There's no clear-cut "goal" you're striving to accomplish in the game, except for a few general suggestions, like restoring the Community Center as a cumulative symbol of your positive influence on the town, or earning your grandfather's blessing by achieving enough success in different aspects of your farm, or the various goals you set for yourself, like setting up your perfect farm layout that maximizes every square space on the map or achieving Perfection by having done literally everything possible in the game. None of these are exactly end-game goals, however, as each one unlocks some new avenue of gameplay possibilities, with the idea being that you can continue playing indefinitely, for as long as you desire to continue playing that save file.
As the introductory cutscenes establish, the point of your character moving to Stardew Valley and beginning a new life as a farmer (and perhaps, by extension, why you as a player choose to play Stardew Valley), is simply a means to escape from the pressing burdens of modern life while seeking out a more peaceful, fulfilling, "down-to-earth" sort of lifestyle. That, I feel, is where Stardew Valley really shines. Although it has many compelling aspects working in its favor (like lots of engaging gameplay mechanics with tons of depth and variety to experience and a really satisfying progression system), the real reason I suspect it has such strong appeal with so many people is likely just its charming, immersive premise, and its relaxing vibes and atmosphere. After all, it's a wonderfully idealized version of a wholesome life/setting that I think many of us yearn for, where you're able to live self-sufficiently with no bosses to report to, where hard work and dedication are guaranteed to pay off, with a tight-knit small-town community who come together for all kinds of special events and contribute to society in different ways, with just a hint of magical elements to make it feel fantastical and thus a little more exciting than real life.
Watch this review in video format.
There's a certain cartoonish
simplicity to the way this world is depicted, between the pixelated
graphics and crude animations, the way certain gameplay mechanics
function, and only ever getting short snippets of conversations with
people, which has the effect of distilling these situations into their
most essential elements and lending a certain purity to the presentation
that doesn't distract you with extraneous variables, while also
allowing your imagination to fill in the details in the process. Thus, I
would theorize that this presentation makes you internalize the details
of this setting a little bit more and makes certain things more
poignant than if everything were presented with hyper-realistic graphics
and truly realistic gameplay mechanics and fully-fleshed-out dialogue.
The
characters are surprisingly realistic, however, in spite of their
cartoonish presentation, as they each have a lot of hidden depth to
uncover as you befriend them. Okay, well, maybe not all of them are
completely realistic, but you've got characters like Haley, who
experiences a lot of growth as she matures from being a vain, spoiled
princess to a more wholesome person taking a deeper, more sincere
interest in the world around her; or George who's always bitter and
cranky about everything, but as he warms up to you, you learn more about
WHY he's so cranky and he starts to change his behavior around you; or
Shane who's dealing with serious psychological trauma associated with
depression and alcoholism, whom you can have a hand in helping in his
road to recovery. It's actually shocking how much I empathized with some
of these characters, with some of their cutscenes even bringing me to
tears, which is surprising to me given that they're just simple 2D
sprites that only ever talk in one or two sentences at a time, but these
details really work to flesh them out into feeling like real people you
can relate to, which just goes to make the setting all the more
believable.
Beyond that, the general aesthetics serve in just
making the game simply pleasing to interact with, with the visuals and
music being a work of art all on their own. The pixel graphics are, of
course, a standard element of this type of indie game (and the classic
farming simulators that inspired Stardew Valley, of which I personally
only ever played Save the Homeland and Friends of Mineral Town), but
there's an impressive amount of detail in the environments that makes
them visually interesting to look at. I particularly appreciate all of
the curved and squiggly lines, with patterns that overlap from one
square to another, thus giving everything a more natural appearance that
helps to mask the game's grid-based nature, which can often leave some
of these games with an overly square, artificial sort of look to
everything; and I love the color shading on different things, like with
most trees and shrubs having five or six different shades to add depth
and texture to their leaves which are all individually painted. It's
also nice how there's almost always some amount of movement in the
environments themselves, with the flower petals gently flapping in the
breeze (or whatever it is they're doing to be moving like that), or the
waves in the water gently rippling, or butterflies casually floating
around from place to place. Occasionally you'll even see shadows cast
from the clouds that move across your fields (Summer 1, day 15), or
random animals darting by. With all of the local townsfolk also going
about their daily routines, moving through the town and to different
locations throughout the day, sometimes just hanging out with their own
idle animations, it really gives the Valley a feeling of liveliness to
it, just from the amount of independent motion you see happening around
you.
