Stardew Valley Review (PS4)

Growing a farm.  Aiding a town.  Killing monsters.  No, it's NOT Rune Factory.  It's Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley is similar to the Harvest Moon series and its spinoff, Rune Factory.  Like in Harvest Moon, you live daily life as a farmer in a small town.  You start off creating your protagonist and choosing the plot you want to farm on.  Each of these plots has advantages and disadvantages so they are all worth trying.  Once that's done, it's off to the farm.

You have more than enough options for your character and your farm.

The passage of timeline is also like Harvest Moon.  Each season is a month long and has its own unique crops you can grow.  Festivals dot the calendar and you'll have the chance to go or not.  Days don't drag, each able be played through in mere minutes.  The game saves automatically after each day, so you won't have to worry about losing too much progress in case there's a power outage or something like that.

You won't just be growing crops and tilling soil, though.  You'll fish, butter up a soulmate, mine ores, go questing, and fight monsters, among other things.  Everything is simple, including combat.  You'll never feel like you're in over your head when you run into an enemy while mining for ores.  And the monsters aren't overly tough.  Simply don't get hit.  You won't be ruing the day you decided to go into the mines instead of going to the festival.

The citizens of this town and even the town itself is quirky.  You have the mayor, a maniacal store manager, a trailer park whore, wizard, and a homeless man, among others.  Quite the diverse cast. Their interactions are just as diverse.  Some are assholes, while others aren't.  The people aren't particularly talkative, either.  Most people will only talk to you once or twice a day, then say nothing.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not par for the course.

The characters aren't always happy-go-lucky, unlike Harvest Moon.

Yeah...we've all been there, sister.

Some people will be straight-up assholes until you become their friend.

There's also some grown up humor here.  For example, you'll catch somebody digging through someone's garbage.  He then promises to not dig through that person's garbage anymore, only to turn around and dig through someone else's garbage.  Stuff like that would never happen in a Harvest Moon game.

You won't see jokes like this in Harvest Moon.

On to the little stuff.  The graphics are good...at least that's what I want to say.  If this were a Gameboy Advance they would be great.  At night, you won't be able to see anything, but not because it's dark.  It's a good thing graphics don't make the game.

The game looks terrible when night falls.

The music is forgettable.  The town theme will make you feel like a yokel.  It'll make you want to rustle up some trouble.  It's a knee-slapping good time.  Sadly, it's the only song I can remember.  There are short stretches where you'll go without music, but it's not like the whole game is without it.  It's not even particularly bad.  Other than the city theme, though, none of it stuck with me.

If there's one glaring flaw, it's the inability to load another save or reload your current day without shutting the game down entirely.  For instance, let's say you're tired of playing your first farm, so you want to switch over to another farm that you've already started or maybe you screwed something up and want to do the day over.  The only way to do so is go out to the PlayStation menu, "close application", and reboot the game.  There's no way (that I've figured out, at least) to simply go back to the title screen or load from the file you're currently playing.  This is weird and clunky.  There's no reason it should be that way.  Maybe the other versions of the game aren't like this or maybe there's something I haven't figured out yet.  It's not game-breaking, but it is a little confusing.

It may seem unfair to say that Stardew Valley is Harvest Moon for adults, but that's what it is.  It plays, looks, and even sounds like a Harvest Moon game.  Anyone who's ever played a Harvest Moon game will know that's not a bad thing.  The game does has a good sense of humor and a set of characters that separates it, though.  Play it, especially if you're a Harvest Moon or Rune Factory fan.