Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life review

Ensuring that Forgotten Valley isn’t disremembered.

Despite the technical prowess of contemporary consoles and PCs, it’s easy to become nostalgic for early 21^st-century gaming. When Natsume released Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for the GameCube in 2003 there wasn’t a push for the now-ubiquitous season pass or any other type of DLC. Games were thoroughly tested before shipping, largely eliminating the disappointment associated with a slipshod launch. Above all, this was a time when discourse centered on the games themselves, rather than the manufactured outrage of clickbait journalism.

As such, it’s easy to understand why Marvelous would offer a remake of A Wonderful Life.  Although modern life sims are undeniably popular, some recent entries have lost sight of the quint charms that made some of the older genre entries so charming. Sure, the prospect of agrarian automation is alluring, but there’s something fundamentally fulfilling about the predictable routine of tending to your crops and creatures. A Wonderful Life offers beguilement without the bloat, even if some of the game’s components can feel a bit old-fashioned.

An Improved Localization…

All this makes the recent renovation of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life a remarkable title. On the one hand, the release has been given a moderately-sized makeover. Gone is the drab graininess, replaced by texturing that makes things decidedly more cartoonish and vibrant. Characters still have SD dimensions, but changes to hand and foot proportions make them look decidedly less doll-like. NPC monikers have been changed, bringing them closer in spirit to the original Japanese names. The nomenclature for hybrids has been improved as well with grapple replacing ‘phuju’ for grape-apple mixtures.

But at the same time, A Wonderful Life undoubtedly feels like a nearly twenty-year-old title. Considering romance is one of the game’s core constituents, you might expect the title to have absorbed the lessons of engaging dating sims released across the last decade. But all too often, small talk with your potential partners (who can be male or female now), is lackluster. There are some cute candidates for relationships, but don’t expect to be swept off your feet by the game’s recreation of romance. Likewise, townsfolk might emit several lines of dialog, but there’s little sense of their ambitions or worries. Just like the original release, NPC interaction is reduced if they’re doing something and they still awkwardly block the way when you’re attempting to speak with an adjacent character.

…But Conversations Remain Superficial

Yes, A Wonderful Life provides the obligatory side jobs to your core agricultural duties, whether it’s fishing, archeological digs, or setting up a kiosk in the middle of town to vend your wares. But each of these activities feels constrained by modern standards, whether it’s the limited number of fish, the size of the excavation site, or the number of potential customers. Exacerbating the simplicity is the introduction of inflation into Forgotten Valley. Prices for some of the coolest gear have escalated, diminishing the sense of reward for your daily labors.

Longtime Story of Seasons producer Yasuhiro Wada has habitually favored a sense of discovery across the franchise. Largely, A Wonderful Life follows this trend, frequently letting players learn about the world at their own pace. That said, there’s an in-game notebook that explains the nuances of tasks like fertilizer manufacturing if you’re hopelessly bewildered. Many modern life sims have amenities like mini-maps and markers that point to the next task at hand. For better or worse, Wonderful Life wants you to learn about the landscape and appreciate each element in its ecosystem for yourself, rather than having you follow a succession of orders. After countless life-sims have required me to introduce myself to the local townsfolk before my character could get their hands dirty, A Wonderful Life’s more autonomous approach is refreshing.

The Push-Pull Relationship with Your Offspring

Although partnering up is a bit passionless, A Wonderful Life’s cross-generational storytelling can pull at the heartstrings. Should you marry and have a child, you’ll witness them grow up, observing them at different intervals of life. While it’s somewhat superficial, exposing your child to music or artistry has a tangible effect on their interests. While it can occasionally feel like you are manipulating stats, few games offer such a broad overview of a rather ordinary life. As such, the game’s snapshot moments are likely to cultivate sentiment. For all of Wonderful Life’s antiquated elements, the game’s generational overview can make it all worthwhile.

But if you’re just here to cultivate the fields and breed animals, Story of Seasons is still a solid experience. Sure, it’s still too easy to accidentally re-till seeds, losing the resource in the process. But a few quality-of-life improvements reduce some of the drudgeries of farm work (and yes, you can now sell goats after they’ve stopped producing milk). Converting kernels into bountiful crops remains as satisfying as ever, and there’s charm in watching the season gradually pass. All of Story of Seasons’ virtues might not be evergreen but two decades on, this involving life-sim offers one of gaming’s best summations of life.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life was played on
Switch with review code provided by the publisher.