Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

Genre: Top-Down Management Sim / RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021 and ported to PC later that same year, is yet another game in the “Farming RPG” series, a genre that is getting increasingly crowded on the Nintendo Switch.

If nothing else, Pioneers of Olive Town is an extremely polished game, featuring nice-looking 3D graphics that never so much as approach the level of “impressive”, but remain nevertheless pleasant, with a good amount of personality and occasionally some really nice elements like excellent-looking water. These visuals are backed by a nice subdued synthesized soundtrack that pairs well with the gameplay for a nice, relaxed experience.

As for the gameplay, Pioneers of Olive Town is once again polished, and it handles the standard elements of the genre very well, and I’d even go as far as to say this game does most elements of this genre as good as, if not better than, most of its contemporaries. There’s plenty to do, the pacing is good, players don’t feel overwhelmed or bored with a lack of things to do… the folks behind the Story of Seasons series really do seem to know exactly what they’re doing here.

The controls in this game are good, and even the touchscreen is put to good use in handheld mode, making for easy menu selection (though players will still have to use the gamepad to move their character around and interact with things)

The problem is, what they’re doing is the exact same thing so many others have done time and time again. You have the same pattern of clearing overgrowth, trees, and rocks, tilling soil, planting goods and placing them in a bin to automatically sell to market, the same building relationships with townsfolk, the same randomly-generated mine to make for endless production of rocks and ore, a town bulletin board with quests, scheduled events, townsfolk who walk around and need to be located, shops that operate on a rotating schedule… if you’ve ever played any game in this genre, Pioneers of Olive Town will be very, very, very familiar to you.

Even worse, this game doesn’t really do anything to set itself apart from the crowd. It doesn’t have Stardew Valley’s multiplayer, it doesn’t have Rune Factory’s combat, it doesn’t have strong characters or an interesting story. Pioneers of Olive Town does everything it sets out to do extremely well, but that doesn’t keep it from feeling somewhat uninspired, like it’s a game that’s just going through the motions.

This may sound overly negative, so let me just state again, if you’re looking for a Farming RPG on the Nintendo Switch, Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is an excellent example of this genre doing what it does best. It’s a fun game, it’s extremely well-made and what’s here doesn’t have any significant flaws I can point to. If you’re a fan of this genre, this game will almost certainly please you. The problem is, if you’re a fan of this genre, you likely already have Stardew Valley or Rune Factory 4 on the Nintendo Switch, and as such it’s hard to think of a reason to play this game instead of going back to play those games. I suppose this game has better graphics than those games, but at this point I would hope that a new entry in this genre would have more to offer than that.

tl;dr – Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is a Farming RPG much like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, and it is an extremely polished entry in the genre that does pretty much everything it sets out to do quite well. Unfortunately, nothing it sets out to do is particularly original. So even though this is a solid entry in the genre, it’s hard to give it a hearty recommendation when there are more inspired Farming RPGs on the Nintendo Switch you could be playing instead.

Grade: B

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