The most recent Harvest Moon I played was, I think, FoMT for the GBA (obviously not counting Innocent Life on the PS2, or Tale of Two Towns for the NDS which I played for like half an hour tops)
If you liked FOMT/the idea of farming games in general, you would probably like Stardew. IMHO, it is really good at balancing things so that you aren’t locked into optimizing anything - you could farm minimally and focus on the social elements and have a good time too. The stuff in the meme doesn’t feel too much like pressure, because you’ll just naturally encounter everything by the end of year one and know how to find it by the end of year two for the community center (the main goal of the game), and if you want to optimize everything for cash you can buy out an equivalent “win.” It’s very sandbox-y.
Unlike the Harvest Moon games, gender doesn’t matter for who you marry, which is something I personally always enjoy in a “cozy” game. There’s even a cute option where you can chose to move in a monster as a friend instead of choosing to get married.
One of the funniest things I’m noticing on my current play through is that the easiest way to romance the alcoholic is to give him alcohol. The quickest way to consistently casually gain a bunch of hearts is to hang out at the bar every night and give everyone there a beer.
Thank you for the explanation.
The most recent Harvest Moon I played was, I think, FoMT for the GBA (obviously not counting Innocent Life on the PS2, or Tale of Two Towns for the NDS which I played for like half an hour tops)
If you liked FOMT/the idea of farming games in general, you would probably like Stardew. IMHO, it is really good at balancing things so that you aren’t locked into optimizing anything - you could farm minimally and focus on the social elements and have a good time too. The stuff in the meme doesn’t feel too much like pressure, because you’ll just naturally encounter everything by the end of year one and know how to find it by the end of year two for the community center (the main goal of the game), and if you want to optimize everything for cash you can buy out an equivalent “win.” It’s very sandbox-y.
Unlike the Harvest Moon games, gender doesn’t matter for who you marry, which is something I personally always enjoy in a “cozy” game. There’s even a cute option where you can chose to move in a monster as a friend instead of choosing to get married.
One of the funniest things I’m noticing on my current play through is that the easiest way to romance the alcoholic is to give him alcohol. The quickest way to consistently casually gain a bunch of hearts is to hang out at the bar every night and give everyone there a beer.