This
same setting also serves as host to the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies
on the last day of Summer, with the town setting up a series of torches
along the beach and casting an illuminated boat out to sea to attract
the attention of the migrating moonlight jellies as they continue their
voyage across the ocean. It's such an incredibly simple event that
basically just amounts to a one-minute cutscene watching a few jellyfish
sprites slowly come into view of the camera, but the wonderfully
enchanting music combines with the event's thematic symbology, of good
times coming to an end as we move on to the next stage of life, with so
many aspects of nature and life that we don't fully understand, to
create a really emotionally charged scene that sends me back to the
bittersweet days of my childhood when summer break was winding down,
realizing that those fun days of youthful freedom were almost over and
that a whole new adventure awaited in the coming school year. This is
sort of reflected by my in-game experience as well; that first summer
showed a lot of growth, with me as a player finally getting into a solid
groove with my farming and rapidly expanding into bigger fields, taking
on bigger workloads and utilizing every hour of every day to try to get
as much stuff done as possible; so it was bittersweet for me to be
there on the docks realizing that the summer was over and that it would
be time for a new routine and new workload in the fall, all-the-while
longing for a more carefree life like these moonlight jellies seem to
have, carelessly floating on through the ocean currents to the great
unknown.
It is really easy to feel drawn into this world, to
buy-into this being a sort of alternate reality that you can escape to
to seek comfort from the stresses of every day life. That's a feeling I
don't necessarily get from many of my other, typical favorite sorts of
games that usually add some degree of challenge or stresses to overcome
(which can be extremely satisfying and engaging elements in their own
right) -- but the more laid-back gameplay, here, where you can push
yourself as hard as you want or just take everything completely at your
own pace with no consequence, where the goal of the gameplay is
seemingly just to be in the world enjoying yourself, can be truly
comforting.
I actually really like this time crunch, as I find it scratches the gamer itch in me to overcome challenges and get things done under pressure, while also lending a little more of a structured purpose to the gameplay with needing to accomplish my goals in a certain time frame. But the reality is, there are no major consequences for supposedly "missing" something -- you don't LOSE progress in anything, and everything will eventually cycle back to be doable again at another time, whether it be the next day, the next week, the next season, or the next year. The sole exception to this is a single cutscene with Sam and Vincent on the beach, which must be done in year one, but I believe that is literally the only thing in the game that you can permanently miss. I guess technically you can lose friendship progress with townsfolk by going too long without talking to them, but the friendship loss is so negligible and it's so easy to overcome by just giving them a single liked gift per month, that it really isn't any sort of practical concern. So despite the constant ticking clock in the corner of the screen, you really can take things at your own pace to play as slowly or time-efficiently as you desire.
In fact, there's practically nothing in the game that you "have" to do, as it's fairly open-ended in terms of how you want to spend your time, and how you want to earn your living. You could ignore farming entirely if you really wanted, for example, by earning all your income foraging and fishing, and then spend your evenings in the Saloon drinking cola and playing arcade games. Or spend all your time adventuring in the mines and selling what you earn from defeated monsters and harvested ore veins. Or you could run a ranch and focus exclusively on livestock, or set up a brewery that focuses exclusively on making assorted types of alcoholic beverages. If you want to restore the community center, then you'll of course have to do a little bit of everything, since the bundles that you have to fulfill for the Junimos (who are the magical forest sprites that have moved into the disused community center, who fix up the community center and various other structures around town as you complete their bundles) require select items from all avenues of the game. But even then you could choose to side with the Jojamart (the giant megacorporation who's recently expanded their footprint into Stardew Valley) who will turn it into a warehouse and perform all the other community restorations by just paying them in raw cash, which you can of course gain from any source of your choosing.
While not as totally freeform as some other, more sandboxy games in this genre or weight class, it really does give you a lot of freedom to play the game however you want, in whatever way you want. If there are aspects of the gameplay that annoy you or just don't interest you, then you can ignore them completely and just do the things you like; you won't be "punished" or have a "worse" experience for not doing everything in the game to its fullest or not playing the game as intended, seeing as there really is no intended way to play in the first place.
