Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

Release date: June 27, 2023
Platforms: Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows (via Steam)
Version tested: Switch
Audio languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish
Demo available: No
Paid DLC: Yes

Story of Seasons is a long-running franchise of farming simulations, and this happens to be the most recent entry, although it is a remake of a Gamecube title released all the way back in 2003, under the series' then-title of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. If you're curious about the name change, you can find more information here.

Either way, I got this game as a birthday gift, because my family knew I enjoyed the previous entries in the series. Unfortunately, for some reason or another, this game never really clicked with me. When I tried to give it another go in 2022, it still didn't do it for me - with it even being the generally badly-ported PS2 version, to boot! Either way, when the remake was first announced, I wasn't too excited. However, positive word of mouth led to me eventually caving and purchasing the Switch release while it was on sale. And in the end, I gotta say that I really enjoyed my time, as this remake took up many opportunities to improve things about the original that didn't quite work out.

As with most entries in the series, the player character you can control, who can be either male, female or non-binary, is not a native of the local village, Forgotten Valley. Instead, they inherited the local farm from their recently deceased father and are tasked with revitalizing it, and perhaps meeting their forever-partner along the way.

Forgotten Valley is an interesting place - rural, close to nature, but also brimming with all sorts of eccentric and diverse villagers. As is common with the series, interacting with these people is a big part of the game, and here, this is even more pronounced than it was in earlier or later entries. Every character you meet has a detailed backstory of their own, pains of the past, their own goals and reasons for being in the valley in the first place. You uncover these stories slowly as you get closer to them, which is as easy as giving them gifts they like and talking to them often, and sometimes being in the right place at the right time. In many ways, the way the valley is laid out reminds me a lot of my own childhood, having grown up in a small village in the middle of nowhere, with only the odd car passing by every now and then, with all the people living there being fairly close to each other - this game gives off the exact same feeling.

Perhaps even more importantly, this game has eight eligible marriage candidates, four female and four male, and you will have to decide on one to marry by the end of the first chapter. If you do not make said choice in time, the game will make it for you, aka the character with the highest affection will ask you to marry them. Should you decline, the game will end. This is very unusual for the series, as marriage had almost always been an option, but never mandatory. This is important, though, because the rest of the game places very big emphasis on your family and the eventual future of your child, who is born after the first chapter.

The story itself is divided into several chapters, all lasting for a variable amount of years - the first is only one year long, the second is two, and from then on it varies. Not only will your child grow up in-between the time skips, but the other villagers and even you will grow visibly older, with greying hair and wrinkles. 

How you interact with your child will seriously affect their future. You can raise them to eventually take over the farm in your instead, but also have them perform a career in sports, music, art or something else, this is strictly up to you, and it's an interesting way to progress the game, as in other entries, your child will simply stop aging after a while. Here, they will become an adult, and much like in real life, it will all happen way too fast.

And the interactions within your family are perhaps one of the driving factors as to why this entry is so beloved: it is all real, down-to-earth and very well-written. Your spouse will try to support you as much as possible, while your kid will go from absolutely adoring you to slowly growing independent, with some events implying the growing pain of puberty and the like. It's nothing that's strictly on-the-nose either, as it all feels subtle enough to come off as genuine, with XSEED's excellent localization going a long way to make things more interesting and charming than they were before.

Now, with all of this out of the way, you will still spend a fair bit of time going after your farming chores, this includes raising crops, taking care of your livestock and selling their produce, as well as eventually purchasing or upgrading farming facilities to help make your work either more profitable or automated. In general, the daily grind remains: get up, milk your cows, shear your sheep, snuggle your chickens, let them outside, water and fertilize your crops, wait for profit. A few things have been changed, however, usually to steer it into a more "realistic" direction. Among other things, crops now need to be watered twice per day. Similarly, cows can also be milked twice, which certainly helps. 

