Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG / Management Sim

Players: 1

.

Review:

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a “Farming RPG”-style Action-RPG and Management Simulation that was first released on GameCube in 2004 by the name Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, back in the days before the developer and publisher of the series parted ways and formed two separate franchises. This game received a “Special Edition” port on PlayStation 2 in 2005, but in 2023 this game would get a fully-fledged remake on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, with updated graphics, new features, and multiple smaller quality-of-life changes.

Graphically, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life looks good on Nintendo Switch. It’s nothing phenomenal, the 3D environments and characters look simple but pleasant enough, though the large environments look sparse and somewhat featureless. This game doesn’t wear on its sleeve the fact that it’s a remake of a 20 year-old game, but neither does it compare to the visual quality of modern games like Harvestella and Fae Farm. These visuals are backed by a decent but forgettable relaxed soundtrack.

When it comes to the gameplay, A Wonderful Life seems, at a glance, to be fairly typical for the genre, and in no way exceptional. All of the standard “Farming RPG” activities are represented well enough here – the farming works as one would expect, there’s livestock raising, fishing, mining (in a teeny-tiny mine), running errands for townsfolk, and starting relationships with the local townsfolk (with this release allowing players to romance any of the available characters regardless of gender, and you can even opt to choose nonbinary pronouns, which is a nice little touch).

It’s only when you dig deeper into the gameplay systems here that you find nuances uncommon to other entries in the genre. Planted trees can be hybridized to grow entirely new crops, cows only produce milk within a period after they give birth and must be separated when they are bearing offspring, and starting relationships in this game is not an end goal, but a starting point, as you raise a family and hand off your farm to a new generation.

The thing is, many of these nice nuances may be hard for more impatient players or those new to the genre, as it takes a considerable amount of time before these nuances show. It’s also not always made clear how these mechanics work, or how important they are – for one example, the game encourages you to get it on with one of the locals, but doesn’t make it clear that failing to start a relationship within the first in-game year will end the game. Yikes.

It doesn’t help that I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of these characters. Few characters here impressed me as having particularly strong or well-crafted personalities, apart from some basic character traits. In fact, overall this game felt somewhat lacking in personality.

Still, as “Farming RPG”-style games go, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is competently made and has some unique features that genre fans may well find enticing. It’s not likely to supplant games like Fae Farm and Stardew Valley, but it nevertheless provides its own unique niche within the genre.

tl;dr – Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a remake of a GameCube Action-RPG and “Farming RPG”-style Management Sim. It’s a bit slow-paced and generic, even for this genre, and all of its more subtle nuances will take time to uncover. More patient fans of the genre may find these unique features may make this game worth checking out, but most players are better starting out with other games in the genre.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}