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.
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.