Stardew Valley

These bucolic life/farm sim type games aren't hard to get right. Throw the player into a pretty environment, add a basic laber/money sink loop with upgrades, and add characters to build virtual relationships with. Throw in a plot to give the whole thing some reason for existing and bam! you've got a game. This game fails pretty hard at things that aren't even remotely difficult to get right. Probably because the developers were more interested in gossamer thin allegory and flat out preaching than they were in making a good game. The basic plot conflict reads like a rabid Fern Gully fan played Rune Factory and decided to mash the two together while removing everything that made either one interesting. The characters are implausible and stiff with token lifestyle choices. I guess that's good in the realism department, because every single interaction you have with them is transactional. Building relationships is just another chore you do, and every unlocked interaction is going to preach to you about the value of tolerance or diversity in some fashion. Yes, lord, let this humble peon labour for the privilege of being brainwashed. The gameplay loop itself is more tedium and the upgrades essentially bring you up to the "this is where I should have been when the game started" level. The dungeon segment is boring and anything but challenging. At least we'll always have Rune Factory.

For a game that's based around getting away from the stresses and weariness of modern living it only succeeds in adding a bucket load of aggrovation to my life. There is almost no inventory space, because of course there is. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There are unlockables, because of course there are. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There are collectibles, because of course there are. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There is a main character who runs slowly and walks even slower, because of course he does. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There is a very limited day/cycle where certain places are only/closed AND you cannot stay up past 2am, because of course you can't. There is an inane control/UI system that try's to appease keyboard and controller options and falls horribly between the two. There's very little gold/progress in the beginning, because of course there is. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. Leaving aside these frustrations the game is actually dull, boring, not in watching grass grow kind of way, more in a "is that all?" kind of way. You walk around alot with some mundane agrarian tasks. Modern life is much better than that, and it has computers, central heating and cars to get around in (very quickly).

I would never have expected that a game with pixel graphics to refuse to start on my three-year-old laptop. Apparently this title is an exclusive to devices which support the XNA "HiDef" profile, whatever that means.

WHY IS THIS GAME SO POPULAR? The "running" speed is PATHETIC, and the walking speed is completely POINTLESS, because they're so slow; shouldn't take THIS long to get from Point A to Point B; even the original Harvest Moon had a DASH BUTTON! This, by itself, makes the game EXCRUCIATING to play! The character creator/editor is ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE in which only one option can be seen at a time, and they're all only numbered, so you have to flip through each and every single option to see what they look like; WHY DO GAME DEVELOPERS KEEP MAKING CHARACTER CREATORS/EDITORS LIKE THIS?? I should be able to make my selections from a menu in which previews for each choice are all shown AT THE SAME TIME, so I can compare and contrast them right next to each other! Deltarune did it right (even if its character creator/editor was completely POINTLESS as per its own meta humor). The above two problems could've been solved in an update; apparently the game HAS been updated since its original release, so you'd THINK they could've at least solved the SLOW movement problem! The town's poorly laid-out, and seems like a random arrangement of buildings; nobody designs towns like this in real life, or in games, IF they're smart... The only thing this game wanted to make me do was just go back and play the original Harvest Moon on the SNES.

I want my refund....