Stardew Valley Reviews

The Cover that is better than the original

Stardew Valley is a pixel art love letter to games like Harvest Moon that takes the ideas of being a small town farmer and makes it better than the originals. The game takes place in the fictional town of Stardew Valley where your character has recently moved to take over the farm left to you by your deceased grandfather after becoming fed up with the corporate world.

Gameplay

One of the main gameplay features in this game is farming, where you need to clear land and plat corps and water them everyday in order to make money and expand the farm. While the basis for the game is farming there are many other avenues for making money and spending time. Fishing, mining, and foraging are other big ways to make money in the game, with the true beauty of the game coming from the ability to spend your time however you please. All of these avenues have pretty great depth to them allowing you to tailor them to whatever your preferred method of play is. The game plays from a topdown perspective and the majority of the controls are fluid, feeling great.

Story

The main story of the game involves around two things. First is that the town is in not great condition, with many things around town falling apart and the villagers feeling pretty gloomy about the future of the town. It is up to you to repair the town and rejuvenate it through either repairing the community center or investing in Joja Co. the local mega-mart. The other story aspects come from the villagers you choose to interact with and possibly romance. The villagers lack any significant depth but they all have distinct personalities and you can befriend/romance them through gifts, eventually marrying the spouse of your choice.

Conclusion

Stardew Valley is an artful homage to the Harvest Moon that eats it's lunch with enjoyable gameplay and great depth to that gameplay. It's addicting to those who love it and a game with very few flaws. Overall I give Stardew Valley 4.5 out of 5

One of my fondest memories growing up was spending the weekend at my grandparents house. Every Friday evening after school they would take me to rent 2 games which was the best way growing up to be exposed to so many different games and begin forming my wide likes and dislikes along the way. They never payed attention to what I was renting as the N64 was mostly (lookin at you Conker) a harmless console, but my grandma always enjoyed "that one farming game" while she was baking in the kitchen. This led to my deep love and passion for the Harvest Moon series. This of course meant as soon as I heard a somewhat spiritual successor in the form of Stardew Valley was being released on Xbox I was surely going to put more than a few hours into it.

Stardew Valley drops you into ownership of your recently deceased grandfather's farm in the land aptly named.. Stardew Valley. Since his passing the farm has deteriorated and become overrun with weeds and boulders. This puts your first task in front of you as you get used to your inventory and how tools work, during this process you are also given your first pack of seeds to give you a beginners grasp on growing and harvesting your crops for the years ahead. After you get settled in what better thing to do next than go out on the town or at least go and meet your fellow townspeople. Stardew Valley is a host of different people for you to meet and grow relationships with. The game features a heart system that increases your relationship with each inidivual person by talking to them or giving them gifts throughout the week. These relationships once increased can lead to earning special items, recipes, cutscenes giving you more of a backstory on certain characters or if you work hard enough even marriage. The relationships with villagers is something I personally became very attached to as I spent the first year or so in my town trying to become friends with a local homeless man named Linus. Just seeing him around and talking to him, hearing his stories about how he feels left out and a burden on everyone else made me want to try and make his time in my little virtual village a little better.
Aside from this the game also features a combat system that takes place in the local mine shaft. While in the mine shaft you may come across artifacts,these can be take to the local musem. These can lead you to finding fun items or learning a thing or two about the formation of the town..maybe even some war with dwarves?? but that's for you to find out! Fishing and cooking are other ways you can spend time in your town and earn a profit off of, this becomes a bigger deal during the winter when you can't grow crops until you unlock the greenhouse.

Overall Stardew Valley can be either an wonderful time where you will make tons of memories or something you use to just pass the time. With different activities, jobs, holidays, and townspeople to interact with. Stardew Valley is an experience where you will find yourself constantly finding something new to fall in love with all over again as I did. I highly recommend giving it a chance if you enjoy any sort of simulation game like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing or even The Sims.

Note: I've never played Harvest Moon, so my review is through the lens of a newcomer.

