Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is still the best farming game
Life’s an adventure, and then you die. It’s a bit harrowing, when you think of it. All any of us can do is our best – our best effort to leave a better place behind for those that follow us – because we’re inevitably going to go off for the big sleep sooner or later. There’s no need to rush, it’s important to take your time and soak in every moment with your family, friends, cows, and crops. Sorry, this isn’t actually a philosophical statement, this is a summary of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life.
This is a remake of 2003’s Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, given a fresh coat of paint and a name change after historical licensing issues, and I’m going to go out of my way to lay my feelings out flat: this is the best farming game. A Wonderful Life’s thesis is an emphasis on the life-sim portion of farming games. It’s always been a key part of this series in particular, but AWL takes it further than any other game.
Believe it or not, farming elements are de-emphasized in comparison with other Story of Seasons games. Crops are planted one at a time, instead of in 3x3 squares of profit – and making a profit off of those crops might end up being a secondary objective when compared to keeping a fully stocked fridge, cooking up recipes, breeding S Rank seeds, or handing out produce to your neighbors to keep things friendly.
Tending to crops is tiring work.
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Everything is paced slowly. Crops can take hours of in-game play to grow, animals will be pregnant for what feels like forever, and the in-game timer ticks away at a rate of one in-game minute per real-world second. This means days can last as long as 24 minutes each – though will likely end up being closer to around 14 minutes long, as your cows can be milked once every 11 in-game hours, and crops should be watered twice per day in Summer.
Each season lasts for just 10 days, meaning each year lasts about 40 days, and there are 10 years of main story to play through. You can already see how this game might take you a while to chew through. But as you’re waiting for crops to mature and slowly expanding your farm through nothing but hard work, you’ll also be immersed in that life sim portion. A new Requests system prods you into interacting with your neighbors more, and investigating their homes will reveal recipes for you to add to your collection.
Through interacting with the town you’ll get to know people, and you’ll quickly learn that there are several you can romance – you’ll need a partner by the end of the first year, so you’ll have to choose fast. When this game was originally released, versions with Male and Female playable characters were sold separately, and luckily that’s no longer the case. The game now has a character creator, a non-binary option, and the pool of romanceable NPCs has been expanded, with all choices being compatible with any character type.
Interacting with neighbors is a key part of the experience.
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It’s the little things that make AWL a joy to play, and a few quality-of-life inclusions feel heaven-sent. For example, just pressing the button for your tool – seeds, watering can, hoe, etc. – will automatically place you in the nearest position you can use it, meaning when tending to a large crop field, you don’t need to reposition your character constantly. New menus make it much easier to see the status of your animals and relationships with your neighbors at a glance. Tools that were bugged in earlier releases are fixed, and the economy is no longer partially broken.
It makes for an experience that is a bit closer to Animal Crossing – if you’re a hardcore flower breeder. Instead of turning your farm into a well-oiled and practically self-sufficient machine, it’s more about the sweat of your brow and the friends you made along the way.
There are some frustrations though: sometimes it feels like you don’t have quite enough to do. If the animals and fields are tended to, and it’s still 9 am, you will have time to waste in order to stay awake and put the animals back in the barn when the evening comes. You can go fishing or hunt for wild herbs or mushrooms, but you’ll quickly learn where all the spawns are for those, and how often to check for them. Then it’s a case of bonding with the cast, whom you won’t love in its entirety.
Cecilia is considered the "default" romance option.
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But slowly scraping enough money to buy expansions for your farm, having your animals deliver S Rank produce, and finally seeing a harvest that has taken multiple real-world hours to grow is satisfying in the extreme. Which makes it all the more impactful when the 10 years are over, and you die.
In that time your child might take over your place on the farm – or they might move to city, depending on how your raised them. People living in Forgotten Valley will move on, grow up, or even die. Neighbors will move out, new ones will move, each of them looking to live a happy life – hopefully, as you managed to in that time. Oh yeah, there is an option to continue playing after the 10-year limit, but let’s pretend it’s still as poignant as ever.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is one of the best farming games ever made, remade, with quality-of-life features that it desperately needed. It’s beautifully faithful to the original, sparking nostalgia in all the right places, while refining the experience. This is the most relaxing game since Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and is essential for fans of farming and life-sim RPGs.
Score: 9/10
- Relaxation factor: 10/10
- Visuals: 9/10
- Audio and music: 9/10
- Mechanics and systems: 10/10
Version tested: PS5
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life technical breakdown
You can expand your coop and barn to hold many more animals.
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On PS5 it’s hard to fault A Wonderful Life in any real respect. It’s got a stable frame rate and the picture quality looks incredibly sharp. There’s a momentary fade-out when you whistle for your horse, which takes a couple of seconds. It’s minor, but ends up being one of the most notable instances where the experience could hurry up a bit.
The Nintendo Switch version is likely where problems will crop up – if any – but from our experience on PS5, the game is free of any obvious bugs or performance issues.
