• Price: $49.99 USD (digital & physical)
• Developer: Marvelous
• Publisher: XSEED Games
• Release Date: June 27, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by One PR Studio on behalf of Marvelous and XSEED Games. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

My farming sim journey started with Friends of Mineral Town on Game Boy Advance back in 2003, and I continued on from there. I missed out on the original version of A Wonderful Life due to my preference for handheld consoles (and my siblings hogging the GameCube 😂), so I’m excited to experience this updated version now. Per the website, there are a variety of new elements in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. The game includes more than 70 new events with the villagers, LGBT+ friendly additions, character customization, and more.

Your character decided that they wanted to move to Forgotten Valley to work on their father’s old farm with help from a man named Takakura, who was friends with their father. Before setting foot on the farm, you get to choose your character’s gender: male, female, or non-binary! I think it’s fantastic that they made the game more inclusive with the new addition of the non-binary option. Then you’ll select your eye color and type, skin color, hair color and style, and starting outfit.

A Parade of Animals

Once you’ve finished customizing your character, it’s time to start your new life. Takakura offers you one of two dogs how could he make me choose, a cow, and a horse in the color of your choice as welcome presents. How sweet! Next, he takes you on a tour of your farm’s facilities and the valley, introducing you to the residents there.

I then got to work on my farm, and found myself confused by some mechanics I’ve never seen in the series before. First of all, there isn’t a livestock supplier within the valley itself. Instead, you go to the ledger next to the shipping bin and place orders for livestock, their food, animal reproduction, and new facilities for the farm.

I would have assumed that Vesta, who sells seeds in the valley, would have at least sold fodder and chicken feed for the sake of convenience. But she doesn’t, and everything takes time to get to you after you order them through the ledger, so you really have to keep track of your animal food better than in previous games that offered these items in town.

You’ll get to take care of your standard cows (+ 3 other types), chicken, sheep, goats, and ducks. Goats are only available for purchase during limited periods each year, and I believe you only get one chance to add your first ducks to the farm. (Then you can place their eggs in the incubators for more.)

Another thing I found odd was that some of the milk produced by your cows is not considered to be good enough to ship or cook with; even trying to give C rank milk to someone didn’t seem to go well. My cows kept producing C rank milk for a while, so I couldn’t use any of it as an easy gift during that time.

Not being able to ship it was more frustrating, though. In this game, you can only sell something produced on your farm through the shipping bin. But low ranked byproducts are an exception; I was not a fan of this feature.

There is a way to sell those low quality items, but you’ll have to be patient. Van the merchant appears twice a season to sell his wares, and he’ll also purchase items from you. You can’t ship fish you catch, flowers, archaeological finds from the ruins, and other items, so you’ll have to wait for Van to come to get rid of them. Alternatively, you can open a stall in the plaza and try to sell them there. However, you’ll have to wait for customers and hope they’ll be interested in something.

Obviously it’s best to improve the quality of your byproducts as quickly as possible so you’ll be able to ship them faster. Besides byproducts, livestock can also produce offspring. This function also differed from what I’m used to (Miracle Potions/“breeding kits”).

Here, you have male and female animals, and naturally both are required to produce offspring. You can choose to breed your animal with another one you own for free, or you can rent one. I found it more cost effective to just buy a male cow. Sometimes, it seemed like my animals decided to take matters into their own hands hooves and reproduce naturally. I found myself surprised by the multiple pregnancies I didn’t order, but I suppose they wanted to let Back To Nature take its course.

I’m used to all of my chickens laying eggs in their coop in prior experiences, but it was kind of an oddly nice change of pace to have animal reproduction work differently than it normally does. I think that it felt more realistic having animals of both sexes instead of the usual mechanics. Less realistically, none of your livestock seem to get sick or pass away, although they may become irritable if not fed or left out in bad weather. I liked having my invincible farm animals!

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the livestock were the only ones having kids. (Or calves. Or lambs.) I was pleasantly surprised by the cross-breeding mechanic for crops. Take two grown crops – or their seeds – to a special character starting around Chapter 2, and they’ll try to combine them into a hybrid crop seed for you! I had no idea that that was a thing in the original version of A Wonderful Life, and I would love to see that in future Story of Seasons games because it’s interesting and fun.

It took me a bit to adjust to some of the aforementioned features, as well as the different seasons for each crop. (Turnips might be a spring crop in most of the recent games, but here they grow from summer until winter! 😮)

I think I got used to everything by the end of the first chapter, though. It can be a struggle to earn money at first; even items from the game’s equivalent of the mine, the dig site, may not provide you with much money in the first few chapters. What you have to realize is that this is a game focused on slowly improving your farm and increasing your funds, giving you time to focus on your social life.