In the end, it's really up to your
own intrinsic desires and personal creativity as to what you want to do
in the game. That's something that normally doesn't appeal to me, as I
typically like to have more of a concrete purpose to what I'm doing in
the games I play, like a main story-line to see through to its
conclusion or a final boss I'm striving to beat, which doesn't really
apply to Stardew Valley. But I find it's actually extremely engaging on a
mechanical level with the way its progression system steadily unlocks
new upgrades, new cutscenes, new areas around town, and new gameplay
options, thus providing you with a steady stream of small goals to be
working towards and always something new and rewarding to be
experiencing with each step of your playthrough.
The game
starts you out at the most basic level with limited usable farm space
and not much more to do around the farm besides harvesting your first
batch of 15 parsnips, and not much else to do around town besides
introducing yourself to the local townsfolk -- but then it steadily
introduces new upgrades and gameplay concepts through quests you get in
the mail, which guide you towards other endeavors like visiting Willy at
the beach so you can learn how to fish, or harvesting enough resources
to get Robin to build you a coop so you can buy chickens from Marnie to
start harvesting eggs, to visiting Marlon in the mountains so you can
delve into the mines to harvest ore and fight monsters for other
rewards, and so on. Along the way you're encouraged to pursue various
types of upgrades to your farm equipment which will allow you to do
things more efficiently while also ramping up the scale of your
production, thus giving you more time and energy in the day to get
things done while allowing you to afford even more expensive upgrades.
These upgrades will likewise lead to new areas of exploration and
gameplay opportunities, like how upgrading your axe enough times will
get you access to the Secret Woods where you can harvest a more steady
supply of hard wood and also gain access to new quest events, or how
donating enough artifacts to Gunther in the museum will unlock the
sewers where you get access to a new trader and new quest opportunities
with another small new area to explore.
The community center is
an even bigger factor in the engine driving the game's progression
system. Each room that you restore requires a series of bundled items,
linked by a thematic type of in-game activity and often corresponding to
a specific season. This provides a LOT of specific goals to be working
towards so you always have things you're trying to accomplish each
season, with other long-terms goals that you have to plan for as certain
bundles require more extensive preparation to fulfill. Individual
bundles you complete will then usually offer some kind of small reward
that unlocks a new gameplay system, like giving you new farm equipment
that you can use to process your produce into various types of artisan
goods, which will sell for more money or else be used in other
cooking/crafting recipes, which contributes a lot of to the feeling of
progress on your farm with being able to expand into new enterprises and
increasing the total value of your farm. Then, each restored room will
unlock some kind of major mechanical function around town, like clearing
the glittering boulder from the mountain lake so that you can start
panning the local waters for assorted gems and treasures; or repairing
the bus so you can travel to the Calico desert where you can visit a
couple of special traders and adventure through the even more difficult
mines, there, for more valuable rewards; or repairing the greenhouse on
your farm so you can grow crops out-of-season, year-round; and so on.
As
of version 1.5, there's also an entirely new island you can visit once
you complete the community center, which unlocks a whole new farm area
and tons of extra gameplay challenges, like solving puzzles and
searching for hidden walnuts to unlock different things on the island,
and an all-new, more-elaborate volcano mine with a new way to further
upgrade your tools and equipment.
The way you progressively
unlock new gameplay options, new quest opportunities, new character
cutscenes, and new areas of the map to explore, instills the game with a
strong sense of discovery that keeps the gameplay fresh and exciting,
because there's basically always something new to discover just around
the next corner. Even when the calendar cycles back to spring again at
the start of year two, where it seems like you might just be getting
ready to repeat the exact same cycle all over again, you get new types
of crops to plant, a new townsperson to interact with, and, as of
version 1.6, new alternate versions of the seasonal festivals to
experience. It's also likely that going into the start of year two, you
won't have fully restored the community center or unlocked all of the
possible upgrades to your farm, in which case there's still all of that
extra content to experience in year two. Plus, with all the knowledge
you'll have gained and the upgrades you'll have implemented to your farm
over the first year, you get the opportunity to go into year two having
learned from your mistakes and knowing how to do things more
effectively, with also the ability to do things on a bigger scale for
more profit. So even though you do end up repeating certain things again
in your second year, like planting some of the same crops you already
harvested the previous spring, it still feels fresh the second time
around because you're now able to do it much better than before due to
how much you've improved since your first spring.
