Topic: Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town

What are your thoughts on this reimagined classic?

It looks...alright. But I still haven't fired my copy of Doraemon Story of Seasons, which is the most recent entry in the Story of Seasons franchise. Minus romance and marriage.

It's still a few days away. I do have it predownloaded though.

It was pretty cute.
The game was running on 60 fps.
But the character redesign was a little bit meh for some characters.
Some of them has very drastic change looks.
I never thought Won will have younger and handsome looking with new design without his Chinese hat.
But most importantly, i can have same gender marriage.
I oftenly play as Girl to marry the bachelors all the time on previous Bokujou Monogatari.
Now i can play as Boy and getting married with the Bachelors. 😁

The graphics don't bother me as much as they did in some of the early previews. After seeing more of it lately, I guess they're not too bad. Some characters seem more bleh than others, but the environments and crops and stuff don't look too "mobile."

I'll definitely get it because at the end of the day it's still Friends of Mineral Town with a couple small gameplay improvements.

I picked this game up mainly for two reasons:

Everyone I've talked to said they loved the original.

and

The Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon series is supposed to be the inspiration for Stardew Valley - which I absolutely love.

My first impressions after about 2-3 hours of play? I see why this game would have been loved on GBA and I see how Stardew is inspired by this series. I'm enjoying it, but I don't think it's gonna suck me in for hundreds of hours like Stardew did.

It could be just cause I just started but... why do characters have so little to say? I feel no reason to talk to them when they do not say anything different each day.

Farming seems decent, not sure what to make of the sprites yet. The graphics don't bother me much - even if they aren't in my usual tastes.

For now, I think it will be a nice chill distraction while I have my morning coffee. At least until Stardew gets a new update.

The sprites will slowly get better at the tasks you give them, so eventually they will be extremely good at them.

I'd recommend selecting specific jobs for each, so they get better faster, instead of spreading their time across different skills.

I also recommend alternating the ones with the same jobs, so you always have one active. Because if for example, you hire all your watering sprites on the same day, you'll have one day without help when they all take their break at the same time.

About the villagers and their dialogue, I've noticed the villagers now comment about upcoming events. That's new.

That said, I don't really think they're that different from Stardew Valley's, in terms of dialogue variety. It's certainly not Magical Melody levels of dialogue

@Eel
I saw we can harvest the crops in the middle unlike HM BTN so i can hire the Harvest Sprites for watering the crops and taking care the lifestocks since i can harvest the crops by myself.
Btw, are Harvest Sprites still like Flour as their favourite gifts ?
Also... Have you ever tried to poisoning the villagers with Poisonous Mushroom during Harvest Festival ? 😂
Do we get Credit Roll by doing so on Switch version ?

You can now walk over crops, yes. Though can get better at watering yourself, while your harvesting skills never improve. So it might be good to train at least one sprite for harvesting.

They still love flour.

I've only played for a few hours, so I can't try. That also only happened in DS, not Mineral Town.

@Eel How do I give them tasks in the first place? I asked to play with them and they said we need to be better friend? I'm guessing they need to be bribed? (I mean they want gifts)

@Heavyarms55 you need to get them to three hearts before they'll let you boss them around.

Just pick two or three to butter up with gifts, and talk to the rest if you have time. You don't need to rush to manage all the squad if you don't feel like it, they all will like you eventually if you talk to them every now and then.

Flour surely does speed things up though, so if you can spend the money on that, it's an easy way to make them happy.

@Eel Bribery is the way to go then. Gotcha.

Is crafting a thing in this game? Is there any reason to save things like weeds and stuff? I know that using the axe and hammer on the twigs and rocks gets me stone and wood for upgrading the house.

Also is a kitchen a later upgrade? It seems like cooking is a thing but unless I am seriously blind, there is no kitchen.

Weeds have no use as far as I know. Sometimes you can give them to chickens as snacks, but I don't know if that's in this game. Just sell them.

This game is from a time before crafting had to be a thing in every other game, so yeah you just need the materials for upgrades. It's honestly a bit of a breath of old fresh air not having to hoard every junk item you find. Specially in this series.

Yeah the kitchen comes with the house expansion.

@Eel I'm still gonna play this game but I'm thinking I should have gone with one of the actual newer entries instead. Then again, this game actually lets me play as a girl and still marry a girl, and apparently that's a first in the series. So that's a cool thing.

I dunno why. But I have really been unable to enjoy their newer releases.

So far this feels very much like the original GBA game. There's some weird changes here and there. But overall, I've been enjoying it.

Heh with the new same-sex marriage options, it's been heart event galore during the first month.

@Eel
Even weird, we still able to get baby from same gender marriage.
Well, the baby might be delivered by a stork.... 🤣

I checked, the goddess just comes by one day and throws a baby at you.

Then your partner just goes "ok".

@Eel Are you telling me that's not how it always works!?

@Anti-Matter You can still get kids in Stardew too, just via adoption.

I'm a terrible person, I name all my kids in Stardew after fictional villains like Ysanne Isard from Star Wars. (Just google her). I'll probably do the same in this game, if it holds my attention to that point.

I can't wait to get this, hopefully this weekend. I love the older Harvest Moon games and the beautiful simplicity. I just can't get with any of the recent games. Too much fluff, ugh. Crafting, terraforming, and suddenly now also a dungeon crawler in my farming sim?!!?

I'm halfway joking lol at the end of the day Stardew Valley is awesome and I've poured hundreds of hours into it, but the modern Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games just don't do it for me.

I actually loved Natusme's first entry The Lost Valley, it had a simplicity and focus on farming that the games had been missing for a really long time. Even with the terraforming, it was just really another way to influence your farming.

However they had the great idea of not allowing you to upgrade your tools, so farming with more than a few dozen plants quickly became a huge chore.

Their first mobile title has a similar feel to it. It's super simple and the focus is your farm, but your tools are again very limited for the amount of farmland you get.