Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town might not bear the Harvest Moon title that would identify it as a continuation of the beloved series, but that's all down to copyright, Japanese-to-English translation, and a schism between XSEED and Natsume. It's not very interesting, so to summarise: Story of Seasons is the original, and Harvest Moon (as it is now) is a cheap pretender to the throne.
But in the past few years, even though the rival Harvest Moon games have decreased rapidly in quality, the Story of Seasons series has floundered all the same – and Stardew Valley came to take its crown. Does Pioneers of Olive Town return triumphant, or does Stardew continue to reign supreme?
As we said in our preview, Pioneers of Olive Town is disappointing in the first season. It'll take players a long time to warm up to the idea that everything is handled with Makers – the game's version of processing units, which turn raw materials into usable and saleable items, like wool into yarn, ore into ingots, and wood into lumber. For some reason, those Makers take one item at a time, and so, to make any progress, you'll need roughly a hundred of them chugging along. It's almost a full-time job to handle it all.
Another huge issue is the lack of personality in the townsfolk. For some reason, they have only the sparsest of dialogue, and even when you're actually dating them, that doesn't change too much. Outside of events and working in the various shops, they mostly wander aimlessly around the town, or stand like statues next to their beds, waiting for the day to end.
However. Much like most Story of Seasons games, the world brightens up after the first couple of seasons, and things start to get more interesting. Once you've befriended someone up to two hearts, you'll get some insight into their favourite gifts, which means a fast-track to seeing their "heart events" – the cutscenes that further your friendship. The heart events are short but sweet; we spent the most time with Bridget, so we were treated to a story of her learning to trust other people through animals.
Likewise, the Maker issue doesn't ever go away, but it does get better. Once you've got a decent set-up of all the Makers you need, it's pretty quick work to fill them all up, and becomes part of the farm routine. Later on, you'll even unlock Giant Makers, which can process a few items at a time, although they're expensive to build, so you'll likely be stuck with the ones you get as rewards for levelling-up your skills.
There are 12 skills to level up in total, including fishing, cooking, communication, and mining, all of which cap at level 10. The more you level these up, the better you'll get at them, and the more materials of a better quality you'll get as a result. The skill progress is a nice addition, and makes progress pretty steady and satisfying, as long as you're focusing your attention on multiple skills at once.
There are still a few bottlenecks, like the fact that cooking takes half an hour, even if you're just making Hot Milk. What's more, you can only cook one meal at a time – even if you want to just make multiples of the same thing, you can't – and the Seed Maker, which is the only way to turn high-quality crops into higher-quality seeds, is slow, and can only process one crop at a time.
Mining, farming, fishing, and animal care will take up most of your time while you wait, though, and all of them are as satisfying as you'd hope for, in a game that's about those things. The animals are extremely cute, if a little... deformed (there's no way a cow with that big of a face could survive), and it's easy to unlock new ones, since they appear wild on your farm every season (in the first year, at least) and you can tame them to add them to your collection.
Mining is a test of stamina and occasional mole-battling, and though there aren't skips to help you to get to lower levels immediately, it'll eventually take you the best part of a day to get to the bottom of the third mine. Fishing is similar to how Stardew's system works, and there are bait types and fishing rod upgrades to help you out.
As for what your farmer looks like while they work, the character customisation is pretty good – plenty of outfits, hair changes, even eye colour changes if you want – but the furniture and general house decoration is weirdly limited to a very specific, small area of your house. You can't change the wallpaper or the floor, either. This area gets bigger as the house upgrades increase the size of the place, but you'll never be able to place furniture anywhere you want, sadly.
One of the biggest caveats of all this is that the farming absolutely tanks the framerate. This is an issue that the developers know about, and are working on, but running through ploughed-and-planted fields, or even empty ones, will reduce the framerate to about 5 frames per second. Add this to the weirdly long loading screens, and you'll be wondering what's going on behind the scenes. We actually had one loading screen that was still going after three minutes, and had to restart the game, but that was a one-off – all other loading screens were sub-ten seconds. Still, that's a long wait.
New features, like the Photo Mode and the Museum, are fun to play around with – but the Camera only holds ten photos, and you can't really do anything with them besides donating photos of animals to the Museum. You can't even full-screen them to save them as screenshots.
