well executed. I spent nearly 70 hours in this game, but I feel that so much more is in this game to experience. This style of game is inherently repetitive as you play day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year, but as time passes you will progress within the game too. The random story events and festivals give you some relief of the repetition, but the slow and steady progression is the real incentive to keep going. I have played a dozen or so farming video games in the last 15 years, and I have to say Story of Seasons is without a doubt my favorite and is the most polished farming video game that I have played. Story of Seasons is my favorite original new 3DS video game released this year (2015) and I highly recommend you give this game a chance, because this story is well worthy of your time.

Final Verdict: 9/10

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