Rating Quick View:

Fun: High
Frustration: Medium
Function: High
Future Play: Medium

The Details
Fun level High - If you like to create something from nothing and leave with a sense of accomplishment and ownership, this game is definitely for you. Stardew Valley has such depth and breadth that you can play it however you want to and never be wrong or lose. Want to focus on farm design? Want to focus on battling? Want to focus on learning character backstories? You can! Or not.... No pressure. Since days are split into roughly 15 minute chunks, it feels like a very time manageable game where you can set a goal for the day, achieve it, and try something else the next day. Part of you needs to like grinding games, though. Repeating the same task and increasing efficiency really should be something you enjoy. Fortunately I find that fun.

Frustration level Medium - Ok... This category is a bit of a difficult one to score because I read guides when I got stuck. Found a key... Looked up where it goes. Found a locked door.... Looked up where to get the key. I try to generally avoid any guides, but since days are only 15 minutes at a time, I really didn't want to "waste" it randomly walking around. This game doesn't feel very rewarding as an exploration game, more of a task oriented game, so getting to where I wanted to be felt high priority. In addition, I saw a video clip of the game prior to playing. Without that, I may not have known how to refill the watering can (for example). With little to no tutorials, you either have to be okay trying and failing or just looking up answers. I only read guides for select things and still have played for 145 hours, so I'm happy I used them when I did.

Function level High - Everything about this game and how it functions is great. The music, the sounds, the colors, the story. It's all pretty awesome. A recent title update changed the controls and I don't like the new operations nearly as much, but it may be because I was used to the old control setup. One thing to note is that if you spend too much time on your farm, the music will stop for the day. I don't know if this is on purpose, but when there is no music, I always feel inclined to leave the farm and walk around the town (music returns when you leave your home screen).

Future Play level Medium - This is another tough score, because I am just not sure how many times I will play a game that I have played for 145 hours on my first run. Obviously I think it is an amazing game and I love it. I think depending on what you like to do in the game, the replay level could be very high. If you like starting from scratch or trying farms on new landscapes, you will definitely get 5 play throughs. If you want to go as low into the mines as possible and battle, there may be no reason to start another game. Even if I don't start a new game, I can imagine always returning to my current save.


Information on the author - I find typical review categories difficult to relate to, so I created my own. The purpose of this review isn't to discuss every aspect of the game or how to play the game. Upon writing, the author earned 29/40 achievements and played over 145 hours on a single save file.

this review is broken into achievements (where the game is reviewed with only achievement hunting in mind) followed by both the good and the bad (where the game is reviewed in terms of enjoyment)

achievements
achievement-wise this game is very, very long (150-200h) completion that is enjoyable from start to finish (one of my favorite games of all time) but has one of the most annoying achievement bugs that users have reported (and i myself experienced on 4 different achievements) on almost every single achievement in this game and if you aren't paying attention this could make you do an entire new playthrough (which could add 100+ hours to play time which is ridiculous)

to avoid this and otherwise enjoy this beautiful game (seriously blows my mind that one dude created this masterpiece) i cannot recommend enough that you study the achievements before starting the game and take note of when you are about to unlock an achievement (especially near the end of the game).. now, when the moment arrives that know you are about to get an achievement (you've checked the wiki located at https://www.stardewvalleywiki.com/Stardew_Valley_Wiki and are 100% sure you understand how it is supposed to unlock) you should start a new day then do the required action to get the particular achievement to pop and if it doesn't.. reset the day and try again.. i had to do that a few times in this game for multiple achievements (good news is if you missed one of the earlier achievements you have to make a second playthrough for JoJo Co. Member of the Year achievement so you could grab it on this next playthrough relatively easily.. but that of course is not helpful for the bigger time investment achievements in the late game)

the good
farming, ranching and small town simulator (the best of its kind)
gameplay (endlessly fun, addictive and rewarding experience that is stunning and well thought out)
serene (clam, cozy and gentle pacing that makes for an excellent escape from life and competitive video games with adorable presentation and writing)
co-op (well implemented and makes the experience of this game even better)

the bad
cozy (if you don't like cozy games than this one isn't for you)
achievements are buggy (a horrible happenstance to an otherwise perfect game.. and please don't take this advice lightly because these bugs can add 100+ hours to your completion time if you are not vigilant)