If you've nostalgia it's a double edged sword. If you're coming off the GBA or PS1 era and thinking you're going to work hard to get a greenhouse then you can spend all time indoors to farm and raise animals, then spend your days socializng in town, well....

Tough. Despite the GBA having a hidden greenhouse with sun orbs or something to unlock it, and the ps1 having a home extension for it, for whatever reason Story of Seasons I guess lost greenhouse technology in the lawsuit against Natsume when they lost the Harvest Moon name. That or the Japanese can't do remasters well and it was just too hard or simply forgot, it's mind boggling that the only end game goal is a totally worthless villa.

End game doesn't have indoor gardening and even tho you can get something to increase your stamina and reduce it's tool use cost, you're still spending all day watering plants to make any kind of money and gutting your time with people. Basically pick if you want to be social or successful. And the quality of life on the plants letting you walk through them instead of forcing you to plan out a garden to work around both your watering can's level and reach, as well as your characters gathering and harvesting reach, is a bit of a let down to be honest. It's easier, but takes away some of the charm.

For a game meant for nostalgia bait, it's a bit awkward or off putting with the writing being literally for toddlers, to the point that they don't reference alcohol in a world with a literal gd vineyard and wife complaining her husband goes to the Inn every night to drink their stock away. Let's be honest, you're remastering a nostalgia bait title from a few decades ago, you can get over the clowns in the english ESG telling you to censor the word "alcohol" in localization. Promise. Sit in on a COD lobby sometime and listen to the age range of the "rated M for Mature" and see how well that flies across the industry.

The tools are rebalanced weird, the scythe is way, way too easy to level up and you'll have almost all the wood needed for most of your home and barn expansions before you can get the axe to gold, for whatever reason it's worlds harder to level than the rest. It's so wildly divergent from the other tools that it feels like it got the values mixed up from the scythe or something.

If you like the 2.5D, top down iso look of harvest moons, ie old Rune Factory, SNES to PS1 era Harvest moon, handheld titles or Stardew Valley, you could certainly do worse than this title. But given most of those titles are also on Steam, you could also do better frankly. Disappointed in this remake as it feels like (and is literally in some ways) going backwards in tech and complexity.

Also actual riot for no DLC to marry the Harvest Goddess, nor homewreck on Manna and Duke since he wants to spend all his time at the bar

Mid to early-mid game becomes such a chore as to deter continued playing.

NPCs tend to be genuinely unlikeable, portraying an accurate and inventive depiction of Hell in having to deal with the everyone's completely unhinged demands to make any sort of progress.

Like a halloween town version of Stardew Valley but more shallow and annoying. Scratches the itch for that sort of game for a while, but the continued annoyances and 'asks' of the game to keep going make me reconsider if it's worth the ever growing list of BS entitled strangers want to demand of you in a game about chill farming and property management.

Stardew gives you an early game quest that's OPTIONAL, to talk to everyone in the town. This game demands you speak to every random hobo on the off chance they're the only mf who can sell the trash you need to get NPCs to do their job, grinding everything to a standstill in the name of 'comedy' I guess.

Was fun until forced 3d platforming parkour. Dungeon floors around level 6 introduce floor layouts more mirror's edge or minecraft adventure maps than the dungeon crawl it was the first few floors, and likely past refund eligible 2 hours of gameplay.

Fun game, on launch connection issues are complete trash though. Don't play during peak hours unless you enjoy going 4-5 rounds in a 5 round game, only to have a connection error every time and not get rewarded anything.

Interesting mechanic and enjoyable room escape game. Short and the end game felt easier than a hurdle in the middle, but over all worth a look. The mechanic would be more at home in a sanity or questioning reality setting or story, or thriller or horror genre.