The Museum is perhaps the most disappointing of all. Taking clear inspiration from Animal Crossing, but with a fraction of the budget, Story of Seasons' offering is just not good. The fish exhibit is a bunch of fish-shaped shadows. The treasure exhibit is a bunch of pillars topped with similar-looking rocks. The animal exhibit is a bunch of animal statues on pillars. Examining these pillars gives you no extra information beyond the name of the thing and when it was donated. If we'd paid to go to this museum, we'd ask for a refund.
Pioneers of Olive Town's story is all about bringing tourists to the town – and you'll see them flocking in on the ferry, with randomised appearances, but the same name, "Tourist", each time. Sadly, they don't do much beyond that. Your donations of materials and money won't really change the town in any meaningful way beyond a few cosmetic changes, and the townsfolk thanking you. The tourists don't go to the restaurants, they don't enter the shops, they just mill about at the port. It's a shame, because seeing the effect of tourism on this struggling town would have been really interesting.
In summary, all the issues that we mentioned in the preview are still there, plus a few more that we found by playing through a whole year. Some of those issues won't be too bad once you get into the rhythm of things, and it's certainly a mile better than Harvest Moon: One World, but it's by no means the best Story of Seasons game you can get. However, fans of the genre will find that they settle quite nicely into Pioneers of Olive Town, even as they're disappointed by the things it lacks. It's a solid, if relatively unremarkable entry into the series, but in our opinion, you'd be best off waiting for a sale and a bunch of patches, and getting Friends of Mineral Town in the meantime.
Conclusion
While not by any means the best Story of Seasons game on the market, Pioneers of Olive Town is promising and disappointing in equal measure. Perhaps future patches will iron out some of the issues with framerate and boring character dialogue, but for now, potential buyers should be aware that this game isn't quite in a state we can recommend.
Comments 58
I would say a fart in the wind and a follow through!!! Looks pants! Soiled as well! Will give this a miss Kate!!
MHR tomorrow
Great job as always, Kate! Let me know if you need help holding off the Natsume cancel crowd.
Thank you for the objective review. I was worried that it would be biased because of the hype articles but it turned out genuine!
All the talk, all the badmouthing and the game still sucks.
I wish you good luck
The acronym for this game is now legendary.
Good review. Looks alright but I think I'm just going to get back into playing Animal Crossing regularly and maybe pick up Rune Factory 5 when that drops later this year. That will be enough to cater my simulation needs.
Thank you Kate for the review! I was keeping an eye on this game but as i suspected, its going downhill with this series also. Whats up with companies doing a poor job on those games that once were a gem to play. Gonna pass on this one.
@Zuljaras All reviews are subjective! Just because this one is negative doesn't mean it's not my subjective opinion
Either you got EXTREMELY lucky for be able to see that acronym or wonderfully sinister in your writing. Wow. I’m impressed.
Seems about right. Glad I picked up Mineral Town instead. Simple, but polished and with better characters definitely vibes with me better than "we gave you a ton to do but it's jank and everyone is boring as hell".
Hard pass for me, lol @ poot
@tsdenizen I also bought Mineral Town, but after playing Harvest Moon: One World - I was so disappointed that I needed something guaranteed to be good!
Sadly, I haven't had time to play it because of all the reviews of OTHER farming games 😅
I might get this after they push through some updates as I was looking forward to it but as is, I'm going to pass
I already pre-ordered the game and it's here. Do you think I should just wait a few months to play until patches happen, and work on other games?
@KateGray To be honest if you review game that you like it is more likely to give good grades even if the game has technical problems etc.
That is what I meant by biased. So I am happy that this is NOT the case.
Maybe I did not explained it correctly.
Didn't you just review this game? Looks at article about too many harvest moon farming sim type games
Aaah, this is a shame. Thank you for the review.
I actually thought a game series like this is guarenteed 7 upwards as it is hard to "mess up"!
Mineral Town is looking much better than this sadly. I wish them luck on that remake that they were hinting at on their twitters.
Yeah I think I will just stick with Stardew valley.
I've put about ten hours into this game and it's... rough. Definitely a step backwards for this franchise.
@LEGEND_MARIOID interesting that you should say that - if we gave out .5 scores, this would be a 6.5. It's hard to fully recommend as a 7/10 game, but it's not quite as bad as a 6/10. Tricky stuff!
I don’t understand why these companies have so much trouble with this genre. It’s not new. They should know what works and what doesn’t. I mean, the same repeating, shallow villager text..can we not get some meaningful character development? Having to have a hundred makers, who thought that’s a good idea? Again, older games have already solved these problems. It’s hard to fork over $40-50 for these when there are similar eshop games that do it just as well, if not better at a fraction of the price.
