Topic: Story of seasons : A wonderful life

The game is out!

I decided to play a quick day before going to bed for the night.

The graphics will take some time getting used to, since it almost looks like how Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom look when they remove the shadows and fog, some things also very visibly pop in and out of existence… On the other hand, the music is just great: it made it feel all right.

I don’t quite enjoy the name changes, particularly the name of the valley itself is inferior, to put it bluntly… but I found a life hack for that: I’ll play this one in Spanish. That way there’s a level of separation and I can blame the language!

Gameplay wise, I can already see a few differences in both controls and features. Maybe I just haven’t played the original in a while, but the character movement feels a bit too fast or loose. But I like that the large field is now something to work towards.

Largely it does still feel like the A Wonderful Life I remember, though.

Interestingly, there’s an option to change the language of the voice acting, but so far I haven’t really heard anyone speak.

@Eel lucky! Mine comes in later today. So excited!!

Ah I just noticed a great thing: when tending your fields, instead of trying to adjust your character to face the next field after every action, just wait a bit and the cursor will move on its own.

I swear this game is like putting on an old worn sweatshirt, so comfortable, and yet the QoL stuff makes it better....sorta like it takes what nostalgia told us the old game was like...and adds that. I do miss the restrictions on the farm animals, but everything else feels like coming home except I am finally in my own skin.

Seems like the horse still has the bad habit of falling asleep constantly

Gift guide

Baddoch – Fish, Gemstones, Coins, Fossils
Carter – Eggs, Sashimi, Salads, Milk
Cecilia – Eggs, Vegetables, Flowers, Animal Products, Moonlight Ore, Crops (A or S Grade)
Charlie – Flowers, Fish
Chris – Flowers, Fruits, Milk
Cole – Milk, Gemstones
Daryl – Fossils, Fish, Eggs, Coins (Befriend him early so you get the seed maker for free)
Flora – Milk, Eggs, Vegetables, Soups
Garrett – Milk, Sashimi, Eggs
Gary – Coins, Fish, Meals, Clay Figures
Gavin – Fish, Eggs, Gemstones, Coins
Gordy – Eggs, Meals, Vegetables, Toy Flower
Gustafa – Clay Figurines, Milk, Curry, Meals, Ores, Flowers
Hugh – Meals, Milk, Gemstones (this will change as he gets older)
Kate – Coins, Eggs, Flowers, Ores
Lou – Fruits, Vegetables, Milk
Lumina – Gemstones, Eggs, Flowers, Meals, Moonlight Ore
Matthew – Meals, Animal Products, Crops (A or S Grade), Energy Drink, Power Drink, Hyper Drink
Molly – Curry, Coins, Flowers, Milk, Moonlight Ore
Mukumuku – Eggs, Fish, Vegetables, Flowers
Nami – Clay Figurines, Vegetables, Soups (milky soup in particular), Trick Blue Flower, Artifacts
Nina – Flowers
Pui – Milk, Meals (not made with fish though)
Rock – Flowers (Mist Moon Flower or Toy Flower), Coins, Clay Figurine, Meals, Fossils
Romana – Flowers, Gemstones, Clay Figures, Milk
San – Flowers, Eggs, Milk, Meals
Sebastian – Fish, Gemstones, Flowers, Coins
Sully – Eggs, Sashimi, Milk, Vegetables
Takakura – Eggs, Meals, Milk
Tei – Coins, Meals, Gemstones, Flowers
Van – Eggs, Coins, Gemstones, Vegetables
Vesta – Flowers, Milk, Curry, Vegetables

Ooh thanks, that list will be useful

@Eel I will edit the list as I go. I’m still comparing against their old likes.

So the original was my favourite game of all time, I read the review on this site and thought pfft it'll definitely be a 10 for me but well, it isn't and it makes me so sad.

Don't get me wrong there is some enjoyment to be had here, but I think it is fuelled 100% by nostalgia alone, I want to complete it just because of what this game meant to me as a child, and how it shaped my tastes in gaming today.

