
Welcome to the latest instalment in our nostalgia-inducing column, Memory Pak, where we're going to be doing a deep-dive into some of the most memorable moments in gaming – good and bad. Today is the five-year anniversary of the release of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns in Europe, and Kate has some fond memories of a certain character...
I've played almost every Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons game, and what I've learned from those hundreds of hours of playtime is that all of them, like any good boyband, have one standout marriage candidate.

My all-time favourites of the series still hold a place in my heart: Story of Seasons' Raeger, a sweet and handsome chef; A New Beginning's shy assistant to the prince, Sanjay; and Will, the polite gentleman who lives on a boat in Sunshine Islands. I guess you could say I like the nice guys, which is a bit boring of me.
But of all of these, my number one will always be the muscular, blue-haired carpenter Ludus from Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns — a game which I bought exactly five years ago today when it was released in Europe.

As is traditional in all Story of Seasons games, Trio of Towns has its marriage candidates appear slowly as you develop your farm and your friendships. Usually, the later characters are more interesting than the ones available from the start, and Trio of Towns' harder-to-get romantic prospects include a pink-haired festival host, a man who is always inside of a dog mascot costume, and a literal god.
he's not even hard to woo — his preferred gifts include literal twigs
Ludus — a blue-haired resident of Lulukoko, a Hawaiian-themed tropical beach town — is not one of these hard-to-get spouses. He appears at the start of the player's third week in the game, as part of their introduction to Lulukoko, and he's not even hard to woo — his preferred gifts include literal twigs.
Nevertheless, although he may not be flashy or rare, Ludus is the best partner in the game. He's calm and gentle, but his romantic scenes betray a passionate, affectionate side to him; he cares for everyone in his small town, and eventually, your kids; and to top it all off, he's attractive. For me, it's rare that I find characters attractive in a Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons game, because the character portraits usually end up being "cute anime boy" or "angry dad" (which is certainly some people's thing, but not mine), or even some combination of the two.
Ludus, in contrast, does not look like a child. Or a dad. He looks age-appropriate, and he's got that sort of smouldery, looking-up-from-under-his-eyebrows thing going on. His cutscenes early on often revolve around him secretly thinking you're cute, and getting a little flustered if you show interest, because he's trying to hide his own feelings in order to not make you uncomfortable. What a gentleman!
It's hard to portray romance and affection in dialogue that is constrained by a number of factors
I actually do a fair bit of video game writing myself, outside of my job here at Nintendo Life — and one of my current projects involves writing dates for dateable characters in a farm and life sim. So it may not be much of a surprise that I think about this kind of writing a lot. It's hard to portray romance and affection in dialogue that is constrained by a number of factors, not least of which is the size of the text box. It's even harder to build up a portrait of an entire relationship in just a handful of cutscenes — of course, everyone wants to add more writing, but it's not feasible on a deadline!
Ludus' personality-filled, sweet-yet-shy cutscenes convey a lot with a little, which is the goal of any writer with limited resources. He is able to tell you about his insecurities and fears, his passions, and his pre-existing relationships all at once. He messes up by letting those insecurities get to him, and trying to hide his feelings, but it all works out in the end — and he works through it with you. Best of all, he's a total flirt, which is something you don't get to see much in these pretty PG games.

It helps that Trio of Towns is also just better written than many other Story of Seasons games. Its characters have motives, flaws, and complications to them, and their friendship and romance scenes are genuine and heartwarming. Very few Story of Seasons games actually make me feel like an important part of a town's ecosystem, because I'm usually just "the farm weirdo", siloed off from the rest of town, or the person that literally builds everyone else's houses and keeps the economy going for no thanks whatsoever.
But in Trio of Towns, the three titular towns exist before you even get there, and they're doing just fine without your help. In fact, in a rare Story of Seasons twist, you actually have living parents who move away without you, rather than having a dead relative gift you a farm, and your goal is to prove to your parents that farming is a viable career choice. Sure, you can help those towns flourish by revitalising the economy, but that's mostly just so you can buy more stuff from their shops. It's a shame that no Story of Seasons game since has succeeded in doing things differently.

Ludus was actually resurrected for the Pioneers of Olive Town DLC, which makes it an excellent point of comparison — is he anything like the original? And how have things changed between the two games?
[ToT] proved that the series could be brilliant and surprising, including nods to its history and players' expectations without being weighed down by tradition
Well, his 3D model is certainly more detailed, but players seem to think he's a bit of a disappointment, especially because he lives on an island with only three other people. As Reddit user Tobegi on a discussion about his return puts it, "Ludus shines only when surrounded by his community." He's also not as flirty, and has only short romantic cutscenes in contrast to Ludus from Trio's much more lengthy cutscenes. In short, he's a bit flatter, and a lot less loveable.
I know I harp on about the failures of the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games a lot, but it's because of games like Trio of Towns — games that proved that the series could be brilliant and surprising, including nods to its history and players' expectations without being weighed down by tradition.

