#also like mamoru mentioned earlier in the remake they went really like chill about genders and things

[nowoyas]

can you talk about a wonderful life? i’d love to hear about it because it sounds like something i would like and i’d like to know if it’s worth the money ^_^

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes I sure can!

Okay SO:

I'm gonna approach this from the assumption that you're not super well-versed in farm sims just bc I have literally no other way of telling otherwise and that seems like the safest assumption to make to ensure proper information and blah blah blah

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is the current-generation remake of the games Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (Special Edition). Why and how is it a remake of three games, you might ask? Back in my day (waves cane), there were separate editions of games in the genre for boys and girls. A Wonderful Life was for boys, Another Wonderful Life was for girls, and A Wonderful Life: Special Edition was for the PS2. This remake consolidates them, including the extra marriage candidate for AWL:SE and adding a new one to balance the potential marriage candidates by yassifying an existing character.

Generally speaking, the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games are farm sims! This means you can expect gameplay to look like this: You inherit/buy/wash up on/etc. a farm and take over as the new farmer, typically in a sleepy small town which may or may not have a Plot Problem For You To Solve during your time there. You grow crops, raise animals, and woo someone in the town to marry them and have a family while accomplishing The Plot! Usually, the general message of the game shakes out to be something about the peace of rural life and slowing down in spite of the world speeding up around you. There are exceptions to this rule: in Innocent Life, another game in the genre that was a spinoff of the pre-schism Harvest Moon genre for the PSP, you're not human and there's no dating elements and the focus is more on exploration and helping the town than on your farm, for example!

A Wonderful Life is also, marginally, different. See, A Wonderful Life was intended to be more true-to-life than other games in the series had been up until that point. This is why seasons only last ten days and a monster lives in the woods behind your house. Previously, games in the series were just as straightforward, with some key differences: buy a calf, raise it up to adulthood, and that cow will give you milk for as long as it lives. In A Wonderful Life? You had to breed the cow for it to begin producing milk, and after about a year, it would need to be bred again or else it'd stop and just take up valuable space in your barn. As I understand it, this is changed in the remake, but I haven't played enough to dig into exactly how!

Anyways I'm rambling due to the Autisms™. What I mean to say is, farm sims are about community and cozy, easy living. But typically, you don't grow. The community you live and farm in may grow, as either the goal or byproduct of the Plot (Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands and Island of Happiness), or it may stay static, endlessly (Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town). You almost always have the option to have a kid, but typically, that kid grows to a certain stage and stays that way forever. (Notable exception, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade, where your kid grows up and then you play as the kid)

In A Wonderful Life, it's about the kid. The mechanics are centered around raising the kid, and how your choices affect theirs. If you don't get married and never have a child, the game ends. You leave the valley and return to the city. If you do marry, the chapter ends, and we fast forward to when you have a little toddler (?) running around. Who you befriend (including who their other parent is), how you care for your animals and plants, the things you show your child and the attention you pay them shapes their development. It's about life and birth and death and development and growing up in the countryside. Most importantly, it's about training your dog to perform a 6 foot vertical leap on command.

Please play A Wonderful Life.