I just can't recommend this game to anyone who didn't play and enjoy the original.

The remake itself is great. Last week this is exactly what I would have asked for. I didn't want them to change it, I wanted it to be the same game I played as a kid, and for better or for worse, it absolutely is. it looks nice it runs nice (by my standards) and everything is intact with much less tedium. I'm sad they changed some character designs and animations but I completely understand why they did.

The music and sound effects, the characters, the town it felt like coming home, but I have never felt bored this fast in a farming game. The genre has just evolved, and I'm not just on about Stardew either. That may have kicked off the genre after the OG Harvest Moon games and it's the reason why people moan there are so many nowadays, but every indie farming game/SOS game I have played recently has kept me engaged and having fun for at least 50 hours, and usually into the triple digits. They know what works in these kinds of games and they do it well and unfortunately, time has just left this one behind.

When you look a little deeper past the nostalgia, I find it really difficult to understand how I got so attached to these characters in the first place when they barely say anything at all, and honestly, its because I had imagination as a child and my mind filled the blanks in for me, as well as the really weird designs of the characters, they were so memorable.

Small ramble, there is an event at the start of year 2, and I remember having a conspiracy theory about it among others. I thought that Hardy/Baddoch killed Nina on purpose in order in order to get their house because he lived out of town and wanted to move in, and he always had kind of a serial killer vibe if you ask me, and he still does thankfully. I also thought Daryl killed my cow because he was seen snooping around my farm and I didn't trust him, I was scared he was doing cruel experiments on her and she died shortly after that cutscene (I didn't realize I had just done a bad job caring for her back then) Maybe I just had a dark mind as a kid I dunno xD

So that explains why I was attached to the characters, but I have absolutely no idea how I poured hundreds of hours into it as a kid and when I replayed it 10 or so years ago I was an idiot and din't even know about hybrid crops back then either. It doesn't take long to tend to your animals and your crops, then you are just running around gifting until you max everyone out. After that, well what can you do? go to the dig site which has aged like milk and Carter just constantly gets in the way, or go fishing until it's time to go to bed, which you can play blindfolded if you play with HD rumble, I have often fished and just read stuff on this site and not realized what time it was in game because I was doing it completely AFK.

There is just so little to do, I've been spoiled by so many recent farming/cozy games and their gameplay loops just smack you in the face every second with dopamine. You are gathering stuff like wood for upgrades, you are crafting things, collecting things, working towards your next goal, its so hard to describe but it goes far beyond just farming. I tried to explain to my partner that although farm sims look repetitive and dull, you're brain is constantly busy planning in your head, it's incredibly engaging. In this game, you have to forget everything you know about farming games, don't stress about making money because it comes so slowly and just try and appreciate it for what it is, and that is what I'm trying to do.

Before this came out I bought Pictoneer, Pretty Princess magical garden and Everdream Valley and I just know they are gonna feel so much more like farming games than this one does, this isn't a farming game, it's a relationship/fishing simulator where the dialogue barely changes and that cuts me to say it.

And don't get me started on marriage! I was just so used to being able to see all heart events that it was a frantic rush to get everyone's friendship up. I tried to get Nami's 4th event to activate, looking at guides old and new and I just couldn't do it. As far as I know after doing research (but take this with a pinch of salt) I think it was because I saw Muffy/Mollys last event and if you see a fourth event then it locks you out of seeing any of the final events for the other girls/guys which by today's standards is completely silly and stops you from experiencing the content in the game without replays, the fact that so many guides told you different things in terms of activating these events just cements how obscure it is. It is a part of the game, and I respect and appreciate it for what it is but it forces you into playing a certain way even if you don't usually bother with NPC's too much at the start and want to focus on your farm, you can't.

I'm gonna have to figure out what my fave game of all time is again, because 31 year old me is not the same as 20 years ago and neither are the games available, and playing this again just proves that. it's a special and unique game, it just doesn't work anymore.

