Remakes and remasters are extra frequent than ever in 2023. What’s most attention-grabbing is seeing how these new variations deal with the problem of fully rebuilding versus merely making fashionable 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A Fantastic Life that straddles the road between these two philosophies pretty evenly however nonetheless delivers an outdated expertise in numerous points.
Releasing on fashionable consoles, Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life initially appears like nothing greater than an up to date re-skin on the floor. Nonetheless, some vital modifications have made it extra inclusive for gamers. A Fantastic Life establishes every participant as an adolescent who has inherited a farm from their father in a small city known as Forgotten Valley. Earlier than claiming your inheritance, it’s essential to title your self and resolve 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 may mix any physique kind with any coiffure or outfit you need. As soon as you compromise in your title, look, and pronouns, you are prepared to move to Forgotten Valley. However word you could’t change your pronouns after the choice display screen, so make certain of your choice earlier than you depart.
In what has develop into a staple of the farming sim style, your character packs up and strikes from the massive metropolis to the farm to reside a quieter life. Once you arrive, an previous good friend of your father provides 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 sport, providing steering when questions come up with out forcing gamers to sit down by means of a restrictive tutorial sequence.
As you’d count on, you develop crops and lift animals whose merchandise you’ll be able to promote for revenue. There are the standard 4 seasons in A Fantastic Life, and every lasts 10 in-game days. Today 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 essential, as the sport insists that it’s essential to get married to one of many native singles by the top of your first yr there. I admire that A Fantastic Life removes the gender-locked nature of the unique sport’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 a number of the villagers while you arrive, that are then by no means actually addressed if you happen to resolve to marry considered one of them. This takes away a doubtlessly attention-grabbing aspect of small-town drama from the sport and can be unsatisfying from a storytelling perspective.
As well as, in-game spouses haven’t got 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 time and again. My younger little one had extra distinctive dialogue for me than she did exterior 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 sport hasn’t acquired 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 be a fast errand. Digging for artifacts can take so long as you need, however the course of is sluggish and monotonous. The sport encourages you to talk 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 present them items out of your stock. Even fishing and foraging could be achieved when you do different duties round Forgotten Valley.
When the unique model of this sport got here out, I am positive this appeared like a lot to do. However within the wake of video games like Stardew Valley, this degree of exercise is underwhelming. It is easy to seek out your self going to mattress early to advance the calendar as a substitute of using each waking hour to maximise what you will get achieved. In idea, a few of this time must also be dedicated to cooking, however I usually solely used my kitchen once 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 sport. Concepts that have been as soon as novel are outdated or uninteresting by at the moment’s requirements. Whereas Story of Seasons: A Fantastic Life is a welcome replace to a basic farm sim, stripping away nostalgic fondness leaves you with an expertise that feels missing within the style’s fashionable panorama.
