Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town

First impression

This rework of Mineral Town felt nostalgic, like returning home after years of being away. I liked the new look very much however I wish they didn’t changed the characters this much, some are so diferent that they feel like someone else entirely which takes some of the nostalgia away from you.

As someone who holds the original back on the gameboy advance close to heart and after playing it for this last week, I am sure this entry in SoS franchise will be enjoyable for both old and new fans that love the genre. And you may even ask, is it better than Stardew Valley? No, but it was never trying to be and yet it is still lots of fun even with a little less than Stardew Valley has to offer.

And is the overall experience better than the original? Very much in my opinion, thanks to the many improvements made.

Story

You move into Mineral Town after learning your grandfather passed away and gave you his farm you loved when you were little. The town’s Mayor will then introduce you to your new home and the farm lifestyle. On the original game you had a time limit of 3 years but not anymore! You can play how you want at the pace you want and this I love the most.

From this point on you create your own story, you can make friends with the residents and get to know them and their new events added to the game, marry someone regardless of your gender which is a first in the franchise and highy requested by the fans. Or, just create the biggest tycoon ever and swim in lots of money.

Gameplay

Plant crops

With new crops and various quality of life changes, your farm life is a lot more fun than before. The time passes faster than in Trio of Towns so mind that when choosing how many crops you want you plant.

If you are unsure what to plant first, head over to the library in Mineral Town and read a book about every crop so you can plan ahead. It would also be usefull if it mentioned what each crop sells for.

While the watering and tiling the soil was improving my harvest speed of crops was always pretty slow, we should have a tool to quickly harvest our crops later in the game instead of grabing them one by one.

Upgrade!

Like other past games, you can upgrade your tools to make the work flow a lot faster. Always gives you this sense of progression in every little upgrade you do so It always keeps me entertained without ever feeling bored of the routine.

Everytime you use them they gain experience and you need it so keep swinging your axe and hammer early on even on this air only to level it up, you will need it!

Raise animals

In SoS: FoMT they added a very usefull bell at the entrance of your coop and barn. After you tend to your animals inside, ring that bell so they go outside to eat on their own.

In the original, it was stressfull to look for your animals all over your farm one by one and care for them, you wasted a lot of time so you always wasted wood and stone to fence them because it was necessary. Here I never felt the need for that and at 8pm they all go back inside on their own too, it is a great new feature!

In the relashionships menu for the animals you can see what they need and if you have already took care of them for that day so you never feel lost on what is left to do, very usefull. That blue cross you see means you can’t get any products that day.

Fishing

Tons of little fishies to find and their king to beat during the night, if you are lucky enough to find it. You can sell or eat the fish but saving some of them in your pond is also a good idea.

Fishing is always fun for me and it is quite simple on how it works but there is a little issue, those animations the character does when their fatigue drops will always cancel the cast you just spent energy for, and so you have to do it again. It is a fustrating way to waste stamina points.

Romance or friendship?

You can slowly increase their affection towards you just by greeting them in the morning everyday but giing gifts it’s the way to go. Check your status at anytime in the menu and remember their birthdays too, they will love you pretty fast depending on the gifts you give them, some love sashimi, bamboo shoots or just good quality eggs.

It is boring they always say the same thing pretty much when you greet them so I wish the developers added a little more to their dialogue hopefully in future updates.

If you are friends with most in town you may even have Santa come over your house during christmas!

You can marry anyone you like, even the goddess! Same gender marriages are also possible and the goddess herself will give you both a little baby if that is the case. Unlike past games however there are no rival marriages so you don’t have to rush into her or his arms this time around, some may hate this or love but I personaly don’t mind it either way.

The heart events have been reworked and two more were added, they all feel different enough from the past ones plus two new characters were also introduced, I didn’t get closer to liking them yet but they do felt interesting later on.

Town events

The residents of Mineral Town have much pride in their events, there are always a few every month and all of them feel diferent and fun to participate, even when you lose.

At the start of Summer on day 1 it had one event, I don’t remember which one was it but I really didn’t like this because it wasted a good start for the rest of the season. During events every shop closes so having one with this timing was a poor choice.

Soundtrack

Remastered tunes to feed my nostalgia. Some I really liked and only one or two were a little lacking in atmosphere to my liking. A missing oportunity in not having a relaxed rain music too!

A job well done on the songs but the sound effects were not that great, felt a little dull and could used some more variety.

Conclusion

There is much fun to be had with this game and despite having some things I enjoyed less like every single time that low stamina animation happens, the game has a stamina bar now so we could have less of these, please it slows down the game! Since it released there have been updates with new features and bug fixes for our better experience which is really good to see and it makes me looking forward to what will come next.

This next entry for Story of Seasons was a very welcome surprize and I recommend it to any old Harvest Moon fan from back in the day along with the younger fans who got into this genre from Stardew Valley.

Thank you so much to the publisher and developers at Marvelous (XSEED) for making this review possible.