Also, producing more animals can be done in one of two ways; either you purchase a new animal (more expensive) or breed your own, which requires, for the first and only time in series' history, a male and female specimen of each. I honestly didn't bother with the breeding, because buying multiple female animals may be more expensive at first, but has better longevity when it comes to regular produce. Your farm facilities can eventually be upgraded, such as by extending barn space, adding a duck pond to your field, unlocking another field, getting machines to turn milk into cheese, and much more. While all of these are rather hefty price investments, they're ultimately worth it on the long run, as it all goes towards making more of that precious moolah. The additional field is especially important, because as mentioned before, you got precious little space to grow stuff, and the one you start with can't grow hybrids, as they're more demanding when it comes to soil quality.

The year is, much like in real life, split into four seasons, with each lasting ten days, another departure from other games, along with the fact that time now passes everywhere, regardless if you're inside or outside. The season you're in dictates which crops can be grown, and how much milk your cows will produce. Due to the short length, crops can be grown in two or sometimes even three seasons. Fruit trees are also an option, although they only yield produce for one season at a time and take up a lot of valuable space on your small field, so whether it's worth it depends - they are, at the very least, low maintenance.

One of the coolest gameplay additions is that you can hybridize crops in this game! By befriending a giant plant, you can either feed it seeds or crops which will, with a rate of failure, result in completely new and much more profitable crops. A carrot and a turnip will, for example, become a caroturn and have characteristics of both. This is important, because the game does a much better job at incentivizing you to actually grow these hybrids, as not only are there plenty of cooking recipes that need them, but villagers will often request either hybrids or hybrid dishes on the bulletin - more on that in a bit. But of course, there's also plenty of things to do when you're not tending to your farm. You can go fishing, with the mechanics having been greatly streamlined from the original and now feeling a lot like Animal Crossing, which at the same time enables you to catch a whole lot more than in the original. There is also a dig site where you can get your hands dirty - quite literally. Digging there can reveal items you can sell for a good profit, or perhaps you can even unearth something historical that will help with development of the site itself, who knows?

Selling stuff is also a bit different. Animal produce or crops are still sold via your trusty shipping bin, but anything else, such as the aforementioned dig site items, can either be sold to the peddler Van who comes in twice per season, or by setting up your own market stall in the village center - although this is far more difficult, as depending on their schedule, villagers may not immediately flock to your stall, but Van is a reliable source regardless. Van is also your source for other goodies, such as new outfits or upgraded tools, so it's more than worth it to check his wares every time he's around.

There is also a bulletin board in town where people post request. During your first year, these typically serve to introduce gameplay mechanics, such as a villager asking for a fish, or a specific item from your farm. Most of the time, the rewards are momentary, such as getting some money or seeds in return, but there are a handful of special requests that have no time limit and will typically ask for rare items or hybrid crops - but the rewards are long-term things, such as toys for your child, an alarm clock to set your own schedule, and so on. These side quests may be mostly inconsequential, but they serve to break up the monotony quite a bit.

In addition to that, there's also a few mini games you can engage in if you're in the right place at the right time, such as playing a really weird version of Territory, which is pitifully easy because the AI is unable to recognize large areas, a milk drinking contest which is essentially a button mashing affair, cleaning up a certain person's gravestone in rythmic fashion, and so on. They're nothing special, but the rewards are worth it, and there are achivements for these as well, if you're into that sorta thing.

One of the most notable things about the game is perhaps its visual design. While it's not a graphical marvel by any means, they did make good use of the resources they had. When compared to its original incarnation, the graphics are a lot brighter and more colorful. This makes sense, as the original came out during the time when video games were very brown and grey. The drab, dull colors were instead replaced by vibrant, beautiful and much more detailed environments that are a true feast for the eyes. One of the most notable changes is that the seasons now change gradually instead of instantly. This means that towards the end of fall, the ground will freeze over and trees will lose their leaves, and towards the beginning of spring, things will slowly become more colorful. It's very subtle, but every single day is different, and it once again helps the game world feel less static, especially due to the dynamic weather system which can change on a whim.