The feeling of
growth that you experience in this game is extremely satisfying, since
you not only get to FEEL your CHARACTER getting better as you level-up
your skills and equipment, but you also get to SEE your farm EXPAND and
evolve as you clean it up to create new usable spaces to build new
structures or to plot out larger fields of crops, and as you continue to
acquire more livestock and set up your infrastructure of different
devices to process all of your produce. Then there's other aspects like
setting up fences to section-off different areas of the farm or to
prevent weeds from spreading into areas you don't want them to, or
building walkways to prevent tree seeds from germinating in certain
areas and to allow faster movement from one area to another, and perhaps
even decorating your farm to make it more visually appealing -- all of
which are different improvements to your farm that showcase how far
you've come from your first day of spring, year one, when everything was
a cluttered mess and you had nothing to your name except a few
hand-me-down tools and a starting gift of 15 parsnip seeds. Every one of
these improvements you make feels genuinely rewarding because it takes a
fair amount of hard work and dedication to earn the amount of resources
and money necessary to acquire them, and when you're able to apply
those proceeds to further upgrades, it's a sure sign that the time and
effort you've invested has been paid off.
Now of course, the
upgrades are also a big part of the game's core gameplay loop, with each
upgrade allowing you to produce more resources which you can sell for
more money which allows you to buy even more upgrades so you can earn
even more money, so on and so on. This can be a pretty engaging loop if
you find yourself invested in the game, as it presents a lot of
interesting strategic decisions with regards to which upgrades you'll
prioritize and how you'll choose to spend your limited resources. For
instance, it can be a tough decision early on between upgrading your
backpack so you can carry more items (which means less time wasted
running back and forth to your storage chests, and fewer wasted
resources you have to leave behind), or upgrading your watering can so
you can spend less time and energy each morning watering your crops (or
conversely spend the SAME amount of time and energy watering a much
bigger field which will be worth a lot more come harvest time), or if
you should forego both of those and instead save up for a chicken coop
so you can start getting a steady supply of residual income through
their eggs. Part of that decision will be based on what you judge to be
the best use of your resources, but also just your own personal
preference as to what type of playstyles you want to focus on. And with
so many upgrades unlocking at every step of the game, there are always
more things that you want than you can afford to upgrade at any given
time, so there's always that yearning feeling of wanting the next
upgrade but having to make careful decisions about which ones to
actually pursue.
The depth and variety of Things to Do™ in this
game is actually pretty staggering. Although the gameplay seems pretty
simple on the surface, what with it ostensibly being just a super-chill
farming simulator where you just plant your seeds and water them every
day until they're ready to sell, once you actually get into the game and
start engaging with all of its mechanics, and especially once you start
looking things up on the community wiki, you realize how surprisingly
complex everything is. I'm really not sure I can do it justice without
just listing off a bunch of features or showing charts from the wiki,
but to try to give a simple overview: there are just so many different
types of crops that you can plant that serve different functions in the
game, from basic vegetables and fruits to more specific things like
coffee beans and tea plants and fruit trees and rice shoots, each with
their own growth cycles and profit margins, and which can be turned into
all kinds of different things once harvested depending on the type of
produce it is and also what type of processing equipment you use it on,
with a bunch of different fertilizers that affect the quality of the
crop and the speed at which it grows with different quality levels being
worth more when they sell or having lost value when they're converted
into artisan goods or other crafting recipes and needing certain
speedgro fertilizers to get an extra yield that season which is
ultimately more profitable than using a higher quality fertilizer to get
better yields from fewer total yields, but then you also need a bunch
of other crafting ingredients to set up your infrastructure which means
planting different types of trees to tap them for resins which you need
to plan in advance, and oh by the way I hope you set up a bunch of
lightning rods in summer so that you can harvest batteries from the
frequent lightning storms cause you'll need those for more advanced
crafting recipes and it DOESN'T storm in winter, but to make those
you'll need these other resources which are gained from these other
sources and which need this other specific type of farm equipment and if
you want to get into fishing there's different types of fish for each
season of the year, for each location of the valley, for each weather
condition, and every time of day so when you need a specific fish for a
quest or recipe you have to cross-reference spawning charts to know when
and where to look, but then there's also a complex formula based on
luck and skill and random chance for what type of fish you'll get and
how easy it'll be to catch and whether you'll get a treasure chest in
the process which has its own complex spawning charts to determine the
rewards you'll get from it, so on and so on. And that was barely even
scratching the surface.
