Most people who know me know that I love all these kinds of farming and town building games. Whether it’s Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Littlewood, or all the others, I love them all. Story of Seasons was no exception. Last year I bought the Friends of Mineral Town game but have yet to play it, so Pioneers of Olive Town was my first actual experience with this version of the series.

What really drew me to the game was the animations and graphics from the trailer and I was able to pick up the deluxe edition of the game that comes with multiple DLC’s for $50, which was basically getting the DLC for free.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

I don’t hate the graphics, but after playing the game for a while I started to wonder if they could have been better. There’s been a couple lag and animation issues here and there but I’m mostly going to talk about those later on. Other than the few hiccups, the game looks very good overall.

All the people look really good, especially when you’re looking at in game cut scenes, but character movement in these don’t always work. The animals all look really good as well, especially when it comes to the bigger ones like the cows.

There’s also a lot of detail put into the town itself. The town is full of color and each building has its own detailed look. The town is also full of life with so many characters populating it and doing their daily activities. The game runs very well for having so many characters in the town at once. Overall, the game looks very good.

SOUND: 7/10

For me, the sounds of Olive Town aren’t great. With games like Stardew Valley, the theme eventually grows on you but in this game, I never really focused too much on the music. There’s definitely a nice assortment of different songs but none of them really stood out. I played with the volume on but after playing for a few hours, I ended up playing with Youtube in the background.

As for the regular sounds, some of them are pretty good, and some are pretty helpful too like when you’re fishing there’s a sound that lets you know that you caught something. That’s a helpful sound, but the rest are only okay at best for me.

ADDICTIVENESS: 10/10

If you love these kinds of games, then this is the perfect game for you. There’s so much to do and it’s all lots of fun. For the most part though, it’s the same as all the other games in this genre. You farm, you fish, you mine, and you talk to all the villagers. It’s the same as all the other games in this genre but done in a beautiful and charming environment which makes the game better.

The expansive cast of characters also offers you a lot to do. There’s so many characters to interact with, like nearly 40 in total. Plus there’s obviously going to be marriage, with 10 candidates. Interacting with different characters and marriage offer a ton of different perks.

In general, the gameplay of the game is broken down into a few major categories which are the farming, the fishing, the life-sim, and the Expansion Pass.

The farming itself is amazing, one of the best out of all of these kinds of games because there’s so much customization with what you can do and how you can farm. You can create huge fields of crops but you can also make your fields really beautiful by adding all sorts of things like fences, pathways, benches, and other items.

This is a lot like taking Stardew Valley but then mixing in the customization and beautification of Animal Crossing. I’m also going to lump mining and crafting within the farming aspect because on their own they aren’t really big aspects but together with farming, make the experience so much better.

FISHING

Next up you have the fishing, which is really OP in this game.

Fishing is too OP in this game. If you played games like Stardew Valley and you loved the fishing, then this is the perfect game for you. Not only is fishing easy, but it’s also an easy way to get a lot of money as well. I never even put too much effort into the actual farm itself, why work on turnips and cows when you can fish?

It’s pretty broken if you ask me, even in regular mode. Most of the time I would skip farming and interacting with characters just so I could spend the whole day fishing. In comparison, you can spend all your starting money on turnips and plant them all but then you need to wait like 4 days for them to grow and you need to water them every day.

Maybe you get like 2,000 to 3,000 g out of all that. Spend a whole day fishing and you can get so much more. If you have a basic fishing rod and you get lucky enough to get a rare fish like the Sparkling fish, those start at 600 g each with a zero star quality. In a full day of fishing, I was getting one or two of those rare fish per day.

Common fish that are 0 or 1 star can get you 150 to 200 g per in game hour. Literally before the end of the first in game week, I was making 3,000 to 5,000 g per day and that was before I even upgraded my fishing rod to the 1st upgrade. After the 1st upgrade, I was getting 2 to 5 star fish each time and those are worth even more.

You might be wondering; how can you fish the whole day? Won’t you run out of stamina quickly if you’re doing actions nonstop? Yes, you do, but fish also happen to be the fastest way to get stamina back. Once you unlock the log cabin, which is like within the first week or two, you get a kitchen that allows you to cook food to recover stamina.

All you have to do is cook one fish, doesn’t even have to be of good quality. For instance, the first time I cooked, I used a low-quality sardine and got a 0-star grilled fish. It recovered 30 percent of my stamina. 30 PERCENT!!!

This becomes the ultimate hustle and it’s not much worse if you’re playing on regular mode. Just fish all day and once you get low on stamina, just cook and eat one fish and the stamina you get from that one fish could give you enough energy to fish 4 to 6 times or even more.

EXAPSNION PASS

Next up you have the Expansion Pass, which itself offers a whole lot of content for a pretty cheap price. The Expansion Pass itself costs $20 though it’s on sale for $17 right now and comes with a ton of stuff.

