Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns

released on Jun 23, 2016

The series is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new game for the Nintendo 3DS. The title of the game is Bokujō Monogatari: Mitsu no Sato no Taisetsu na Tomodachi (Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons: Precious Friends From Three Villages). The game will have at least three locales: Lulucoco Town, Tsuyukusa Village and Wes Town. The culture of each will be completely different. Lulucoco is an island settlement, Tsuyukusa is a Japanese village, and Wes Town is a western-style town. The game will feature a protagonist - female or male - and the characters Noel, Miranda, Megan, and Frank from Wes Town.


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Its not bad honestly, its starts out as a really nice, simple experience. Going into this game I kind of assumed I "Picked" a town to side with, I didn't realize id be running between and doing jobs for all three on a daily basis. Kinda got a bit overwhelming with stuff to do each day and started to feel more like a chore.

the first farming sim I ever played and I love it sm ❤
I've tried to play a bunch of different HM games and I can't get into them

Because the cast is split between three towns every town feels comically tiny. They're so disparate it feels like a themepark instead of an actual world.

When I try to think of any of the villagers, my mind pulls a blank, except for that fursuit guy, who I naturally married. The cast is particularly dull here. If the writing was as serious as the N64 game they'd at least seem dull in a realistic way, but the modern setting is as fluffy as ever so they're just empty people living in candyland.

the mining suffers from the usual modern bokumono trait of being a pared down daily where you smack a single rock in town. i used the online once, saw it wasn't as OP as A New Beginning, and then never used it again.

Where this game really shines is its town rating quests, which I thought was a fun little way to incentivize different tasks. Maxing out each town kept me going for a long time.

This is probably the best Harvest Moon game that has ever been made. Not only is there so much to do-- almost overwhelmingly so-- but the characters of this game are some of the best the series has offered in years. With almost as much dialogue as Rune Factory 4, I, well, felt like I was playing RF4 while I played this! Not to say there is an amazing story- it's the same story as ever. Just a person taking up a farm and living on the land. There's just something nice about communicating with NPCs that feel more like actual people than cardboard cutouts.

I love this game so much. And I wish they would make the writing that was in this the standard. I understand farming sims are farming first and characters second- maybe even third or fourth. I just feel like it doesn't have to be like that. It shouldn't be. You play cozy games to relax. (Though to be honest- with so much to do in this game- it hardly felt like I was relaxing as much as I was hustling the crap out of my life LOL)

But- point being- it's not just about you and your farm. There are other people in town. Christ- one of the major selling points of the farming sim genre is getting married and having kids. Don't you want your spouse to be interesting to get to know- to talk to?

If you love character driven narratives- play this game. You won't regret it. And if you just play for the farming and the challenge- still get this. It's the best of both worlds. That's what makes this game so great, there's something here for everyone.

playing this is starting to become a bit of a chore so i'll review it now ^__^ this was my first harvest moon/sos game and i can see why it's so beloved. character writing and events are really really good!! all the characters have so much depth to them and they're actually fun to talk to, as opposed to just cycling through the same dialogue every time.

some things on the gameplay side feel really tedious though — getting the materials needed to upgrade tools, make farm circles etc feel a bit grindy and i PERSONALLY feel that clothes shouldn't be so hard to obtain!!! just let me buy them with money!!! it's also not a game you can just play without a guide unless you're fine with having to wait as long as an ingame year to unlock certain things ie. town link ranks.

also, my farmer is brown... why is my family white. why is the little icon on the bottom screen a blond haired blue eyed freak. the whitewashing of the lulukoko residents is also pretty egregious...

so... it's nowhere near as addicting as stardew valley, but the graphics are lovely and the writing and cast are fantastic. just a charming game overall <3