The benefit of this depth and complexity
is that it leaves a lot of room for more dedicated, enthusiastic players
to really dig into the mechanics with planning their infrastructure and
crunching numbers for maximum efficiency, and it also means there's
nearly always some extra level that you can tap into to continue
evolving your gameplay as you get more familiar with its systems and
become more invested in your farm. As with the game's apparent time
limits, it's up to you how much you actually want to engage with the
deeper mechanics; a hardcore min/maxer may find satisfaction in
speed-running their farm to start earning millions of gold by the end of
their first year with a complex engine of iridium sprinklers perfectly
placed to optimize their tillable space with kegs producing hundreds of
bottles of starfruit wine every week, while a more laid-back player may
find the same level of satisfaction in maintaining a small field of
whatever crops they think look pretty while watering their field by hand
each day. And because there are so many different ways to play the
game, including different starting farm layouts that each come with
their own pro's and con's, there's a lot of room for replay value if you
just want to try a completely different playstyle that focuses on
different aspects of the gameplay, or do challenge runs like completing
the community center in the first year or earning all of your income
exclusively from fishing.
The downside to this complexity is that
I think it can be overwhelming for new players. The game does a pretty
good job of easing you into things over the first week or so of
gameplay, by steadily introducing new gameplay systems through
quasi-tutorials where characters explain basic concepts to you as they
become relevant -- but after a certain point you're kind of just left to
your own devices and have to start figuring things out for yourself.
That can be confusing at times, like when you start unlocking new
crafting recipes where you have to wonder "what is this, how exactly
does this work, why would I want to build that, is it going to be worth
the cost to make it," or when you get a request for something you've
never heard of and have no idea how to go about procuring it, and so on.
And with the huge wealth of items and crafting recipes in the game,
with more and more Things to Do™ being added with every free update,
that can be a lot of information to decipher on your own, especially in
situations where a lot of these things are being thrown at you all at
once. As a new player, you're straight up bombarded with a ton of items
that you just don't have room to carry, and even with building storage
chests you're constantly struggling to make room for everything and
figure out what things are worth holding onto because they're going to
be valuable later on and what things you can afford to get rid of now to
free up space.
Personally,
I really appreciate it when games don't explicitly spell everything out
for you, because that then allows for an exciting sense of discovery
when you actually learn something new for yourself. Besides all the
surface-level stuff with learning how the game mechanics work and how to
best run your farm, there are also TONS of hidden secrets to discover,
ranging from assorted easter eggs on the title screen, to hidden items
behind buildings, to being rewarded for bringing an unexpected item to a
particular location, to rare events that trigger special occurrences
around town. Some of these are intentionally hidden and are most likely
to be discovered purely by accident, but others are specifically hinted
at through things like the Secret Notes you can find in your first
winter, thus giving you a small puzzle-solving element to work towards.
That learning process of putting everything together can be a big part
of what makes Stardew Valley such a fun and engaging experience. But
even then, speaking as someone who loves the game and who has over 200
hours invested across two different playthroughs, it does still bother
me sometimes when I HAVE to check the wiki to figure out why I'm not
finding a particular Dwarf Scroll, or where I have to be in what season
and what specific time and weather conditions to catch a particular
fish, so I do wish this information were easier to find (and reference)
in the actual game.
On that note, I do have some notable
criticisms to level against the game. For the most part, the issues I'm
about to get into are relatively minor and thus aren't significant
enough to detract from the game's overall excellent quality or the
enjoyment that I get while playing, but they're things I notice that I
feel could stand to use a little improvement. So these could be
considered mostly nitpicks in the grand scheme of things, and some of it
is just based on my own personal taste and experience, but I still feel
like they're worth mentioning in the interest of giving a fair and
honest review.
Perhaps my biggest issue is that I don't feel
like there's a realistic end point when you can stop playing and walk
away feeling "finished" with the game, short of going the full extra
mile by achieving True Perfection, which involves doing literally 100%
of everything possible in the game. That does give you something
resembling an actual ending cutscene complete with an "end credits"
screen of sorts, but that's not a realistic end point, since most people
will never come anywhere close to actually achieving that. Of course I
realize the fact that the game doesn't end is the whole point of the
game (and this genre in general, with limited exceptions of course), but
that does mean that every other playthrough (apart from those seeking
Perfection) is inevitably going to end with you reaching a point when
you get bored and lose interest, or where continuing on just doesn't
feel worth it anymore. And that can be a bit of a bummer to fall in love
with a game and then have your last experiences with it be thoughts of
"I'm not having fun anymore" as your enjoyment slowly fizzles out until
you eventually decide to just stop playing altogether.