The Expansion Pass comes with a few things that are unlocked right away but the bulk of the content is from 5 DLC Packs that are going to be released throughout the year. The game itself has a ton of content but the ability to add so much more for a small extra fee is really good.

Each DLC Pack comes out once per month between April and August and comes with a whole bunch of extra content. The 1st pack comes with animal costumes for all the characters along with an extra story scenario. The 2nd pack is basically its own mini Expansion Pack called Windswept Falls which comes with a whole new area to explore and 4 new characters from a previous game which includes 2 more marriage candidates.

The 3rd pack is another mini Expansion Pass called Terracotta Oasis that’s the exact same as the previous one as it comes with a new area and 4 new characters. This one also comes with school uniform costumes. The 4th pack comes with another new storyline and some new clothing options while the 5th pack comes with a 3rd mini Expansion Pass called Twilight Isle that comes with the same things as the previous two.

That’s a whole lot of content to digest for only $20 and it really seems like it’s going to be well worth the price. I personally think that you’re going to end up getting as much content as a full 60 hour game for only $20. Thin about it, for only $20, you’re getting three new areas to explore, 12 new characters (6 marriage candidates), two new storylines, and a bunch of outfit stuff. That’s a hell of a deal and should definitely be considered with the base game.

Overall, the game offers so much to do and gives you a ton of reasons to keep coming back to play some more.

STORY: 8/10

The story of Pioneers of Olive Town is honestly pretty basic and simple, and very much like most other games in this genre where you move to a town and inherit a farm. In this game, the farm that you inherit belonged to your grandfather many years ago but now it’s run down and you move from the city to take over. This really is Stardew Valley isn’t it?

But once you actually start up the farm, there isn’t much else going on when it comes to the story. You are able to learn a lot about the history of the town and you get to know the villagers very well while you also help to make the town more popular. Plus you get the extra story stuff from the DLC packs, so there’s an okay amount of stuff when it comes to the story.

DEPTH: 10/10

I pretty much already talked about all the stuff that has to do with depth in previous sections. There’s like 30 or so different characters for you to interact with plus another 10 that are marriage candidates and if you get the Expansion Pass, you get another 10 characters. If you want to talk to every single character and level up their relationship with you to the max, you can spend many hours just doing this alone simply because of how many characters there are.

There’s also a nice number of areas to explore. The town itself is pretty big with lots of ground to cover and a decent amount of buildings and your farm is pretty big as well. Plus, with the expansion pass you unlock 3 more areas to explore.

There’s also so much to do when it comes to farming. There’s so many different crops to plant and harvest and there’s so many ways to customize your farm. There’s also a lot of mining and crafting to do and there’s lots of objects of pieces of furniture to mess around with. The game simply has so much to offer when it comes to depth.

THINGS I DON’T LIKE:

There are a few things about the game that I’m not a fan of because they interfere with the flow of the game but they are all only minor issues that can easily be overlooked. The first issue that I have is with a tiny bit of lag when you’re walking and try to turn.

If you’re trying to do hard turns or change direction quickly, the animation takes a hit each time and starts looking a bit choppy and it slows down a bit. The other thing that I have an issue with is when you’re doing actions and you run low on stamina.

You get a message saying that you’re tired. This happens when you’re at around 50 percent stamina and again when you’re at 25 percent stamina. This is already more notifications you get regarding stamina than most games in this genre.

On its own, this isn’t an issue but when you get this notification, you aren’t able to do actions for like a second or two. This means that every in game day, there’s at least two occasions where your character is frozen for a couple seconds while you wait for the message to go away.

If you eat to recover stamina and then do more actions, this can happen 3 or 4 times per in game day or even more. Every 10 to 15 minutes you can find your character frozen in place unable to do anything for a total of 10 to 15 seconds.

DIFFICULTY: 4

The game is going to be as easy or as hard as you like because there’s two main difficulties for you to choose from. First you have the regular mode, which is just the normal way to play but then you also have a seedling mode. This mode makes the game easier by making things cheaper or giving you more money for selling stuff, or making other aspects easier like quicker skill ups and a smaller stamina drain.

They’re basically the same but by playing the seedling mode, you’ll be able to do more in a day and you can get the same amount of money a little quicker. Other than that there isn’t a real difference. If you’re playing the game on normal mode and it’s too hard, all you have to do is spend a few days just focusing on getting money and then you’d be good to go. Other than that, the game isn’t really hard at all.

OVERALL: 8.7/10

Overall, the game is a lot of fun. There’s so much to do and the game is really charming at times. There’s a few small places where the game could have been better but it’s very easy to put 60 hours or more into the game and that would only increase once all of the DLC packs are out.

Story of Seasons does go on sale a lot though. Friends of Mineral Town only came out less than nine months ago and has already dropped to $30 or less at least twice. So it’s very possible that this game could drop to $30 at some point this year. If you’re a fan of these games, then you should definitely get it now at full price but if you’re still on the fence, you can wait for a sale but then you have to get it.

As a whole, the game is really good and gets an 8.7 out of 10 from me.