Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Review ( PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch )

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life adds another notch to the belt of farming sims available on consoles.  This is a remake of two older games that have now been combined into one, and slightly updated for the new generation. As a first-time player of the series, I take a look at how this farming staple stacks up against more modern sims like Stardew Valley, which have achieved massive success over the years.

Returning to a Classic in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

The big draw with Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is the fact that it's a remake of a popular PS2 and Gamecube game.  Apparently, there was a strange split back in the day, with the GameCube game featuring a female protagonist with male love interests and the PlayStation 2 game featuring a male protagonist and female love interests. Essentially, they have smushed these two titles together to make the remake and sprinkled in some UI changes to help smooth things along.  The main focus of the game doesn't seem to be all on the farming though, as you work on building a family and helping them grow through the years. Many fans were apparently sold just by the fact that your child can grow up during the game and that the town ages around you. While this is surprisingly pretty unique still in the farm sim genre, we are going to take a look if it's enough to sell the game on its own.

Everyday Flow in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

The game starts out by giving you your own farm, complete with a free cow ready for milking. Some seeds and tools will also be placed in your care, officially getting you started on your farming journey. Like in most games, you have a stamina bar that will deplete as you play the game, only this time working with crops is the only thing that seemed to make it budge. You will immediately notice while on your farm that you already have a barn and coop, however, there are some extremely expensive upgrades you can pay for if you want to expand your farm further. If you can in your house, you will even find that you start out with a kitchen, something that has to be built on in most sims I've played. You can either cook using recipes that you've earned, many of which are seemingly taped to random objects around Forgotten Valley, or combine foods to discover new ones. All in all, the recipes aren't very demanding and can give you a buff to stamina or be used as gifts.

Now that we've established what you have on your farm, let's talk about your day-to-day work. When you wake up at 6 am or 5 am after you hit the second year, your first order of business is to care for any crops you have. This part felt a little strange for me as there are only two smaller plots to plant my crops in,  and compared to everything else in the game it seems that tilling the ground and watering my plants is the only thing that really takes stamina. You will be watering a lot, as there are no sprinklers and upgrades won't come to much much later in the game. This can feel a bit slow at times but isn't that big of a deal thanks to the strangely fast pace your character zooms around at.

Talking about the speed, the UI can feel strange at times, and there are a lot of glitches to be found, like your character only being able to walk sideways like a crab.  Next, you will want to let your animals out to pasture, here they can graze for free as long as you've used fertilizer on your field. Depending on the time, your animals may not be awake yet though. This means that you can milk or snuggle them as they will have a grumpy cloud appear above their head. This feels a bit strange as I have to wait to do things like grab an egg from my chicken in the mornings.

Once you're done with your farm life, which admittedly doesn't take that much time, you can finally head to town. In town, you can do a variety of activities like fish, dig, open a shop, and get to know the townsfolk. Sadly, this is where a few more of my problems come into play.

Getting to Know Forgotten Valley

I'm not sure if Forgotten Valley is too large or too small, but a lot of it feels empty. Most of the time only a few NPCs will be wandering around, and the buildings are pretty spaced out. The people themselves also seem shallow, and the language used in most of the dialogue feels dated. Whether that's a good thing or not seems to mostly depend on if you wanted a faithful remake, but for me it was awkward. The love interests don't bring a lot to the table either, and even when using a guide I couldn't get many of the heart events to trigger until a few suddenly started happening back to back. The music choice when exploring the town also feels odd. Many buildings have their own music, some of which grate on my nerves. When you're just running around though, all you will hear are birds tweeting, and then upon walking into a building like the workout-obsessed family's house you are hit with a large overbearing track.

There are also many animals around the valley that are used for set dressing, I wish that I could at least make friends with them. Looking at the other activities like fishing doesn't add a lot, there's one button press to catch a fish, and there isn't a huge variety in the game. The town “mine” known as the dig site is also boring. Instead of breaking rocks with a pick axe, you are sticking press the button repeatedly to use a tiny shovel to uncover goods. There isn't even a huge variety of items, which is a huge letdown. Additionally, the one mini-game where you play a strange version of triangle tic-tac-toe is ok at best. Even the new festivals feel very lackluster as it's just cutscene. You do have the ability to open your own shop to sell goods, but this is slow and you might as well wait for Van to come into town. Speaking of selling things, I just want to note real quick that most items you forge or dig up can't be shipped, you are forced to carry them around to gift or sell at the market.

Finally, there's the request board. This is where you are automatically forced to accept quests when you check them. The problem is that they seldom have new requests and there's no challenge in getting the items. In fact, I'm not even sure the board helps me increase my affection with the townsfolk.

Building Your Family in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

Let's take a look at the main reason older fans were hyped for this game. The game has a campaign of sorts where you live through your life and watch your child grow. The first year is all about pulling your hair out. All of this while trying to figure out what gifts the bachelor you fancy likes. After the first year, new NPCs move into town. And then you have a child that you can start to influence by making friends with certain characters and giving them toys. The second year is really the only one that felt significant. As the town just ages after that, sure you get to watch your child grow up. But there aren't enough interactions to even make that feel rewarding. It's not like you watch them get married or anything either, as they just pick a career and go with it.

I feel like this could have been more fleshed out for this remake as while it's still something you don't see often, there's not a lot there to make me want to play through the years. Even with hybrid plants, I don't have enough interest to keep playing or trying to befriend every village especially when they aren't being fleshed out. I wanted to see Rock become less lazy or Pui finally not be homeless. At least the name changes and character redesigns they did on these characters actually feel good, but what's the point when not updating the rest of the game?

A Kind of Wonderful Life

The glitchiness of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, coupled with the outdated feel makes it hard for me to play, regardless of how much my Story of Seasons-obsessed friends speak its glory. In addition, I learned that there were two sequels of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life that came out for Nintendo DS and added more characters, why wasn't the Witch Princess included in the roster to freshen up the addition? My understanding is there were also even more love interests in these games, so why not put them in to make the valley feel less dead? If you are a fan of the game then you may enjoy this, but for players like me who are new to the series, this is a hard game to recommend.