There are
a few moments that are often considered "soft stopping points" among
the community, but to me, none of these actually feel like a satisfying
end point. Getting your grandfather's blessing is arguably the main
thing you're trying to accomplish in the game by taking over his farm,
but his evaluation triggers automatically at the start of year three,
which might not be when you're ready to stop playing even if he's deemed
you to have fulfilled all of his criteria. Even then, it just amounts
to a 30-second cutscene where grandpa's ghost shows up and he says
"You've done a great job restoring my farm, I'm so proud of you. Bye!"
And I was like "what!? That's it!?" So that didn't really do it for me.
Maybe if the cutscene were more elaborate, and you could choose WHEN to
seek Grandpa's blessing, it might work, but as it is, it's a complete
non-factor for me. Then, restoring the community center seems like your
real, actual goal in the game, but each stage unlocks new gameplay
elements, so whatever one you do last means you still have some
unfulfilled Thing to Do™ left in the game as a reward for having
completed the community center. There's even a whole extra bundle that
appears in the abandoned Jojamart after completing the whole thing,
indicating that there are still meaningful things left to do with the
junimos. And since the update to version 1.5, there's now an entire area
on Ginger Island with tons of exciting, all-new gameplay, so finishing
the Community Center feels like even LESS of a satisfactory stopping
point, now.
Now in fairness I do really like Ginger Island. It's
a wonderful change of pace from the ordinary gameplay with exploring
the map searching for hidden secrets and solving puzzles to get golden
walnuts, which you can use to unlock different areas of the island where
you can experience more content or unlock new upgrades. The volcano
dungeon is more interesting than either the standard mines or the skull
caverns from the base game, too, with it having more complex level
designs that require the use of your watering can to create safe
pathways over the lava, and occasional floor switches that have to be
found in the level before unlocking the door to the next floor. The
whole things feels highly reminiscent of old-school Zelda games,
specifically Link's Awakening, considering the tropical island setting
complete with a mountainous structure at the top-center of the map;
hunting for hidden items that give you progressive rewards the more you
find; the inclusion of an item trading sequence; and more platforming
and puzzle-solving elements in the dungeon environment like you would
see in a typical Zelda game. And since I love Link's Awakening, it's
only natural that I would also love the homage being paid to it with
Stardew Valley's Ginger Island.
Unfortunately, your ultimate
reward for doing things on Ginger Island is to unlock yet more upgrades
to your farm and your equipment, by gaining access to the forge and Mr
Cheese Mr Qi's Walnut Room, which I just had no interest in pursuing by
that point of my playthrough because most of the upgrades just didn't
seem worth the effort, or all that necessary in the first place. Just
looking over the available options for Qi's Special Notice Board, I was
just like "I don't want to do any of that," and the forge requires one
prismatic shard (which are super rare) per enchantment (which are
randomized), so I was like "I really won't get much benefit out of this,
either." And that's basically where my playthrough ended: realizing
that I just didn't want to play anymore, and quitting. That, to me, is
not a satisfying way to the end the game, so again, I just wish there
were a more definitive end point somewhere along the way where I could
feel a stronger sense of fulfillment and end the game on a proper high
note, while still allowing other players who WANT to continue their
playthrough the opportunity to do so.
Next on my list of
criticisms is that the core decision between picking the community
center or Jojamart seems absurdly one-sided in the favor of the
community center. Not only is restoring the community center more
in-keeping with the game's intended theme, considering your character
was deliberately trying to escape from the soulless oppression of
working for Jojacorp, a place so dystopian that they literally work
people to death, but buying seeds from Pierre is straight up better than
buying from Jojamart, seeing as his prices are better to start the game
without requiring an expensive membership that only makes Joja's prices
EQUAL to Pierre's, AND he's closer to your farm so it's a shorter
commute any time you need to buy seeds. The only benefit Jojamart has is
better hours, since they stay open later in the day and don't close on
Wednesdays, but those are easy enough to plan around, so I never felt
like there was any incentive to ever do business with Jojamart. It seems
like if they actually wanted the Joja route to be a tempting
proposition, then their prices should be cheaper than the competition,
and it likewise might've been a more interesting decision if there were
also gameplay trade-offs for choosing Joja's seeds over Pierre's, like
if they were cheaper but less likely to yield gold-quality crops, or if
you got extra in-store bonuses by selling your produce directly to Joja
to make up for siding with the "evil" corporation that the game clearly
doesn't want you to like in the first place. I guess it does give you a
faster, easier, and more reliable way to get auto-petters, if you care
about that, but it's not enough incentive for me, personally.