As I hinted at earlier, I think a 7 for the review on here was very generous (I thought that was too low pre-launch) now I've played it and I think the writer's love for the OG game boosted the score by 2 points, its a 5 out of 10 experience with 2 points of absolute nostalgia. And if I didn't have such fond memories of it, I would have benched it by now.

@Nintendencies
In my opinion, I gave this game 5 / 10 because:
1. The entire places are still barren.
2. Only 10 days each seasons
3. You must get married or Game Over
4. You will DIE at the end of chapter 6 The Twilight.
5. No Festivals at all. The celebrations you see just only cutscenes.

So basically this game is still very linear in term of storyline and almost no useful places to visit. Not to mention the original game only under 1 GB, what will you expect from the game with under 1 GB size ?

But I will get the game, just to indulge my guilty pleasure despite I already know the game is mediocre.

@Nintendencies AWL was a departure when it came out too. So It will always have a different scope to the rest of the bokumono games. For me though this game came out right when I went to undergrad as a teen so I really appreciated the smaller scope as other bokumono games were too much (not to mention annoying because I had to play a boy all the time). Hilariously enough, my job has me just as busy now as school did (and I am in grad school) so once again the focused scope really works for me. But I agree because of the uniqueness of this particular game in the franchise, if you didn't like it then, you might not like it now. But I do recommend it to people that want to like stardew valley but A) don't want SNES type graphics and B) find Stardew to be too much. I also play a ton of other games, so the time sink of the other games is a negative to me (one of the reasons I love olive town, because the makers automate so much, but still I can do manual labor) a lot of the games in the genre IMO have gotten quite bloated. So having a leaner game like AWL to pull out is nice.

For me I give it an 8 as it does what is on the tin and improves over the original (I've also played the original more recently so I have less nostalgia and more...this style works for me). Except for axing animal death/sickness...that was a good mechanic to have. But I understand that it isn't for everyone. I wish I'd bought it digital (well almost...the goat plushie is cute) so I could pop between it and Zelda more easily.

If anyone here has played Harvest Moon DS and has nostalgia for it, go to the sprite’s home and speak with the large pot behind them. Speak with it over and over until you annoy it.

You won’t regret it!

@Anti-Matter
Yeah I have to agree with you there, everything you said is spot on, the only thing I disagree on is the fact that you die. It makes the game unique, and like the PS2 version, you can carry on after you die. Also I have that many games, so it's nice that a farming game has an official ending.
But also like you said, where you will get it anyway, there is something special about this game despite me dunking on it, and my nostalgia for it is so high, so I will see it through till the end.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Re-reading what I wrote I do feel like I was a tad harsh on it, but I do still like the game and will play till the end.

Yeah for anyone that doesn't have 100s of hours to spend in one farming game this is great. I always hear people saying JRPG's are time sinks, but I'd argue games in this genre are much worse on the old clock. It's a very good game to just chill out to. You just have to come to terms with the fact your progress will be slow.

I am female too, and I usually play a female but funny enough I went with the male looking character with male pronouns, just because that was how I originally played it. It's a different world nowadays but playing as a guy was just the norm back then, even with Pokemon games you had to play as a boy, and I didn't get crystal till much later. I guess I'm ashamed to say I wore it as a badge of honour because it was much more rare for girls to play games back then, and I was always a tomboy growing up so I felt kinda cool, is that cringe to say? xD

Yeah this game is for the fans of the original, the review scores it's gotten lines up with that as well depending on if they played the original or not. Yeah to be fair you have a point there, I could see how this could work for people that are easily overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things to do in modern games and want a more relaxed experience, they are always said to be cozy and relaxing but they can be kind of stressful (in a good way) and some people just aren't wired like that

It's its own thing, it isn't like any other game and I found as soon as I started appreciating what it is instead of what it isn't I found myself enjoying it a lot more yesterday.

There is still some tedium (choosing one crop type at a time at Vestas for example) but overall it really is a solid remake. I can't stress enough that I loved this game so much, maybe that's why I was extra critical of it.