And btw Kate, I have no idea how you manage to play all these time sinks AND still have time to crank out all the articles you do for this site. I salute you.
I'm definitely finding this game much more fun and enjoyable than Freinds of Mineral Town. I also like the farming and presentation more than Stardew Valley. It's not quite as deep as SV, but I am just not a fan of pixel art in modern games.
RIP original Harvest Moon, at this point I would had been okay with A Wonderful Life remake.
I expect to enjoy this more than 6/10. The artistic style/visuals alone appeals alot to me compared to Stardew and the rest. Cant wait to try it out next week when i get it
Should be getting it tomorrow, so I guess I'll see.
I'm still playing Friends of Mineral Town though, so this will probably be on the back burner for a bit. Hopefully it receives a patch in the meantime.
Argh I feel compelled but I may wait a month or two. Wait on all the patches. I was gonna get it Friday but at this rate the price is gonna tank so no point in wasting money. Sigh. Mineral town is a bit too simple even considering I am not a social farmer. May have to dig out the 3ds.
Edit: couldn’t resist the plushie.
@Zach777 It's nice when developers are honest with us.
This was about what I expected from the game. You just need to look at the trailers for this game and for Rune Factory 5, and you can clearly tell that the developers didn't put nearly as much effort into this game. If I'm being honest, the announcement of an expansion pass for this game was a huge turnoff and warning sign for me.
It seems that Stardew Valley has maintained its crown. Which is good because there is still plenty of content from the latest free update that I haven't experienced yet.
Hopefully, Rune Factory 5 will have a much better showing.
I wish there are some big body and six pack bachelors on Story of Seasons.
I'm looking for six pack dudes like Bob from Save the Homeland or Owen from Tree of Tranquility.
I think the negative online reception to this has been overblown. The performance issues are definitely a problem that needs to be sorted, but I've otherwise been deeply enjoying my time with it. It's obvious this game was made in a post-Stardew Valley landscape and I think it's better for it, even if SDV is still the better game overall.
In my eyes, these games are similar in appeal to an RPG in that it's about enjoying the power trip of becoming great from humble beginnings. I play them because I want to start a tiny garden with pennies to my name and eventually come to own a kingdom of vegetables and livestock. I think the game absolutely nailed the reward structure in that regard, as I felt like I had a ton of meaningful activities to do each day and it felt like I was making notable progress.
I guess I don't see what I'm 'supposed' to not like here, can anyone who's spent some time with the game shed light on this? What did this game fail to do that previous successes in the genre did do?
I'm conflicted, but mostly glad I didn't preorder for the buffalo plushie. I will probably still end up buying this because I love the series, but everything I've seen and heard makes this entry sound more like a $30 guilty pleasure than a $60 deluxe purchase. Meanwhile RF5 is coming soon, I'm still playing the FOMT remake and I still have to get Sakuna, so I'm set for farming right now.
That little buffalo is still calling my name, though.
Poot is the puffy angry face Jigglypuff makes.
@SwitchVogel Pioneers of Olive Town has quickly become my favorite farm game/sim out of them all. I’ve tried to like Stardew Valley like 9 times and it just feels stressful. Rune Factory doesn’t have enough farming even though I love the combat stuff, Friends of Mineral Town is great but I’ve enjoyed this one WAY more- I don’t know, something about this one just really works for me. My life is crazy, and I play a lot of intense games, so I actually prefer a little bit more simplicity and being able to just farm and take my lady presents lol! Plus, I’m TOTALLY playing in Seedling Mode, cause I don’t care about being “hardcore”, I like that money is a little less scarce so I can mostly just do what I want with a little challenge coming from trying to manage it all.
I think it’s a fantastic game man, I’m with you 100% on this one- considering I’m a huge fan of farming games I have zero idea why there’s so much hate for this one on the internet other than this- people spend more time these days tearing things apart than just LIKING something. So, I play what I want and screw the trolls. Plus, I turned 40 last year and I’m married, with two kids and a business to run- my brain doesn’t have room to care about what a bunch of strangers think I should be playing.
Nice to be back, I haven’t hopped into the rooms in a WHILE!
@JasmineDragon Don’t listen to the noise, it’s a wonderful game. I’ve been playing for 3 days straight now and I only love it more. Promise.
@SwitchVogel
I'm not surprised whenever Marvelous released their Bokumono games.
