Remakes and remasters are extra frequent than ever in 2023. What’s most attention-grabbing is seeing how these new variations deal with the difficulty of utterly rebuilding versus merely making trendy visible enhancements. Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life is a remake of Harvest Moon: A Fantastic Life that straddles the road between these two philosophies pretty evenly however nonetheless delivers an outdated expertise in varied features.
Releasing on trendy consoles, Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life initially seems like nothing greater than an up to date re-skin on the floor. Nevertheless, some vital adjustments have made it extra inclusive for gamers. A Fantastic Life establishes every participant as a teen who has inherited a farm from their father in a small city known as Forgotten Valley. Earlier than claiming your inheritance, you could identify your self and determine your look.
The customization suite is the place the up to date model exceeds its predecessor. Gamers can customise their avatars with gender-inclusive pronouns, physique, and vogue choices. Past that, not one of the clothes or hair choices are gendered both. You’ll be able to mix any physique sort with any coiffure or outfit you need. As soon as you agree in your identify, look, and pronouns, you are prepared to go to Forgotten Valley. However notice which you could’t change your pronouns after the choice display screen, so make sure of your resolution earlier than you depart.
In what has turn into a staple of the farming sim style, your character packs up and strikes from the large metropolis to the farm to reside a quieter life. While you arrive, an previous good friend of your father offers you a tour of the farm and supplies you with notes that function the sport’s tutorial. These notes are extraordinarily helpful within the early recreation, providing steering when questions come up with out forcing gamers to take a seat by way of a restrictive tutorial sequence.
As you’d count on, you develop crops and lift animals whose merchandise you may promote for revenue. There are the same old 4 seasons in A Fantastic Life, and every lasts 10 in-game days. Lately final 24 real-life minutes, which does not sound lengthy however can begin to drag the longer you play. Ideally, your every day loop contains tending your crops and animals, visiting the forest spirits to see if they’ve any new recipes for you, serving to to dig on the archaeology website, fishing, foraging, cooking, and chatting along with your neighbors round Forgotten Valley.
Attending to know the opposite residents of your small city is vital, as the sport insists that you could get married to one of many native singles by the tip of your first yr there. I admire that A Fantastic Life removes the gender-locked nature of the unique recreation’s romances, that means gamers can marry any eligible single in Forgotten Valley, opening the door for queer romances.
That stated, these relationships are disappointingly shallow. Since your courtship is barely a yr lengthy, you do not get a lot time to construct an attachment to your future partner. There are relationships already ongoing between among the villagers once you arrive, that are then by no means actually addressed should you determine to marry one in every of them. This takes away a probably attention-grabbing component of small-town drama from the sport and can also be unsatisfying from a storytelling perspective.
As well as, in-game spouses do not have a lot that is novel or attention-grabbing to say when you tie the knot. After marrying Cecelia, she largely stayed in our home and repeated the identical line about studying new issues about home tasks over and over. My younger little one had extra distinctive dialogue for me than she did outdoors of cutscenes.
Sadly, A Fantastic Life’s mechanics really feel equally shallow throughout your day-to-day loop. Whereas the pronouns, customization, romances, and visuals have been up to date, your every day life within the recreation hasn’t obtained the identical remedy. Doing all of your every day chores would not take lengthy, particularly when you begin upgrading your instruments. Chatting with the forest spirits can also be a fast errand. Digging for artifacts can take so long as you need, however the course of is gradual and monotonous. The sport encourages you to speak with everybody on the town to assist construct your relationships with them, however their dialogue is commonly repetitive, and it takes nearly no time to provide them presents out of your stock. Even fishing and foraging could be executed when you do different duties round Forgotten Valley.
When the unique model of this recreation got here out, I am positive this appeared like a lot to do. However within the wake of video games like Stardew Valley, this stage of exercise is underwhelming. It is easy to search out your self going to mattress early to advance the calendar as a substitute of using each waking hour to maximise what you may get executed. In concept, a few of this time must also be dedicated to cooking, however I usually solely used my kitchen after I actually wanted to. Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life has a Fullness meter, however it would not lower shortly. I solely actually paid consideration to it when my character gave me the hungry icon, which often appears to set off when the bar is about one-third full.
This meter is considerably emblematic of my general expertise of this recreation. Concepts that have been as soon as novel are outdated or uninteresting by at this time’s requirements. Whereas Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life is a welcome replace to a traditional farm sim, stripping away nostalgic fondness leaves you with an expertise that feels missing within the style’s trendy panorama.