Though as an aside, I really like the fishing
mini-game, as I find it more actively engaging than most other fishing
mini-games I've ever experienced, and I feel like it does a pretty good
job of translating the methodology you have to use in real fishing with
keeping tension on the line while alternating between pulling up on the
rod and reeling down with the line, depending on how the fish moves. I
wind up enjoying my time fishing early on, but unfortunately its
usefulness wears out before long when you can make so much more income
farming than you can fishing. The recent update to 1.6 attempts to buff
the fishing with new types of bait, an upgraded fishing rod, and an
all-new fish smoker, among other things, but I still find it's easier
and more effective to earn cash by just setting up sprinklers and
dumping crops into kegs and preserves jars, than it is to spend time
meticulously fishing all day.
Next on my list of criticisms is
that the social simulation of befriending townsfolk is insultingly
simple, and not much better than what I remember from playing the
Harvest Moon games 20-some years ago, although it's been a long time and
my memory of those games is not great. Regardless, you gain friendship
points with people almost exclusively by bribing them with gifts they
like and listening to them talk about themselves, with hardly any
opportunity for any real interaction. And when you DO get a rare chance
to pick dialogue options, the meta-game is almost always to pick the
answer that makes the other person feel good, like telling Penny you
loved her cooking even after she poisons you with it, or not being a
creepy pervert with Leah when she's showing you her art. There's hardly
any nuance to these dialogue options, so it's not satisfying identifying
the obviously correct or incorrect ones. It would've been nice if there
were more complexity in the choices, and just more of them in general
so that you could develop more of an actual camaraderie through real
interactions instead of basically just buying their friendship. I would
love to be able to actually DO things with the townsfolk, like exploring
the mines with Abby, or going on a fishing trip with Willy, or foraging
for mushrooms with Leah, to name just a few examples. Some of their
heart events give you the illusion of things like this, but you're
ultimately always just watching a cutscene and maybe picking one or two
dialogue options. The two best heart events are the ones where you play
Journey of the Prairie King with Abigail, and that tabletop game with
Sebastian and Sam, so I would've liked more interactive heart events or
activities in general, like those ones.
I do like how triggering
their heart events requires other specific conditions, however, like
being in the right location, at a certain time of day, in the correct
weather conditions, or with the right other people around them, and so
on, than simply going up to that person when you've reached the
requisite number of hearts with them. That creates a lot of exciting
unpredictability as to when you're going to stumble into a cutscene,
because they can happen in such seemingly random occasions when you
least expect it, which makes the world feel a little more dynamic to
have so many events popping up all over the map at different times, with
different people as you're going about your daily business. That can
make some of them incredibly easy to miss, however, which can once again
be another situation where you might feel compelled to have to check
the wiki to figure out how to trigger certain heart events.
If some of the existing date-able characters
couldn't have been made to be explicitly older, then it makes me wonder
why you can't date any of the older singles around town. Marnie and Gus,
for example, seem like wonderful people who would make great partners
for a farmer, and someone like Willy might be a decent candidate as
well. But I guess with all of these people running their own businesses
and serving as shopkeepers, that might create a structural issue with
the game's formatting if they had to leave their jobs to go live on the
farm, or else spent all their time running their stores instead of
enjoying married life with you, so I don't know. This is where mods like
Ridgeside Village or Stardew Valley Expanded start really appealing to
me, if only for the sake of having a few older dating options, because
the ones in the vanilla game don't feel like they're really for me.
Finally,
I feel like some of the festivals are a little anticlimactic. Now don't
get me wrong, I love the festivals for the way they add extra seasonal
charm to each season, and the way they depict the sense of community
with everyone coming together for each of these events, with many of the
local townsfolk pitching in in their own special way to make it happen.