Their games are always have some issues, especially the infamous Calvin's Heart Event Freeze glitch on Tree of Tranquility and Permanent Child Missing glitch on Animal Parade.
Oh I so will buy this game ^3^
I'll hold off for a sale.
@GhostGeneration You know what? You sold me on it. I guess I just needed to hear from a few people who are really enjoying it, to balance out all the people who haven't played it but somehow know that it's trash. I am weak, yes, but also I really like Story of Seasons (I've been a fan since the original Friends of Mineral Town) and I wanted the buffalo to sit next to my strawberry cow.
Sakuna will just have to wait a little longer.
@SwitchVogel You helped sell me on it, too. And to be honest, I think a big part of the negativity around this is that saying Stardew is better gives you instant indie gamer cred.
Definitely don't want to join the bashing train, as I, and as I can assume most of you good people, are all fans of the franchise!
I just remember how awesome the 3DS SoS games were for their time, and with the fresh direction that the Doraemon spinoff took, it seemed that this new one would be a slam dunk. I think that there is a collective feeling of letdown, even though I am sure the game provides a good amount of fun and is not inherently trash like many opinions swilling about seem to suggest.
I will definitely pick up down the line to support, but I just hope that the developers take all the criticism floating around constructively and not to heart and end up nixing the franchise!
It seems like the new director really had big aspirations for this game but time and budget wouldn’t allow it. Too bad he couldn’t reign it in and focus on retaining and improving the things fans already enjoyed in the series. People have other games for heavy crafting and annoying fishing mini games, SoS has its own charm.
@JasmineDragon You won’t regret it, and BTW- I was hyped for Sakuna for a year and a half but I put it down after a few hours. Everything is great EXCEPT the controls while you’re farming the rice. It’s AWFUL, I’m not sure why nobody’s really mentioned it but it completely ruined the game for me. It’s gorgeous, and a killer idea, but I like my farming much less “bite my controller” rage inducing.
@JasmineDragon There's always going to be a variety of opinions on games, I could very well just be an outlier. I think you're onto something though, I'd wager a big part of the reaction to this is just that it's not Stardew Valley.
In some regards that's valid; I think it's incredible that a game produced by one dude is more content rich and high quality than the newest release of the most influential series in the genre. Even so, it doesn't have to eclipse SDV to be a perfectly enjoyable game in its own right. So far, I'd rate this higher than Trio of Towns.
@SwitchVogel I'm also failing to see the disdain for this game. It is leagues better than FoMT as far as modern conveniences, like sprinklers, being able to choose your farming area, and the days not shooting by so quickly. The farm is fairly large in comparison to FoMT and most of Stardew Valley's farm layouts. I have no qualms about the house decorating, because house decorating is not why I'm playing a farming sim. The makers are not an issue for me, especially coming off of SV. I would have at least scored this game the same as, if not higher than, FoMT.
@SwitchVogel I definitely bought Trio of Towns after reading your review awhile back. Do you feel that this new one really eclipses ToT in terms of overall package?
@recent_mantis I'd say so. ToT main issue was an absolutely awfully slow start, plus the side jobs system was super shallow. I liked the Town Link Rank tho, as it actually incentivized you to talk to everyone instead of just your marriage candidate.
This one strips away the handholding nonsense and while the social side is definitely weaker, I think the new farming and resource gathering activities more than make up for it. To me, this game is just more fun to play than past entries with all its different systems, and in that regard it reminds me a lot of SDV.
I just want A Wonderful Life to be remastered at this point.
@SwitchVogel Many thanks for the further thoughts. Will look forward to getting this down the line as well then.
@SwitchVogel I will start off by saying I am enjoying olive town.
I think aside from the fact that we just had a well loved remake (of a remake) in FoMT that people have stardew amnesia.
What I mean is the biggest weakness that bokumono has is that it has done everything, everything you can possibly do in this genre both good and bad ideas... problem is it can’t seem to get all the good ideas in one game. So then people play stardew which is just bokumono in a blender with the good feel (yes that was on purpose) story of being a passion project rags to riches story and we get this skewed perception of any new bokumono games.
Don’t get me wrong, the game has flaws...but they all do and this game isn’t a train wreck by any means. Which frankly is impressive considering we have a new director (including FoMT) onboard. A lot of times when the torch gets passed the drapes catch fire.
