Congratulations, farmers! Your farm has just been updated to 1.0.4, and with that comes a few new patch notes! It's just like real agriculture. Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town launched late last month in the West with a bit of a lukewarm reception - many reviews (including ours!) noted its framerate issues, its tedious cooking/Maker interfaces, and its long loading times, as well as a few bugs and gripes here and there.
As a result, XSEED and Marvelous made a show of apologising and promising to fix it, and they're keeping to that promise with their latest patches. Version 1.0.4 - which is out in North America, but not Europe and Australia - has patch notes which include fixes for corrupted save data, an infinite item glitch, and generally just shortening the loading times. It's not a huge update, but it'll certainly fix a few of the most pressing issues.
By the end of May, however, we'll be getting the mother of all patches: Version 1.0.5, which has the following patch notes:
・Adjusts some of the residents’ existing dialogue and adds new dialogue
・Changes the functionality of all makers
・Improves visuals during eating scenes
・Adds the ability to lock movement in a straight line
・Adjusts cooking times
・Removes the need to press the A Button when moving from indoors to outdoors
This patch will attempt to address some of the biggest issues in the game, and though the patch notes are a little vague, the XSEED blog goes into a little bit of further detail:
"The next update will go beyond optimization and bug fixes. It will include adjustments and additions to game systems and text. The two main purposes will be to adjust the functionality of makers and update dialogue text, two things that we have received a lot of feedback from players about.
Makers
In an effort to improve the functionality of makers, they will be changed so that each maker is able to create multiple items.Dialogue
Our team is now working on writing new dialogue so that players can enjoy getting to know the residents of Olive Town even more than before."
What's more, a Story of Seasons player on Reddit has translated the Japanese blog post, which also has more information, including the fact that Marvelous has just hired a new scenario writer to work on the dialogue for the marriage candidates, and that the developers are "thinking about doing free content updates".
In case you were wondering why Pioneers of Olive Town missed the mark by such a wide margin, Story of Seasons fan blog and irreplaceable guide Fogu detailed the fact that the game was actually outsourced to a company called Three Rings Inc., a studio that has previously worked on One Piece games among others. Despite Pioneers' disappointing launch, Marvelous intends to keep working with Three Rings, according to a Japanese report from the company.
Are you relieved to see these patch notes, or is there something missing for you that would improve the game? Let us know in the comments below.
[source xseedgames.com, via fogu.com]
Comments 24
The game was outsourced??? No wonder it seems like a massive misstep for the series.
I've still had fun with the game so far, but makers have been pretty tedious, so I'm really glad to see that patch will be coming soon that will fix them. I love how they're also committed to fixing the dialogue, and the game itself, rather than only performance issues and bugs, because that's just as important in my opinion!
@nessisonett I thought both the season and harvest moon games have been bad for a while were they actually good until now? Either way I'll probably stick with the true sequel to friends of mineral town stardew valley
A Japanese game that fails on the foodporn part? FOR SHAME!
@Ghostchip Nah, the original (sort of) Story of Seasons and Trio of Towns are pretty good. Not my favourites in the BokuMon series by any stretch but they’re pretty widely regarded as Good Games™️
I really hope that Rune Factory 5 will end up better than this..
Well all right, I guess I'm keeping it in the back burner until those updates are out.
Framerate in particular bugged me from what I played, especially after getting used to FoMT's smooth one. And I'm usually not that particular with that.
Bippity boppity boo, when you abandon Harvest Goddess in your game, then this is what happens to you~
I'll just keep playing Stardew!
(Sung to the wii sports resort theme)
Great news. I started playing over the weekend and have probably put in around 20 hours so far. The game is not nearly the disaster you might think from all the reactions online. It's not the greatest in the genre, but I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. My only worry now is that the second patch will probably break my save file if they are changing the way makers work. But I'll keep playing it anyway.
The patches sound great and should fix just about everything I haven't liked about the game. Fixing the maker system is definitely the top priority as I hate the way they work now. If they fix that, add some more variety in the dialogue, and do something about the slowdowns that some people have experienced, the game will be vastly improved.
Outsourcing = Marvelous cares little about this series. Such a shame.
@nessisonett you seem to like these games a lot! I just played a couple but they sure are fun. Is the switch friends of mineral town a good remake? I've had my eye on it for a while but I have the original somewhere so...
@Ghostchip The remake’s pretty good yeah. It’s faithful so does miss a bit of depth but it’s worth it just to experience Mineral Town again!
@nessisonett Or you can just play the original, which I'm doing now. =>) Never a bad experience.
@Ghostchip The GameCube and Wii Harvest Moon games exist lmao. Play them they’re hella good.
@Ghostchip I enjoyed it, though I’ve never played the original. Haven’t gotten to having a kid yet but I’m working on it
Unfortunately if you start a new game your saved game files are erased. Looks like they took a cue from AC.
@HarvestGoddess
But Harvest Goddess never say "Salagadoola mechicka boola
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put them together and what have you got
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo." in Bokumono games 😆
@Anti-Matter bippity boppity bop, I am the Harvest Goddess, and I say what I want.
If you don't agree, then you can sure as hell face the Harvest God. (Why I have to work with that fat rarely seen baffoon when Sephia gets a hot firey stud.. is beyond me..)
So is Europe getting the patches eventually as well?
I have the special edition still sealed until they fix the game.
(That and I am enjoying Littlewood far too much to even consider another sim at the moment)
I knew it had issues when I bought it but knew they were planning on fixing it, but skipping Europe seems a big OOF to me.
er..i do hope they realize that the community continues to request of adding potraits, i went to check up the feedback everyone gave out when they had to rightfully apologize on twitter for their f up, and everyone agreed they want it back with other things as well - another thing; they really need to fix the wedding, and the relationship communication with the characters you marry because honey it is super bad dry compared to the 3ds one, it's bad...
...man i hope they continue to add more updates on not do a ditch please T_T...knowing that the 1.5 is just this is okay but i still need the potraits i just cannot play the game like this..it feels so out of touch from what story of seasons is - oh wait i know why, it's because the moronic fools at marvelous decided to hire a new team of developers, replace the actual devs for this franchise and add new ones that don't know what they're doing.. sigh..
@kducky11 I wish but I gave my wii away to salvation army...
@Ghostchip they aren’t too expensive to pick up used nowadays. I bought another wii for my sister on Craigslist. It was only like 40 bucks.
@kducky11 Hmmm noted
Tap here to load 24 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...