It's been a long time since I've cared about one of the bachelors in the way that I did about Ludus five years ago — and while a not-insignificant part of that is down to the latest game, Pioneers of Olive Town, doing away with the emotive character portraits in favour of 3D models, I imagine that it's also down to the usual culprits of reduced budget and tighter deadlines. As I said before — it's hard to make something great when you're under the pressures of time and money.
It feels like a fairly massive step from the immersive, vibrant world of Trio of Towns in 2017 to the pared-back Pioneers of Olive Town in 2021, but remakes aside, that's what the Story of Seasons series has looked like for the past five years — and the next game, A Wonderful Life, is also a remake, this time of the beloved GameCube game. Don't get me wrong — this next remake looks pretty good, and A Wonderful Life was a really lovely game, but I have to wonder what was lost after Trio of Towns... and whether it can ever come back.
Do you agree that Ludus is best boy? What was the last Story of Seasons bachelor or bachelorette that you really liked? Tell us all your farmy/romantic thoughts in the comments below!
Comments 11
I like Owen from Tree of Tranquility by the most since I like muscular looking dudes.

Story of seasons on the 3DS. The pilot of the name change and it's sequel. Every game after has been a much lower quality. Don't know why they dropped the anime aesthetic with actually well written characters for the chibi lifeless drones where you get lucky if you see two separate pieces of text from any given character.
Doraemon spinoff was okay though, as was rune factory 5.
I find the series kind of frustrating in that I absolutely love 64, Back to Nature, and Friends of Mineral Town, and also at the time really enjoyed A Wonderful Life, DS, and Magical Melody though it's been awhile since I've really played any of those ones, and I continually keep coming back to those three over and over and over throughout the years, but really no farming game ever since has scratched the same itch for me with the exception of the FoMT remake.
I dunno, it's like post-DS (and really even that has its issues, mostly how grindy and how absurdly glitchy it is plus the pointless DS gimmick integration) the series just hit a hard wall and nothing since has really landed right with me, and as I really, really dislike Stardew Valley it kind of just leaves me endlessly replaying the same few old games while not really having any new ones.
I married Inari since that was the closest I could get to a lesbian option (SoS ToT cheated by saying the character is opposite your character but since the ingame model looks the same I could ignore that quirk) . As usual I pretty much avoided the male options. So I know/remember nothing about any of them. In fact I’ve spoken to them more now than before… Due to Olive Town (since I am married with a daughter to Laura).
The thirst in this article is hilarious for me though as I can’t relate at all. Looks like every other bland/boring bishounen type to me. But yay for dark skinned characters! I’m very glad we are seeing more and more of a diverse casting now.
DS was usually Lumina or Celia although they’re basically kids in that game due to the art style so it felt a bit creepy. Tale of Two Towns was a toss up between Reina and Nori but for bachelors I’d usually pick Kana. Rune Factory 4 had loads of great characters for male and female options so for bachelorettes I picked the genuinely adorable Clorica and for bachelors I picked Leon as he’s a flirty himbo and fit well with a gay character.
I did like Iris (from SoS) in Olive town though. Her personality seems to have made the jump mostly intact.
I din't know what it was about Trio of Towns, but that game just completely failed to grab me. I enjoyed A New Beginning and the first Story of Seasons a lot, but Trio... maybe it's subjectively better written, but even after two seasons I felt nothing about the characters or story.
@Anti-Matter it’s Reyn!😂
I also picked Ludus, because I wanted to try playing the game from the female perspective. I also went with a brown-skinned avatar with purple hair, which ended up being weird because your character icon (what you look like on the mini-map) looked nothing like her. Plus interacting with your family is weird, like no one mentions that you're either adopted or a total gyaru.
I really liked A New Beginning, so I tried to 'customize' as much as I could. You can set up your own house and farm, sure, but I tried customizing 'important dates' in an effort to be weird.
I attempted to force the wedding date to fall on my birthday. That didn't work, the game won't let you do that, it just skips to the next possible day. Then I attempted to force our child's birthday to my birthday, and while the game will let you try to do that (and with Ludus' 'kid initiation event' requiring some timing, it was a little tricky), but then something really weird happened.
So, when you're expecting, all the villagers start saying different things to you. During the two days my avatar was 'overdue', all the villagers stopped talking about the imminent baby. This really freaked me out. Day 1: 'Happy Birthday' from everybody, but no baby talk. Day 2, from Ludus: 'Happy Anniversary', but no baby talk. Day 3: Baby.
Whew!
I hope we get back to A New Beginning's style of village creation, I had a lot of fun with that one back in the day.
Going to be honest, the bachelor's of Olive ztown all looked like generic background NPCs and personally i kept getting them confused with the tourist npcs.
Personally the last good boy was Griffin DS Cute he's such a sweetheart. Ludus is great too! But frankly most HM/SoS bachelor's look like children and all share the same body type. This is why im Loving Coral Island! The bachelors look like adults!
I love these features, Kate! I’ve been loving the Harvest Moon series ever since the first game released on the SNES. In 2014 Swedish Video Game Vlog GamingGrannar did a showcase of my Harvest Moon collection on YouTube. That was by the time the series had already started to spiral downwards. After I’ve tried Stardew Valley I ceased collecting the games, since it felt like either Natsume or Marvelous even tried to make the new entries any better. However, it is with great interest I follow the releases of the multitude of Farming Sims in development. But I guess I won’t have the opportunity to dwell deep into these games as I used to, since my IRL farming adventure now has taken off, with both family, farming and animal husbandry in the mix. But I guess I wouldn’t have this kind of life if I hadn’t drawn inspiration from Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons to begin with.
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