@Ryu_Niiyama I think a lot of it also has to do with the echo chamber of the internet skewing public opinion. Reviews with valid (though not damning) criticisms about performance issues or hokey game design get twisted into 'this game is a dumpster fire' on forums, which perpetuates an impression that the series is going massively downhill.
It just bothers me a bit that opinions on games these days are becoming increasingly more polarized. We'd rather talk about games and formulate our opinions based on those conversations than actually play the games and draw our own conclusions.
@SwitchVogel internet certainly makes the echo chamber louder (which seems counter intuitive since we can watch people play now if we don’t wanna do it) but the reasons for it haven’t changed. People have finite resources to dedicate to gaming so the spend a lot of that time gaming by proxy via reviews and playground battles on forums and comment sections. More people wanna armchair dev than play.
Ah well back to my farm.
Game is already being patched.
https://nintendoeverything.com/story-of-seasons-pioneers-of-olive-town-update-out-now-version-1-0-4-next-patch-detailed/
At this point, it’s a 7.5. By the time the next patch comes out it will be an 8. There is a very great game under the hood (I am on my second year) and many of the blemishes are being ironed out. At least wait for a sale, but this day 5 buyer is quite happy. Already 60 hours in.
I know this review is a little old since there has been updates to improve the game but I will put my own review here. There has been a much better improvement to the makers and there is more dialogue to the characters but this game is still meh. I mean, I do enjoy the game but I still prefer the older HM and SOS titles more and Stardew Valley still has the crown. The characters faces still aren't that expressive and their dialogue(even the newly added ones) make them sound like a robot. Especially the spouse. I married Neil and he just sounds like this soulless robot repeating how much his life would be nothing without my character and how he didn't know love until he met my character and how hard it was to not be able to see my character at night. All this cheesy cliché crap while having almost no individuality of his own. He doesn't much either besides going back to windswept falls when he's not standing in a corner facing the wall like he's in a time out lol. I just wish the characters were more fleshed out and had real in depth personalities and stories instead of the typical, cliché background stories and personalities you see in every other game like SOS and HM. I think it's time for Xseed and Marvelous to evolve their characters and maybe even have the spouses and children actually help out on the farm instead of being a waste of space. It would be nice to see characters actually progress as you go through the game and story too. Like they could actually have Neil show progress through his studies and eventually become a Vet. Maybe see him play his guitar at certain times of the day or hanging out with the animals on the farm(once you're married). This game is also lacking in the competitive festival department. The Egg Hunt is a disappointment as it is only a cutscene. And they took out all the animal festivals where you can show off how well you took care of your livestock and actually compete with other farmers. I missed the harvest festival too and actually being able to contribute to festivals with items and crops from your farm. I also feel that the time in POOT goes by a little too fast because it's difficult to get a lot done in the little amount of time in the day that they give you. Pioneers of Olive Town had so much potential but it flopped for the most part. It goes to show that rushing a game's release date can only drag it through the mud.
@realityxaidan well it probably would give you a better experience of the game if you waited a little longer but now that the 1.0.5 patch is out, I find that the game is much better.
@RikkuPendragon I got the game near launch and played for a few hours but then decided to wait for the 1.0.5 update. It's definitely been better after the update. I love the game overall!
@SwitchVogel I will start by saying that I do enjoy playing POOT and the faults of this game hasn't stopped me from playing it. I am glad that you enjoy playing it and that you haven't let others' opinions affect what you think about the game or how you enjoy this game. My problems with POOT is that I personally find the characters flat shallow(no depth to their personality and they're very cliché personalities, they seem like card board cut-outs compared to other characters from older titles or in SV), The makers were hindering my enjoyment of the game but ever since the 1.0.5 patch where they fixed them I feel the quality of the game has improved in that respect(although I feel they could still do a little more touch ups and polish on the makers), it bothers me that I can't store the makers and chests inside buildings so they're just an eyesore on my farm, the lag is still a hindrance even after the first patch, and the lack of festivals is disappointing. Especially the competitive ones. I miss the animal festivals where you can show off how well you have raised your livestock and compete with the other farmers, the egg hunt is a big disappointment as it is only a cutscene. I attended it once for the achievement and then I just don't plan on going to any future ones. The cutscene does absolutely nothing for you besides just be there. I also miss being able to contribute items and crops to festivals from your farm like you could in the harvest festival. I also think that they just need to evolve their characters by fleshing them out more, give them more in depth, unique, and interesting personalities and back stories. It's time to actually make spouses and children more useful around the farm in stead of just standing in their corners of shame.
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