Yeah animal death was a part of the game in my book they shouldn't have removed that but then choose to have the animals randomly fall asleep and be mad at you if you interact with them still,. The only part that was unfair was if they got sick and there was a festival or something and you couldn't get hold of animal medicine so it felt like it wasn't truly your fault when one died. Child memories are weird, but I'm pretty sure this game taught me about death, because I was lucky enough not to have lost anyone/any animal at that point, so it hit really hard when it happened.

I have it physically as well and I feel you there, though I did put Zelda down to play this, I can't really play anything else on the side of a farm sim for some reason. I have the EU SE version so I don't have the plushie (big sad) but I have a notebook and stickers and a poster (yay)

I think it’s important to remember that this isn’t meant to be the regular modern farming sim sandbox game we’re now accustomed to: although it might seem light on it, this is a story-driven game, and the title might very well refer not to our own character’s life… but the one we set up for the child. So it’s important that the character acquires a child early on.

The story can’t move on without one.

@Eel
I have good and bad perception about Wonderful Life, considering my experience from PS2 version.

The Bad
The game was so barren due to under 1 GB size on both Gamecube and PS2 version so there were a lot of important features from previous Bokumono games got removed such as 10 days per season, linear storyline, only one shop place (Vesta farm), no festivals (only cutscenes), no Mayor, no useful buildings to visit, inconsistent aging for other villagers, almost useless digsite, etc.

The Good
Not gonna lie, the family life storyline somehow quite interesting for me.
I have ever drawn with my own Chibi style the life stage of the kid from different career paths.
I have ever drawn the story of Scientist kid and Farmer kid.
I draw the life stages into 6 frames with his Dad.
1 = Toddler
2 = Kid
3 = Teenager
4 = Young adult
5 = Daddy passed away
6 = Your kid future job

Maybe I will remake my own drawing someday to get better visualization.

The file size is irrelevant. I’d bet many of the games you enjoy are under 1GB.

The remake is, in fact, still only 1GB in size. Friends of Mineral Town, is 1GB as well (on the GBA it was under 32MB!)

@Eel You are quite right it's not trying to be like the modern games we have now, it's about preserving and updating a well-loved classic and making it more readily available and that it did really well. But It's really hard not to compare it to what we have nowadays. As much as I do appreciate it is it's own thing both when it released and with this remake, it just doesn't give you enough to do in between the story to keep me engaged despite me sinking hundreds of hours into the game when I was younger, and a replay I did 10 or so years ago.

The child and forced marriage is an integral part of the game and I wouldn't change it, but what I would change is to make the heart events a bit more streamlined, give us clues on how to activate them perhaps? Because I've found that the older guides weren't 100% accurate and it's a bit of a stress for someone who wanted to see all the events for at least the girls only having a year to do so, I can't imagine how annoying it would be for someone interested in seeing events for all characters, not to mention the fact it locks you into being unable to see all heart events for the other characters if you accidentally trigger someone's final event. I missed Nami's last heart event because I saw Muffy/Mollys fourth one and I didn't realize that was a thing (not to mention that triggered a really sad Muffy scene that you can't get otherwise, though it had changed in the remake to make you feel less bad) I thought you could see them all and then make your choice like in the newer entries. Granted I didn't have problems with this as a kid because I just was forced to marry and I didn't know any better, and my second time playing I knew I wanted Nami.

I like this game. It is unique and dripping with nostalgia and is arguably one of the most relaxing farm sims out there once you make it past year one. There's a reason that I can't seem to be able to part with it despite my grumblings, but considering it was my most hyped game of the year and that my nostalgia brain always said that was my fave game of all time the realization that it is quite sparse in terms of things to do really hurt my inner child I guess.

But I'm really glad that there are defenders like you that love it as much as I thought I would, if anything I'm really jealous of you is all xD

Does anyone know what that squeaky sound is during winter?!

@Ryu_Niiyama it’s probably a bird.

Yes it gets annoying.

@Eel I was hoping it was the game saying ducks were available or something (no pond yet) because I am going to have to blitz through winter otherwise.