I previously sang the praises of the Night Market and the Dance of the
Moonlight Jellies, but most of the others have a similarly engaging vibe
that really sells the time of the year in their presentation. It's just
that, some of them seem to come and go without much of an exciting
climax, or an actual resolution to the event. The Spirit's Eve Festival
has some great atmosphere and even a fun little maze to explore, even if
it is a little simple, but after you solve the maze, you just kind of
leave without any fanfare or resolution, which I always thought was a
little awkward. The Flower Dance likewise just kind of happens, with
absolutely no follow-up to the cutscene in which you either witness or
participate in the dance; like, there's no sequence where they crown a
Flower Queen, or where you get a brief line of dialogue from your dance
partner saying "Boy that was fun, thanks for dancing with me!" or
anything like that. The dance just ends, and then you go home. Even
participating in the dance itself is kind of underwhelming as it's just a
short little cutscene where you don't do anything to actually
participate in the dance yourself, like needing to time button prompts
to dance in rhythm with the group without making a mistake, or needing
to follow the others' movements and facing without breaking formation or
bumping into anyone, which might've made it a little more fun and
engaging.
The Feast of the Winter Star is the worst offender.
The whole point is that it's the FEAST of the Winter Star, with tables
of food set up everywhere, but you never get to sit down and participate
in the titular feast. This event really should give you the option to
pick which table to sit at as the conclusion to the event, which might
raise your friendship points with everyone at that table by a small
amount, possibly with you even bringing a dish of your own to share, and
then play out a cutscene where Lewis or someone gives a toast for the
great year you've all just had while wishing the Winter Star's blessings
on everyone for the next year, before everyone digs into the feast, and
then fading to black to end the event. But instead you just show up,
exchange your gifts, and then awkwardly leave. It's the most
anticlimactic thing ever. And there's not even any motion happening in
the scene, everyone just stands there staring off into the distance like
lifeless zombies. Why is no one walking around mingling between
different groups of people, or admiring the decorations, or checking out
all the presents under the tree, or sampling different foodstuffs from
the tables?
At least with version 1.6, we finally get a
second, alternate version of each festival that rotates in every other
year, so there's at least some variety to experience with the festivals
from year to year. Previously, you would've experienced the exact same
scenario year after year, with the exact same map arrangements, the same
lines of dialogue from all the NPC's, and the same gameplay solutions
to everything. This made repeat festivals especially underwhelming
during my previous playthrough of version 1.5 about a year ago, when
there wasn't much incentive to even show up for the festivals after the
first year. So I'm glad this has finally been addressed with the recent
update, but it's still a shame that it took seven years since the game
first launched for it to happen, as the repetitive festivals definitely
would've been a major criticism if I were still playing and reviewing
the earlier versions of the game. There's kind of a similar thing going
on with the characters' outfits, where for the longest time everyone
only had one outfit they wore throughout the entire year, which led to
absurd moments where people like Haley are hanging out in the snow while
wearing a sundress, or with Demetrius wearing a short sleeve shirt at
an ice fishing competition talking about how he should've worn a coat.
That's another thing that finally got addressed with 1.6, in giving
everyone an alternate set of winter clothes, for which I will commend
the improvement but lament that it took seven years for them to finally
start wearing hats and coats in the winter.
So Stardew Valley
wound up being a surprise hit for me. Although I did enjoy playing some
of the Harvest Moon games back in the day, I had grown away from this
type of gameplay experience over the last 20-some years, and thus the
idea of playing another "country life simulator" never really appealed
to me. I then randomly decided to spend some Google Play credits to try
out the mobile version, figuring it might be a decent way to kill time
while away from home, and hey, if I wind up not liking it at least I'm
not spending my own money on it. But after the first week or so of
in-game time, I found myself deeply engrossed in the process of
exploring the town, getting to know all the townsfolk, upgrading my
farm, and looking forward to what each new season had to offer. The
game's best selling point, in my opinion, is truly just its charming,
immersive premise, and its relaxing vibes and atmosphere, but then it
also has really engaging gameplay mechanics with tons of depth and
variety to experience and a really satisfying progression system to go
along with that wonderful theme. And the fact that it's made entirely by
a one-man development team, who goes by the moniker ConcernedApe, makes
it all the more impressive and worthy of praise. This game really does
feel like a labor of love from the developer, with a lot of smart ideas
and simple heart injected into its creation, which is reinforced by all
the continued support he's given Stardew Valley over the last eight
years with so many free content updates that continue to expand on the
game and make everything better, without charging any extra money in the
form of DLC or microtransactions. The theme and gameplay systems may
not be for everyone, but it's no wonder to me why Stardew Valley appeals
to so many people so strongly, because it really is just an extremely
lovable game. In my case, I didn't feel like I had any particular
affinity for this type of game going into it, but it quickly won me over
and has become one of my most cherished gaming experiences.
Good to see you coming back! I kind of missed your reviews.
ReplyDelete