Remakes and remasters are extra widespread than ever in 2023. What’s most fascinating is seeing how these new variations deal with the problem of utterly rebuilding versus merely making fashionable visible enhancements. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life that straddles the road between these two philosophies pretty evenly however nonetheless delivers an outdated expertise in varied points.
Releasing on fashionable consoles, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life initially seems to be like nothing greater than an up to date re-pores and skin on the floor. However, some important adjustments have made it extra inclusive for gamers. A Wonderful Life establishes every participant as a teen who has inherited a farm from their father in a small city known as Forgotten Valley. Before claiming your inheritance, you need to title your self and resolve your look.
The customization suite is the place the up to date model exceeds its predecessor. Players can customise their avatars with gender-inclusive pronouns, physique, and trend choices. Beyond that, none of the clothes or hair choices are gendered both. You can mix any physique sort with any coiffure or outfit you need. Once you compromise in your title, look, and pronouns, you are prepared to move to Forgotten Valley. But be aware which you could’t change your pronouns after the choice display, so make sure of your resolution 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 stay a quieter life. When you arrive, an outdated pal of your father offers you a tour of the farm and offers you with notes that function the sport’s tutorial. These notes are extraordinarily helpful within the early recreation, providing steerage when questions come up with out forcing gamers to sit down via a restrictive tutorial sequence.
As you’d count on, you develop crops and lift animals whose merchandise you possibly can promote for revenue. There are the standard 4 seasons in A Wonderful Life, and every lasts 10 in-recreation days. These days final 24 actual-life minutes, which does not sound lengthy however can begin to drag the longer you play. Ideally, your each day loop consists of 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.
Getting to know the opposite residents of your small city is vital, as the sport insists that you need to get married to 1 of the native singles by the top of your first yr there. I recognize that A Wonderful Life removes the gender-locked nature of the unique recreation’s romances, which means gamers can marry any eligible single in Forgotten Valley, opening the door for queer romances.
That mentioned, 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 some of the villagers while you arrive, that are then by no means actually addressed in the event you resolve to marry one of them. This takes away a doubtlessly fascinating factor of small-city drama from the sport and can also be unsatisfying from a storytelling perspective.
In addition, in-recreation spouses do not have a lot that is novel or fascinating 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 house responsibilities again and again. My younger baby had extra distinctive dialogue for me than she did exterior of cutscenes.
Unfortunately, A Wonderful Life’s mechanics really feel equally shallow throughout your day-to-day loop. While the pronouns, customization, romances, and visuals have been up to date, your each day life within the recreation hasn’t obtained the identical therapy. Doing your each day chores does 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 recreation 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 virtually no time to provide them presents out of your stock. Even fishing and foraging might be completed whilst you do different duties round Forgotten Valley.
When the unique model of this recreation got here out, I’m positive this appeared like lots to do. But within the wake of video games like Stardew Valley, this stage of exercise is underwhelming. It’s simple 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 may get completed. In principle, some 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 Wonderful Life has a Fullness meter, but it surely does not lower shortly. I solely actually paid consideration to it when my character gave me the hungry icon, which normally appears to set off when the bar is about one-third full.
This meter is considerably emblematic of my general expertise of this recreation. Ideas that have been as soon as novel are outdated or uninteresting by at this time’s requirements. While Story of Seasons: A Wonderful 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.
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