At first, it was very exciting to finally have a relationship-building, harvesting, collecting, crafting game for PC. After about a year worth of in-game time, everything, and I do mean everything, started to wear thin. The interactions with other characters are flat, wooden, and generally uninspired. There is very little to like about most of the characters and very little indication as to what they may or may not like. Planting and harvesting is boring and unoriginal and soon starts to feel much more like a chore than an integral part of the game. The storage system is cumbersome - rather than allow you to add capacity to large storage areas, you have to create additional storage that is opened independently of all your other storage. Want to store enough that you can actually start cooking things someday? Better craft a dozen chests and better enjoy running back and forth between them trying to remember which one has which ingredient. The game is bright and colorful but the graphics are mediocre. I understand the whole pixellated retro fad over the last couple of years, but honestly, a game like this deserves better graphics. The dated graphics feel like a cheap attempt to capitalize on the nostalgia of the old games in this genre. Once I'd seen almost all of the game screens, and encountered most of the major game elements, the luster faded very quickly and I was left having to decide whether I wanted to spend countless hours of repetitive gameplay to accomplish goals that weren't particularly rewarding, or to just move on. I chose to move on. If you've been having withdrawals since the last Harvest Moon game came out, you will probably enjoy this game, but unless you love repetition with little feeling of accomplishment, you're probably best served by avoiding this game. Seeing the popularity of this game makes me wish I could design games because I believe that fans of this genre deserve the game that Stardew Valley wishes it could be.
