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.

my favorite of the bokumono 3ds games.
feel like it both improves and moves back from story of seasons in various ways. there were a lot of gameplay improvements, and i appreciated the reinclusion of tasks (similar to ANB) so gameplay didn't feel aimless (like SOS). also enjoyed the addition of friendship events, it adds more character to both marriage candidates & townspeople.
the character portraits are so fugly tho? esp bc the official art looks amazing and was what the portraits looked like in both ANB and SOS. and i really missed the feel of a cohesive town environment we got in the previous games. people between towns interact, but they feel so fundamentally separate that it became annoying trying to balance them all. grindy in parts, but a lot less grindy compared to the previous two entries (and the main story was a lot easier to complete compared to ANB). married hinata who stole my heart frfr

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.

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

Everything I like about this game I could see someone else disliking.
The game introduces mechanics very slowly, so the first year is just learning how everything works rather than being able to beat the game.
There are a ton of characters, so memorizing all their names will take some time. There are also many characters that don't have portraits or affinity but can still be involved in quests and events.
You have very little stamina in the game and will need to eat food multiple times a day to just do your basic chores. Cooking doesn't have any mini-game.
The game wants you to keep storage of tons of different crops and items just to do required crafting. The requirements for certain outfits of houses is steep.
There's a huge emphasis on dress up and many difficult tasks reward you with just outfits. The number of outfits you have unlocks other things so collecting them all is encouraged.
Decorations which you can put in your fields actually matter for the gameplay and some decoration combos are optimal. If you ignore this it'll be tough to raise the stats of your crops, which is important as quality for crops is made of four different stats which need to be balanced.
There is no mine to enter, there's just mining points in the over world to hit once a day. There's a lot of different resources from mining and items that used to be just for pointless jewelry like gemstones are now needed to upgrade tools.
All tools can be upgraded, even stuff like milker and shears, and each have multiple stats to individually upgrade. Your first couple years will likely just be spent trying to upgrade the tools as without the upgrades to speed and energy conservation you won't have time to have a big farm.
Pets are used for purposes like getting rare materials and herding your livestock so they are more than just fancy furniture. They are the only way to make your livestock graze, and how many they can send to pasture depends on the pet's affinity, so you'll need multiple pets with high affinity just for this.
Characters will take a long time to raise their affinity and you're expected to do multiple things like get gifts, wrap gifts, talk daily, send letters, and do chores for them to raise said affinity.
Festivals have multiple difficultly levels and you'll need to beat them multiple years in a row to get all their unlocks.
This game might have the most dialogue of the whole series. There are plenty of events and niche dialogue like having a specific pet or outfit with you will trigger new conversations. When you start dating someone, everyone in the town has unique dialogue to say about it. It will take a huge amount of time to see everything this game has to offer.
This game still could be better of course: the controls are a bit slow, it doesn't have any rival romance like in Animal Parade, and you can't be gay, but this is definitely my favorite farming sim. If you want a farming game that is just farming and talking, but does those aspects really well and has tons of content, then this is the very best in the genre.

This was my second attempt at getting into this game, but the pace is taking too long to pick up for my taste.

It feels like there‘s not much to do apart from doing part-time jobs (which mainly consist of just pressing the A button) to kill time.
While having three towns to do business with sounds nice in theory, they make the world seem weirdly patched together. I didn‘t find the characters very likeable either.

Definitely one of the weaker titles in the Bokujō Monogatari series.