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Stardew Valley is a game that I had heard about through word of mouth (bought on Steam), basically described as a better version of the Harvest Moon series, which was in a bit of an identity crisis—from 1997 to 2013 the Japanese series Bokujō Monogatari was known as Harvest Moon in the West, starting with the original Harvest Moon for the Super NES in 1997 (stateside release, at least), but original developer Marvelous decided to split ways with its original Western publisher Natsume, resulting in the series being renamed Story of Seasons while Natsume continued to make bastard rogue Harvest Moon games like Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos. But enough on the history lesson!...by the early 2010s the series had stagnated in the West (instead of a new Harvest Moon game released for every console, the Super NES Harvest Moon was followed up with Harvest Moon 64 (1999, also known as Bokujō Monogatari 2), which in turn was followed by Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (2003). They made others but it was in decline, it was here that an independent (Western) developer created Stardew Valley to make up for some of the shortcomings that were never fixed in sequels.

Indeed, it is very familiar if you've played a Harvest Moon game before, I had done both the original and the GBA Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. Once you get into it you can easily absorb 40 hours of gameplay, but when you get to winter first year you've experienced 90% of what the game has to offer with most of the rest being just fetch quests and busywork...and unless you really pursued a particular mate you probably haven't gone much in the "marriage" aspect. As Stardew Valley angles toward the progressive Tumblr set, there's not much of a functional difference if you choose a male or female farmer...it can be changed anyway if you make friends with the Wizard and access his basement, I decided mid-way through the first year to play as a bisexual shapeshifter who worked in the hottest part of summer wearing a fetching black dress, seducing man and woman alike, that is, if said shapeshifter actually interacted with townspeople much. Of course, no matter if you're a white male one day and a green-skinned space babe the next day, townspeople will NEVER comment on your appearance.

The big problem with Stardew Valley as one reason it took me a while to get into it when I first bought it back in November 2018 was that a lot of the frustrations that I had with the Harvest Moon series still applied, like accidentally striking crops with a pickax and just destroying them from existence, or finding out that the one shop you need is closed at arbitrary hours, or the person you need to talk to moves around constantly, or that crops will simply perish the very next day if it's the end of the season. The closed store issue isn't nearly as bad as it was in games like Friends of Mineral Town (it's just Wednesday) and most of the rest of the issues can be mitigated with mods (console/phone versions are out of luck). I even got a mod that let you turn your animals into meat products and watched as my dairy cow became several pieces of raw steak. Not that mods correct most of the game's other problems--the characters aren't well-written and tend to be unlikable, the subplot of the evil corporate store is hack (which literally does nothing wrong except being owned by a corporation, and the "local" store owner is arguably even worse), all your interactions with the villagers revolve mostly around giving them gifts that they like or dislike (you'll be checking the wiki constantly), and several other quibbles persist.

As stupid as the subplot is, it at least allows a sort of end-game to be created without railroading you into a marriage or relationships, just find the items they ask for, whether it's crops, fish, or other items, and every season I'm able to acquire more of what they want. Honestly I would recommend printing out the wiki page just to figure out what they want, like how I found out I missed the "Summer Foraging Bundle" because every "Spice Berry" I found my character either ate or sold. Guess there's always next year.

FINAL RATING:   

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