Stardew Valley is a Rare unique game that stands out as the best in its genre. It sets the standard for all other farming simulators and casual games.
On the one hand that's pretty great. Stardew Valley has everything you could want: farming, life simulation, dungeon crawling, and dating. However, it can also make it hard to enjoy other games. that try to be something like that because I know I'll stop at nothing to stop whatever new farming sim is coming out at Nintendo Direct.
I am interested in giving the Story of Seasons series another chance after a nearly two decade hiatus, but every time I think about giving someone a quest and I catch a glimpse of Stardew Valley out of the corner of my eye and am back to mining iridium ore and romancing 12 people at the same time Sorry, Story of Seasons, Stardew has really killed my interest in you.
How Stardew Valley Makes Me Long for Harvest Moon
The Story of Seasons series is like a spiritual successor to the Harvest Moon games. Although Harvest Moon games are still being released, a disagreement between the original developers and the copyright holder led to the people behind it creating Story of Seasons instead. went on to create their own farming sims that are basically Harvest Moon under a new name. It is complicated, but that's not the point, so we don't need to go into the specifics.
Stardew Valley was made because the Harvest Moon games were getting worse. Solo developer Eric Barone explained that when he decided to create Stardew Valley, he wanted to recapture the joy he felt while playing the original Harvest Moon games on the Super Nintendo and Gameboy. Little did he know that he was creating a game that would recreate the magic of those old farming sims even more effectively.
Stardew Valley is much better than those games. but if you grew up playing Harvest Moon like me, you do not constantly think about how much better it is than those games. Instead it reminds you how much you loved playing them when you were younger.
Playing games from the Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon series isn't my cup of tea, because while they are good enough games, they don't have the same charm as Stardew Valley. Maybe it's because Stardew is primarily one person's passion project that's been updated and improved for free over the years. but there's something about this game that's able to recapture that spark that the current era of Story of Seasons games just don't have.
Story of Seasons, It’s Not You because It’s Me
I would be interested in Story of Seasons if Stardew Valley didn't exist, but new entries in the series and other farming sims like it don't fill me with excitement and interest, reminding me that it's been a while since I started a new Stardew farm.
This is not really Story of Seasons fault. These games aren't bad by any means. it is just that when a game is as strong and well-defined and exceptional in the genre as Stardew Valley, everything else seems worse in comparison.
Maybe someday, a Story of Seasons game will be as popular as Stardew Valley. If that happens, I'll be the first to play it. But for now, I will be happily playing Stardew Valley and ignoring Pierre's calls.
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