I played 14 days in my beloved snes Harvest Moon for the first time since Stardew Valley was in early access and it’s still so good. Days are very short but nights are as long as you want. The issue is, you don’t have much stamina and you have a time limit to drop things in the box. I accidentally made my potato farm too big already. Foraging is a bit of a grind… you can really only grab 2 pieces of fruit and sprint back to your box before the sun sets, or quickly grab flowers for your gf (in my case I’m romancing my first wife ever, Ellen), and then grab 1 fruit. I am looking forward to taking my horse to the old town road instead.

Only having 2 tools on your person and carrying one thing at a time is tough to go back to, but it’s still workable. All things considered the game still feels really really good to play. Even though I did waste some seeds accidentally because I didn’t realize I had it selected instead of my hoe. But at least with switch online, it’s easy to just rewind and act like it never happened.

I never really realized how much the relationship mechanics are front-and-center from the beginning, but I guess the game doesn’t really show off that many competing systems up front. It takes a while to get the story going, upgrade your house and animals, and have weather events that open up new areas, etc. But for the first month there’s not too much going on, so I understand why they want you to start giving flowers to the girls and read their diaries.

I am so glad that Stardew exists and expanded on this game in every way, but there’s still value in coming back to this one. I hope I just pop it back in every once in a while to progress the story because it is pretty great once it gets going.