Confessions of a Literary Addict

I think I should probably put some sort of disclaimer in here before I give my first impressions of the game, and that is that I am an avid and long-time fan of Harvest Moon and their rebranded Story of Seasons games, so. You know.

It’s a first impressions from someone who’s pretty die-hard about the series.

Still interested? Cool, let’s go.

The graphics/art:

The intro is adorable, first of all. I have been loving the way they put the little movie intro bits into the games every since they bumped up the graphics and platform (did it start with New Beginning? I feel like it might have). The character designs are very cute, though, and I highly approve. I love my pixel people, back from good ol’ More Friends, don’t get me wrong, but these designs are just everything to me.

Maybe not everything, but I do love them.

The animal designs and the designs of the houses, stores, landscape are also on point, imo. The day we get to, say, Skyrim-level graphics will be the day, but until then, I’m pretty happy with what we’ve got.

Also? Love the layout of the town. So much.

The storyline:

Though I enjoyed the little intro bit to the whole beginning, with the family, I felt the tutorial and tour parts were just … so long. Too long. I miss being thrown in the deep end after being given a few tools and learning to swim, you know? I said this about Pokémon Sun, too, I feel like the kid gloves are on for too long when it comes to the start of these games. I didn’t have these when I was starting out on the games I had as a kid, and it was still a lot of fun.

The characters:

The fact there are NPCs that walk around and can be interacted with is awesome. The characters that I’m able to talk to so far are pretty cool, and I’m enjoying their personalities, but I can’t wait to unlock everyone so I can get the full experience.

I’m not a huge fan of the bachelors this time around (I’m always more strongly-opinionated on the bachelors than the bachelorettes, because I can always find a girl I want to marry in my male file, whereas I’m picky af on my female file.), but that might be because Story of Seasons and New Beginning spoiled me rotten. They had such good bachelor options, I swear.

I want to go back and play them, now. And maybe More Friends of Mineral Town, just for nostalgia.

New features:

I haven’t played quite enough yet to gather all of the new features, because a few of them are animal-related and I haven’t gotten my hands on the animals yet, but the one thing I can comment on is the new personality feature!

I actually … find it a little unnecessary, since it doesn’t exactly do a whole lot, but I think it’s a fun new tidbit that they can definitely expand on as the series continues along.

I looove the wild items you can find, too. There’s some classics, like Moondrops and walnuts and such, and then there’re things like maple leaves and other harvestables.

Also, the little popups of dialogue you get when you walk near characters is really cute. I’m not sure what kind of purpose they serve yet, aside from just being nifty, but I like them.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, I’m going for Wayne. 😉

Not sure who to choose for my male file yet, but I’ll get there when I get there.

Thanks for reading!