Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town
This minigame gave us Super Monkey Ball flashbacks

Other Disappointments

Some disappointments defy neat categories. This is the section where we get complainy.

Harvest Moon: One World

Running takes stamina

We've already mentioned a slew of disappointments for One World, but there are still a few more that don't fit neatly into a category.

The worst, for our money, is the fact that running costs stamina, which is your only source of energy in the game. If you get lost in the mines - and you will - it'll become a race against time and energy to try to find a ladder up or down to escape.

A smaller, but no less irritating issue is how sensitive the joystick controls are. It's easy to accidentally select the wrong option in a menu, and though we never had any dire consequences thanks to the sensitivity, it was annoying.

Finally, there's the wonky economy - and lack of difficulty options. Story of Seasons has had a "Seedling Mode" for a while now, which lets more casual players (or reviewers on a deadline) experience the game with reduced prices and easier friendships. One World doesn't have this, which means that the slog of trying to make money is a universally shared experience between all players. We didn't even get a horse until Autumn of Year One, and the world is so huge and empty that it's really a necessity if you want to get anything done.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

Too many makers

Don't be fooled by its winning streak: Pioneers of Olive Town has its flaws, too.

Most egregious are its technical issues, which involve long loading screens and a framerate so low that it might as well be a slideshow whenever you walk into a field of crops.

In many other places, there's just a lack of polish that betrays either the game's low budget or the game's tight deadline. The Museum is sparse and disappointing, the lack of interesting dialogue makes all the townsfolk seem like robots, and the dearth of animal festivals, cooking festivals, and produce competitions makes it seem a bit pointless to be trying to get 10-star crops and 10-heart animals if no one's there to appreciate it.

Decorating your farm is fun, but just as limited as the house decoration in some places. The developers have seen fit to make the terrain sloped in some areas, and you can't put path on a slope, so you're stuck with grass for now. There's also a generous border around the edge of each area that you can't build on, as well as around the lakes you can't get rid of, so a lot of your paths are going to have to accommodate that.

Lakes

And, since we've mentioned the lakes: Pioneers has a real problem with the overly-generous bounty of Mother Nature. The lakes are designed to be pumped dry, but they refill over the course of about a week, and the cycle starts again. Smaller ponds will appear anywhere there is space, and trees, forageable plants, long grass, and rocks will appear in any single-tile space that isn't taken up by a Maker, a building, a fence, or a path. What's more, they'll all grow back like weeds, even the rocks. It's a full-time job to keep chopping down all the trees, or laying path everywhere to stop them growing. We never thought we'd say this sentence, but it might be time to nerf Nature.

The cooking ability and the need for Makers, on the other hand, are both painfully slow. The former takes half an hour and you can only make one dish at a time; the latter makes one item per Maker, leading to the player needing about a hundred Makers spread across the farm to make progress. As we mentioned in our review, you get used to it - but that doesn't make it less bad.

Not to excuse any of this, of course - a game shouldn't be releasing if it has framerate issues this bad - but the developers are promising to patch it, and at least most of it is patchable.

WINNER: NO ONE!

We thought it would be too confusing to declare who won a category called "disappointments".

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town
Oh, that's nice.

Surprises

AH! What was that? A surprise? Warn us next time.

Anyway, surprises and secrets are great in games like these, and while we won't spoil anything huge, there may be some little spoilies in here. Mostly, though, these surprises are all about things we were surprised and delighted to see in the game (that we haven't already mentioned).

Harvest Moon: One World

Mutated Crops

One World might be pretty dire, and we certainly don't recommend it (spoilers for the end of this article), but it does have some things going for it - especially when directly compared with Pioneers of Olive Town.

One World's world is seamless, with short loading screens only visible when you enter a building. You can explore the whole thing in one go, which is pretty neat (but may explain why there's not much in the world).

Crops are bountiful

Its addition of mutated crops is an interesting proposal, and makes for an idea that we'd love to see in future games, especially if it's made a little more accessible to players.

Finally, there's the automatic tool-switching, which is a godsend. Perhaps some Harvest Moon players prefer to have their toolbar organised just the way they like it, or to have a little more control over what they intend to do, but One World does away with all of that. If you're pressing A next to a tree, you'll chop it. If you're pressing A next to the sea, you'll fish. Now your inventory can be filled with things you actually need, rather than every single tool you might need.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

Sprites

Pioneers of Olive Town is by no means the best Story of Seasons game, but it does still have a lot going for it.

The addition of the Harvest Sprites is perhaps the most interesting thing, even if they do look like sentient eggs. Through your daily activities, you'll discover Sprites, the tiny pink eggs, and you'll be able to assign them to various other Sprites, themed around a specific type of material. Assign a bunch of Sprites to the Stone Sprite, and he'll collect ore for you, or the Angler Sprite can get fish for you instead.

Every Sprite you get also earns you a point for the Shrine, where you can unlock new abilities, more stamina, new areas, and better crop quality. When the various Sprites give you the materials they've gathered, they'll also give you Sprite Coins, which can be spent on rare materials , but aren't usually worth it unless you really need a single piece of coal. It's a confusing and convoluted currency system, but it works.

Museum

The progress in general is fast but satisfying. You'll unlock most of the tool upgrades by the end of Year One, and maybe even be on your way to marriage. After a year, our Museum is almost full, and we barely even tried, and we've almost completed the story of Pioneers of Olive Town, which requires building up the town to attract tourists. Lovett, the local Gourmet, is often asking for meals of a certain quality, and we're about halfway through those requests, too.

Some of the late-game crafting recipes take a lot of materials - especially the Old Hydroculture Plant, which takes a whopping 50 Orichalcum Ingots - but that gives us something to strive for. What's more, the difficulty options give you a choice between Normal, and Seedling Mode, which lowers prices across the board and raises what you can sell items for, as well as making friendship gains easier and faster, and stamina loss slower. Overall, it makes for a less stressful experience for those who don't want to grind quite as much, without taking away the challenge.

Seedling Mode

Pioneers of Olive Town doesn't have anything quite as exciting as One World's mutated crops, but you can occasionally get a special crop - a Giant Sweet Potato, a Jewel Melon, or a Round Eggplant, for example - which sell for more, or can be turned into more seeds than the garden-variety version. They're pretty rare, but exciting to find.

And, last but not least: the crafting. Pioneers of Olive Town is all about taking things into your own hands, and you'll be able to build everything (except house upgrades, barns, coops, stables, and tool upgrades) from scratch. You can then decide where it goes on your farm. There is the issue of trees popping up in the cracks every time you look away, but it's quickly remedied (and hopefully will be patched). This degree of freedom is not new to the series, but it's welcome.

WINNER: Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town!

Gasp. No way.

OVERALL WINNER: Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town!

The Winner!

Well, that was surprisingly easy (and, perhaps, obvious): Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is the clear winner. So clear, in fact, that we wrote this paragraph before we wrote the rest of the article. But, if you were sitting on the fence between the two games (or you just wanted to read us thoroughly tearing apart Harvest Moon: One World again) then hopefully this helped.

Happy farming!