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 What is this? Story of Seasons Friends: of Mineral Town is a remaster/remake of the GBA games "Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town", and "Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town" ...which were themselves remasters/remakes of the PS1 game "Harvest Moon: Back to Nature" All of these games including Story of Seasons follow the same general formula: the main character arrives to a town to inherit their grandfather's old dilapidated farm, and attempts to revitalize it while also befriending the townspeople, falling in love, mining, exploring, upgrading their equipment, and dabbling in the local low-key magic. Sound familiar? Indeed, indie-darling Stardew Valley was in many ways aimed at being a spiritual successor not just to Harvest Moon as a series, but specifically to Back to Nature and Friends of Mineral Town. You'll find these games are generally the most beloved among Harvest Moon fans because, rather than attempt to tinker with the core formula like a lot of other titles in series, BtN and FoMT focused on perfecting the formula for a simple but enjoyable gameplay loop. If you like Stardew Valley, you'll be right at home with Story of Seasons which has come full circle to learn some lessons from Stardew and brings many of quality of life improvements over the GBA titles. So wait, this is a Harvest Moon game? Why is it called 'Story of Seasons' then? Long story short Harvest Moon developer Marvelous had a falling out with their long time publisher Natsume, and it is Natsume who owns the copyright to the "Harvest Moon" title rather than Marvelous. Marvelous is now published by Xseed, and so the title had to be changed for legal reasons. However this is an honest to god Harvest Moon game made by the Harvest Moon developers. I haven't played Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, what do you actually do in this game? The core gameplay loop involves growing crops and raising animals on your farm, so that you can sell said crops and the products from your animals (eggs, milk, etc) for cash. You use that cash to upgrade your farm, upgrade your tools, and buy gifts for villagers. You talk to villagers and give them gifts to make them like you more, which unlocks story cutscenes with them and - in the case of romancable villagers - eventually allows you to marry them and raise a family. There are other side activities such as mining (which gets you ores to upgrade your tools and gems to sell or give as gifts) foraging (stone and wood is used for farm upgrades and decoration, foraged goods can be sold, gifted, or used in cooking recipes) village festivals (some of which are competitions where you can win fabulous prizes) and interacting with the local magical creatures who - if they like you enough - can give you huge benefits on your farm. There's no real "end" to the game - you can go on farming forever, however you are evaluated on everything you've done after three in game years, which is the closest you get to any kind of story conclusion. There is no combat and there's nothing that really demands good reaction time or rapt attention. It's a chill game for relaxing. Okay, so what's changed from Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA? Quite a lot! This is not a simple 1:1 remake, instead the game has ironically taken a lot of lessons from Stardew Valley and added a lot of QoL and inclusiveness features. Here's a brief overview of the major changes: New and customizable characters You can choose from four different farmers to play as - two male and two female - as well as customize their outfits via the mirror in your home. All outfits are unlocked from the start so no grinding for fashion. New character portraits and art style All villager portraits have been completely redone from the ground up in a new style. Simplified Farming The fertilizer mechanic has been completely removed, crops now have a star rating of 1-5 that determines their value, with higher star ratings requiring a more upgraded field. Also you can now walk on growing crops, making watering middle crops much easier. Inventory management sucks less No other way to put it: in FoMT you couldn't upgrade the size of your bag and items didn't stack in it, so you had to carry a basket around everywhere to hold excess items. Now you can not only upgrade your bag's storage capacity, but items stack up 9 of each per slot. Mining sucks less Mining in FoMT was a nightmare of stocking up on as many stamina potions as you could carry and then saving on each floor while looking for the stairs to the next floor, and reloading if it took too much stamina to do so. Story of Seasons has straight up cribbed both the elevator and holes that can drop you multiple floors from Stardew, which makes getting deep in the mines less of a marathon. New animals and crops These include new variants of cow that produce milk types or different beverages altogether, rabbits, and alpacas. There are also two new crops: soy beans and chili peppers.  Same-sex marriages In a first for the Harvest Moon series, you are not locked into marrying a member of the opposite sex. All marriage candidates are fully romancable by either a male or female farmer. Speaking of marriage: New Marriage Candidates In addition to two brand new romancable villagers, you can now marry a handful of previously unromancable NPC's. Friendship level tracker Your menu now has a window that tells you your friendship/romance level with all the villagers. Yet another huge QoL feature cribbed from Stardew. There's a lot of other little things too that I did not mention, they really went the extra mile to try to modernize Friends of Mineral Town based on the things that worked in Stardew. Why is it worth spending $50 on this instead of plowing another 100 hours into Stardew Valley? Honestly if you're not bored of Stardew then there's really no reason to buy Story of Seasons, since it is much of the same but lacking several features present in Stardew such as crafting and combat. However if you're bored of Stardew and/or just want to play a chill farming game in a new setting with new characters then Story of Seaons will absolutely scratch that itch. This is a remake of what is in my opinion the best game in the Harvest Moon series, and it heaps quality of life improvements on top to make it even better. Systems? Right now just PC and Switch. Initial user reviews appear to be very positive (official outlets less so, but that's a different can of worms), and I haven't experienced or heard of any serious performance issues or game breaking glitches.    
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Jul 15, 2020 23:03
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 21:27 |
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Reserved I guess.
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Jul 15, 2020 23:05
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Eeepies posted:Either I'm remembering things wrongly, or I can't find the tree at the summit which gives you a stamina fruit if you take an ax to it. Definitely remembered to give flowers to the goddess in the waterfall though! Keep it up because apparently you don't get the mine elevator until you've given her 100 offerings.  Scalding Coffee posted:Can your children grow up and work the farm? In the original your kid started as a baby then grew into a toddler after two months, and stayed a toddler forever. I haven't read anything about them changing that but I'm not 100%. AFAIK the only Harvest Moon game where your kid actually grew up and could help out was A Wonderful Life.
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Jul 16, 2020 17:27
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I dug it up on day one while setting up my initial turnip patch lol. Very nice considering I remember tilling the entire goddamn field once to find it. Detective No. 27 posted:My copy is arriving today. I bought the GBA version a few months ago, and just like when I bought and Stardew Valley, I didn't get past the first couple days cause I had no idea what I was doing and choice paralysis. Hopefully it goes better this time. My suggestion is that for the first couple days just clear your field as best you can, make sure you're watering crops, and plow any money you make from them into buying more seeds for more crops. If you have spare time wander around the village and talk to people, see if you can find a romancable character you want to focus on, or wander around the wilderness to the south of your farm and grab foragables to sell. As you use your tools you'll get notifications that they've leveled up, at which point you can go into the mines and collect some ore to take to the blacksmith in town to turn them into better tools. Spring is always kinda slow in these types of games, just take it easy, focus on crops, and don't stress too much about getting everything done. Things will pick up in Summer/Fall and you'll start to get a better feel for what you should be doing. Then come winter nothing will grow so you can spend all day plying villagers with gifts, mining, secret hunting, etc.
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Jul 17, 2020 19:19
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So it's now incredibly easy to cheese the mines because  you can save everywhere and the ladder to the next level is fixed for the floor you're on even if you load a save, so you can just save as soon as you reach a new level, till around until you find the ladder, then reload and run straight to that spot to progress immediately.It's pretty cheap but I also remember how much of a crushing slog the mines were in the original FOMT so I feel like I've paid my dues.
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Jul 19, 2020 00:20
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