Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life review

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is supposedly a laid-back farming sim remake, but it reminded me how hard games used to be.

As I stand in a field of 36 wilted turnips, the seeds for which cost most of my savings, my farmer’s eyes are pinched in a pained expression because I’ve not eaten in days. I won’t have the cash for new turnip seeds until next week because my cow, unbeknownst to me, hasn’t eaten recently either, and she’s producing poor quality milk I can barely sell for a pittance. Life in Stardew Valley is never this dire.

A Wonderful Life is a remake of the 2004 Harvest Moon  with the same subtitle, and begins as all the modern farm sims inspired by the series still do, with a young adult from the city moving out to the countryside to take over a family farm and build friendships, a family, and profit. It immediately puts other recent Story of Seasons PC releases to shame with cute, higher quality graphics, though it does sand the edges off old character designs more than I’d like.

It comes with modern improvements like:

• Movement controls that don’t make me want to scream
• A choice of pronouns
• Eight total marriage candidates mashed together from the “boy” and later “girl” versions of the original release
• The imminently important ability to leap over fences instead of walking around them