Been playing this game on and off since 2016, and I have about 200 hours of it on Steam before buying it on GOG during a sale so I have it forever, but I'm still not even close to completing everything. Stardew Valley speaks for itself at this point. It has dating, marriage, and parenthood, combat, exploration, mystery, in-game events and progression, time-specific events, all rolled into a farm simulator reminiscent of Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing but with even more interactivity and immersion. It is truly one of if not THE best indie game of all time.
I don't dislike Metroidvania's but I'm also not huge into them, but I really like this game. Controls are tight, characters are good, settings are cool. My only gripe is that is that you can tell it just FEELS like a WayForward game, even though they're not actually the main developers afaik. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that but it does make it feel a bit less unique than I thought it was going to be. But it's very fun and if you like that kind of look/feel then it's not a problem anyway. Highly recommend.
