Terroir

.. the scrolling of information in some places is infuriating. Also: why it defaults to the normal speed after each event even if i was on highest speed..? This game looks cute but it is very very slowly advancing even at the normal difficulty. It asks too much time from the player and time is very valuable.. Meh..

The beginning hours are bad, and you have to do your own research online in order to play this thing. Buttons and interface are non-intuitive, and a button which should cancel or exit is actual a one time thing like rename; leaving the exit to a small x on the top right. And please make it easier for me and let me call up the menu by pressing escape. Also, isn't it easier to click on your main building in order to enter it? You can only enter it by pressing the second button from the top right. And why can't I harvest one of the crops first? There could easily be a button on the right above or below the 3 crops that says 'harvest this one now'. AS is, a single button harvest everything, whether you want to keep one or not. I felt my IQ drop as I struggle to give it a chance. I finally gave up when I spent about 2 hours trying to get a 5 star 'Rkatsiteli', and I found the only way to do it is to nerf your judges. There were no combinations that gave me a 5 star Rkatsiteli when you invite 3 5-star judges. I also hit a bug where my screen goes blur as my tavern fails to load. I had to get out and back in again. This is lazy version of a Skinner box; and I don't recommend it to anyone. Please go play "Stardew Valley" instead.

Winemaking... alright. Each wine is scored in four different characteristics, and you get the numerical values of all, and the game gives you equations on how to manage them through wine processing, and there is almost zero automation on that. Fermentation is timed and limited to 2 months, but ageing has no timer like "bottle the wine after X months". You simply have to remember that and count along. Processing the wine is done in step-by-step wizard dialogs, but if you have more than one variety of grapes, each gets it's own tab, and can be quite easily forgotten. The game won't pre-select even the only possible choice, leaving you with having to select the only real selection available. So much for useless micromanagement. But thare's only one "harvest" option, without possibility to harvest per variety. So much for useful micromanagement. Given plenty issues like those, cosmetic things like day-and-night cycle (where each day is approx. a game month long and only affects map visibility... not in a good way) aren't the things that drove the rating down for me. The idea of the game is good! Spend some love on the controls. Throw in some more options like "Weather and climate", [Harvest variety]/[Harvest all] buttons Tip: UI was too unintuitive and arbitrary.

First of all, I'll say this: even with GOG's great refund policy, I'm extremely glad I got this game for free. The idea behind it isn't bad at all, but it's executed so shoddily as to be outright insultingly bad. The entire "the weather is randomized and therefor your harvest is too" idea is absurd. Do the devs think even the most modest vinyards these days handle their crops like it's 1782? There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, you can do to counter-act the insipid RNG weather system. If you're unlucky, you can get screwed over with 5 straight months of rain. Honestly, can you name one single place IN THE WORLD where grapes are grown and you randomly get 150 days of non-stop rain? No, you can't, 'cause such a place doesn't exist! Adding to that, there's an extremely unfair level of "gain vs cost" with the production and sales of wines in the game. Even if you manage to ace your harvest and produce a 5-star wine, the sales of it never counter the expense of its production as well as the upkeep cost on your vinyard, meaning you will always, and I mean ALWAYS, lose money early on. Seriously, how the hell could the devs be so inept as to mess that up?! That's not even mentioning the utter BS with "fungal rot" and whatnot. In the 3 or so hours I could stomach playing this miserable crapshow of a game (knowing I'm new to the game and thus needed a bit of an "easing in" period) I decided to play it on the easiest difficulty level. The game claimed easy mode "reduced frequency of fungal rot" or some such bollockry. This was an outright stinking lie. 7 years in a row, every single crop of mine suffered fungal rot which not only drastically reduces the quality of the wine if harvested while the grapes are afflicted by it, but which also ALWAYS reduces the year-end yield of the crop by a whole 30% PER MONTH OF AFFLICTION! That's insane! And there's NOTHING you can do to counter-act it either! Simply put, this game is GARBAGE, and I'm glad I didn't waste my money on it.