The character models were also substantially reworked to be both more realistically proportioned and more expressive - both things that were somewhat lacking in the original. The character designs themselves were also updated, some more than others, although none of them were as extreme as the previous remake of Friends of Mineral Town, where everybody looked dramatically different. Here, things were mostly updated to reflect series' artist Igusa Matsuyama's art evolution, as well as updating clothes to more contemporary 2020s trends, for example Sully (Wally in the original) now wears running tights instead of baggy sweatpants, while on the more drastic side, homeless character Pui was considerably "cleaned up", no longer wearing tattered clothes but rather stuff made out of leaves and now being surrounded by butterflies instead of flies. Yet everybody remains recognizable, which is nice.

The game's soundtrack remained mostly untouched from the original - which is a blessing, because it was one of the highlights. The musical tracks, while sparsely used, were a joy back then and are still as addicting nowadays. This includes "Breezy", the default track that plays on your farm, as well as the tracks for the various event scenes. Whatever the game calls for, be it something upbeat, something sad or anything in-between, the music choices perfectly underscore the feelings the game tries to convey to utter perfection. While the tracks themselves were left untouched, there have been new records added you can play on your farm, including music from other titles in the series, such as the opening theme of DS.

And it's just not the musical department where the sound design really shines. The valley has some truly atmospheric, almost ASMR-like soundscape going on, from the sounds of your own footsteps, to gentle flow of the nearby river or the gushing waterfall, all of it comes together to a surprisingly great treat for the ears! It's an often underappreciated art, but the attention to background sound was extremely well done here. Also neat is that the game reuses most of the original's sound effects, or at least the less annoying ones (that cartoonish sound that plays whenever you pick something up, for instance, is thankfully barely used). However, they also don't mesh too perfectly with the new sound effects - this is perhaps not too notably unless you got some serious speakers hooked up to your TV or are playing with headphones, but the older sound effects have notable compression on them - which makes sense, given the game's age. Either way, it's not a deal breaker in any sense of the word, just notable.

This was also the first SoS game to feature any sort of voice acting, even though the characters only ever make short grunts and say a few non-specific words. All of this was retained, but oddly, XSEED also decided to dub these grunts into not just English, but multiple other languages as well - getting a full cast assembled to record about 20 or so voice clips. I don't understand why this was done, but it was interesting to try out the various audio "languages" just to hear different interpretations of everyone, you can switch the voice language independently from the text too.

Since this is a remake, the question of what is new may justifiably come up. In addition to the graphical and aural addition mentioned above, many things were subtly changed. For one, you can now choose your gender, including a non-binary option and create your character as you see fit, with a variety of face, hair and skin options to choose from - the original only had one fixed character design, and to play as a girl, you had to purchase a different version, á la Pokémon. This was all condensed and makes the game especially queer-friendly, thankfully. Secondly, Gordy (Cody in the original) was now made into a marriage candidate, and Lumina retains her promotion to bachelorette from the PS2 port as well, with you being able to both choose the gender of your child and to marry anyone, regardless of your chosen gender. Speaking of the PS2 version, the differently colored outfits you got in that one are back, and they're joined by a big assortment of clothes you can purchase and wear as you wish, which is always appreciated.

Animal care was also simplified, with animals gaining happiness far quicker than losing it, and they also can no longer die. Similarly, cows will continue to produce milk the entire time, instead of only doing so for a year after giving birth - making male animals fairly obsolete. This makes it far easier to earn money, too, but the game's economy was likewise rebalanced to counter this. Other things were just straight up simplified - going fishing now works like more contemporary life sim games instead of requiring the patience of a saint, and they also added a bridge between the goddess pond and the dig site, meaning you no longer have to go around and can save time. The edge of town, which originally served as a place to link your Gamecube to your GBA now obviously serves a different function, going there simply wastes several in-game hours in case you run out of things to do.