The “Belle of the Barn”

I often found myself completing my farm chores by around ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. Then I’d begin my usual tour of gift-giving throughout the valley. If you’ve played a farming sim like this before, you know the drill. I did find it kind of funny how each person would always ask if the item was really for them, and it also prevents you from accidentally giving something away.

Everyone in Forgotten Valley seems pleasant, if not slightly eccentric. Some of them even got “glow-ups,” with new and improved appearances. A few, like Marlin, have also been renamed (“Matthew”). You can get to know these characters individually, and then spend time with them as a group at the festivals.

Each season lasts 10 days, and there’s one community event in each season. These events are charming yet they lack variation. I don’t know what they’d have to do for this, but maybe they could have added something like a dog competition since they let you train your dog. Or a crop/livestock festival with you, Takakura, Vesta, Cecilia, and/or Matthew as participants, alternating between crop and livestock festivals every other season. Just one more event per season could have given us a little more to do.

Another issue I had was that many of the character stories, like the festivals, felt shallow. When I watched a character’s events, I felt like they barely scratched the surface with their personality or backstory. Molly was sweet enough, but many of her events focused on her unsuccessful attempts at dating.

Also, the dialogue could get rather repetitive – for example, when it’s summer and I already know it’s hot out, I’d love to talk about something else. I got most of the villagers’ friendship levels pretty high, but they still said a lot of the same things in each chapter. That being said, while there are many aspects of the valley that remain the same, change does occur after each chapter.

A “Budding” Romance 🌱 💕

One of the best parts of this game for me is the way that the villagers change over time. I think that’s unique to A Wonderful Life, and I really like it. From what I understand, you have to get married by the end of the first year. You can marry any of the marriage candidates you want regardless of gender, including the new bachelor Gordy.

When you get married, you get to choose what gender you want your child to be (boy, girl, or either). Starting in Chapter 2, you’ll have that child. I tried out same-sex marriage, and it looks like the Harvest Storks Sprites must bring you a child or something? Anyways, I absolutely adored the child I had with Matthew.

Your child starts out in the toddler stage. As they grow up, you can try to influence their future career path by showing them items and bringing them around people related to those careers. Apparently, the child will be predisposed to one path in the beginning based on their other parent, too. This didn’t seem like it was explained anywhere, but I’d seen the information online before.

You can buy toys from Van, and obtain other items for the kid by completing requests. (I was a little disappointed we couldn’t buy new baby clothes too.) Some items unlock incredibly adorable cutscenes with your family. The scenes with the child and “Grandpa” Takakura were SO precious. And I loved seeing what the little toddler would say in response to different items.

At the end of the second chapter, your toddler seems to change into more of a kindergarten-aged child. You don’t get to upgrade your house yourself; instead, it automatically gets bigger after a chapter ends. The baby gets their own room once they’re a little older.

There are six chapters in the game, each lasting for four seasons. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll get to see characters age. You’ll get some wrinkles here and there, and your hair will gradually change. That sweet little toddler changes into a moody teenager before they eventually settle down and decide on their career path as an adult.

Overall Thoughts

When everything finally came to an end, I was a little sad even though I began struggling to continue by Chapter 3 or so. Not all of the mechanics were my cup of tea, and I struggled to fill my time with enough variety in activities. I also found myself missing the more extensive hair/clothing options and house customization from more recent entries in the series.

However, there’s still a lot of good things to say about this updated version of a classic. I think the performance was excellent, with short loading times and no noticeable frame rate drops. Gameplay can come off as dated, but I did love the way that they played on nostalgia while also adding more modern, fresh elements such as a non-binary option, same-sex marriage, and redesigned characters. I may have wanted more cutscene interactions with the villagers, but I absolutely enjoyed and appreciated the new family scenes they added.

I think that fans of the original game will have a fantastic time with Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life in 2023. Those who haven’t played the original, and/or who really prefer having the more modern and convenient amenities in their farm sims may not get quite as much enjoyment as the ones who played it back in the day. I still enjoyed it despite my critiques, and there’s definitely an appeal to a more relaxed game with such a peaceful atmosphere.

I’d love it if future games in the Story of Seasons series took inspiration from certain elements of this game. Cross-breeding crops was really neat. And actually seeing the townspeople age made things feel more real to me; I like seeing progress as I play. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see those kinds of features implemented in the next few games, and also have more of the previous games brought to Switch at some point.

8/10