Games worth discovering

SoS: A WONDERFUL LIFE - LACKS A LOT OF THINGS

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STORY OF SEASONS: A Wonderful Life

Developer: Marvelous Inc

Publisher: Marvelous Inc

Released: June 27th, 2023

Price: 39.99 USD

Harvest Moon vs Stardew Valley

As we become older, younger generations of gamers are increasingly failing to appreciate the origins of gaming. Story of Seasons - A Wonderful Life is a rework of the classic Harvest Moon - A Wonderful Life. It's actually a semi-decent port of the PlayStation 2 version of the game; yet, when compared to the GameCube version, many things here have been modified or omitted completely.

Stardew Valley should never be used as a way of competition to determine which game is better. StarDew Valley would never have gotten to where it is today if not for Harvest Moon being made in the first place, since it was inspired by it and evolved into what it is now when the developer was practicing his coding skills.

If we were to compare, Stardew Valley is "better" since it was built in recent generations, but Harvest Moon was designed as a farming simulator that taught youngsters about life, hard labor, and caring for your loved ones, including animals. It was a hard lesson to learn, witnessing animals die as a result of poor care and other factors like the inevitable need to face death and watch your children take over.

This game has less to do with it being a competition and more to do with it being a game about growth, being good to others, and getting to know more about life.

Issues

A lot of changes

Do you remember the original sprites?

They butchered their names, Nic, Nac, and Flak were changed to Ace, Hart, Jack... I don't care what the reason was, this just killed every motivation I had. Their names no longer roll off the tongue, and the town Forgotten Valley? It's is originally called Forget Me Not Valley. This can be easily fixed with a mod to change it back.

If you grew up with the GameCube version of this game, you may be overcome with nostalgia while you play it and huge disappointment. It's an amazing sensation, but there are a few things that are quite terrible with this remake. The controls are neither "terrible" nor "horrible," but there are certain quirks, especially while completing tasks like Archaeology with Carter standing right next to you. This will disallow player input because he is within speaking distance of you, which can be annoying.

If you recall the original game, planting, watering, and placing seed was a complete nightmare flicking you to the same spot and being a hair trigger input away from missing. It's a lot easier now with so much QoL adjustments. Xbox controllers work fine but apparently PlayStation Controllers might have some issues. The game isn't or never was designed for keyboard an mouse, but definitively could use some polish.

Message Board

If you receive a board request for someone and want to give them flowers or something to expand their friendship with them, you can't do so for the duration of the request sometimes, which can take some time to get everyone's relationship up swiftly rather than taking an entire season cause it does take time.

Animals can not die

This is something I honestly believe should have been included in all SoS games. As a child forgetting to bring your animals in on a rainy day or forgetting to feed them, only for them to tip over and die or even die from old age was heartbreaking.

That is one thing I wish they had maintained. It provided a deeper meaning to the game, but to remedy the issues they had with most children crying and being very upset, they made you and everyone else pretty much immortal outside of a few old citizens, so you can play the game in heaven after you get to the end of the game.

Gameplay

Live a "Wonderful Life"

A simple concept. The goal here is to basically live your best life while caring for animals and citizens that you meet in town as you slowly grow older. You will ultimately marry and have a child, even if you marry the same sex, often events such as being blessed by the Harvest Goddess usually occur, as they have in prior games but here the child shows up magically so I guess they weren't too detailed with it. I want to say that this whole remake doesn't really add anything to the gameplay itself. It's just the original game with a tiny bit of polish that fixed most but not all issues.

There is no multiplayer. It's an old game that has been rebuilt for individuals who want to relive their youth, as the originals were exceedingly slow with lag and other issues. Many of those faults have been addressed in this remake. Visually it's great, a lot of the slow inventory management and tool management is gone. Now I'll say something. No, this game isn't worth $49.99, nor is any other game developed these days. On sale, I would recommend it but as of now, only if you truly want to support the developer who brought a lot of good memories to your childhood.

There isn't much to do but talk to people every single day, give them gifts until you can unlock special events for them, farm, generate money, and live a Wonderful Life.

Conclusion

It's kind of hard to recommend

I grew up with this series and I absolutely adored it for so many years. Throughout elementary and middle school, I spent hundreds of hours playing the original and Friends of Mineral Town on my GameBoy Advance. It was a lot of fun and I even helped out other class mates with their save files, even if it was a repetitious. But this game doesn't contribute much and doesn't fulfill that nostalgic sensation, instead provoking it with several tweaks that damage the feelings.

If they had kept many of the elements that made Harvest Moon what it was, it would have been the ideal remake, addressing all of the issues with the original while leaving everything else unchanged, or even going so far as to include more features such as the Heaven Mode or the ability to play with others.

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