One of my favorite additions is the new tool upgrade system. Instead of having to order the better tools, Van will simply sell them at his stall when he visits, provided you used the previous version of the tool often enough. Not a problem for the watering can, but remember to fish a lot! Also, the game is just a lot more transparent in general. The menu shows you your friendship level with the townsfolk, your kid's interests and skills, the health of your livestock, a collection of all hybrids you've already made and so on. Not only that, but the game now very clearly explains its mechanics to you, something sorely lacking in the original, where Takakura would give you some advice, but a lot of things, such as how to properly take care of your animals, were hardly touched on. And better yet: you can re-read these tutorials as much as you want!

Some measures were also taken to make the game more family-friendly, although please not that this was not done by its Western publisher; the changes apply to all regions: any and all references to alcohol were completely removed from the game, and the bar was consequently turned into a café. In addition to that, as mentioned above, animals can no longer die. One could argue for or against these things, but they don't hurt the game either way, and the changes were likely made due to the CERO, Japan's rating system, having become a fair bit stricter since 2003, and alcohol usage is one of the many things they do not like to see in video games.

Finally, and this is arguably the biggest change for Western players: due to the change in publisher, going from Natsume to XSEED, all of the text was completely retranslated from scratch. Now, both translations are fairly close to the original Japanese, and if you compared them side by side, you'd probably notice that most of the time, the difference is only in wording. However, the new translation is far less localized than Natsume's efforts, this is especially evident in the character names, which are much closer to their Japanese counterparts. Celia is now Cecilia, which is closer to the original Sepiria, among many others. At other points, the new writing also feels more mature and better-written in general, as Natsume's dialogue had a bit of a childish overtone, especially in regards to adult character using the word "play" to describe what they're doing. It simply feels a lot more natural.

Now, does that make the game perfect? No. While it is a substantial improvement over the original, it still has plenty of weak spots; the biggest point of contention being that, despite the multitude of things to do, the days still feel very long and you'll eventually run out of things to do before you go to bed. Secondly, while the characters are well-written, it doesn't distract from the fact that the dialogue does tend to repeat a lot - this is especially grating when you want to make hybrid seeds, as the character who provides the service will not shut up! And, despite them fixing a lot of the technical issues, a few of them still remain, one of them undoubtedly being the context-sensitive button; anybody who has ever entered the house of the firework makers and tried to exit it while both were present will know what I'm talking about - and this also applies to your farm animals, who just love to get in the way of each other or randomly fall asleep so you can't interact with them. Any characters who are not currently just walking or standing around also won't accept gifts, because the dev team evidently was too lazy to program special animations for these circumstances. It's a bit of a shame, given how many other things they fixed, but it is what it is.

Also, there is a tiny piece of paid DLC - mainly some alternate outfits for your protagonist. They add absolutely nothing of value to the game and are purely cosmetic - which has me on the fence as to whether their existence is justified or not, but the base game already has plenty of costumes for you to choose from on its own.

Finally, with the game being released on multiple consoles, the question always comes up as to which version is best. Thankfully, there aren't too many differences, so we'll keep it brief. Switch players will be happy to know that, unlike Pioneers of Olive Town, this game received proper optimization and never has any dips in its framerate. However, it also runs at only 30fps (as opposed to the Gamecube's 60fps) and has a lower resolution than the other versions, although it's hardly notable.

The PC, Xbox Series and PS5 ports all run at a buttery smooth 60fps with sharper graphics, at the tradeoff of not being portable. The Steam version is also not optimized for Steamdeck (yet?), so if you want it on the go, the Switch version is your best option, otherwise, all of them are fine.

And with all of that out of the way, the final verdict is:

65% - charming, if sometimes dragging

Pros:

• Charming characters
• Beautifully designed world
• Addictive gameplay loop...

Cons:

• ...but even the best gameplay loops get repetitive
• Goes on a bit too long for its own good
• Might be considered too easy

Note: all screenshots were taken on the Switch's undocked (portable) mode.