This is probably one of the my longest review spanning 3 years ingame.I have this game installed for very long time, I tried to play it long time ago but couldnt get into pixel art style. Not long ago, suddenly i have urge to play farming sim so i reinstall this game. For this review, i will story what i did / learnt in every specific year.
Year 1 : The new beginning. This time, i just to play the game blind. With several cutscenes, soon you will learn about your surrounding. There are 5 cores in the game which are farming, foraging, mining, fishing & combat. The struggle is managing your limited knowledge as well as finding way to make money. As the game progress there are schedule of people, seasons & community center bundle to complete. You will get different type of crops, upgrading your gears as well as unlocking couple of feature / building that make your farm more effective.
The first year is super rough. I kinda hate how slow you walk around which combined with alot backtracking you will waste lots of time walking around. I ignored most of the NPC interaction, which kinda bite my ass and slow my progress by alot. To make things worst, i missed a season specific which made i have to wait until year 2 to complete with further setback. I feel like i didnt fully utilized my farm, always not enough money, too much focusing more on mine which is not profitabl eand running out of things to do because of my setback earlier.
Year 2 : Knowledge is power!Unlike first year, this time i watched speedrun doing 100 days challenge as well as keeping wiki on 2nd monitor. I now take note most of the game system, especially the NPC schedule & trying to get close to everyone and get married. Optimizing farm, having more money maker as well as doing everything in large bulk made me able to do alot of progress. The new area i unlock manage to add more gameplay, which both focusing more on mining & combat. One thing i liked is probably how many options you have in the game.
Despite my smooth sailing in 2nd year, i still have some regret especially regarding to my decision to 100% this game (all achievement & perfection rating), thus i have missed couple of stuff which I to get it in 3rd year. Festival event which was interesting at first time in first year, suddenly became waste of time since it occupied whole day for no reward. The clunky of UI and lack of QoL is my biggest gripe especially when you still trying to playing the game the vanilla way.
Year 3 : Im going super saiyan!With a simple goal in mind & i want just to play 3rd year with mods, i picked alot of stuff that kept the vanilla game but make everything easier / faster since game is already tedious at this point. I unlocked the last area which give me new farm that unaffected by seasonal change. All aspect of the games are even more enhanced with new system & i managed to get all completion stuff i needed within year 3. Time fly faster since i installed automation mods so i didnt have any money problem. I could do whatever i wanted.
The early part of year 3 is a joy for me and all the problem i had with clunky / lack of QoL are fixed via modding. I have so much things to do yet i kept running out time. The combat however still remained the chore since it is core of the endgame. Here come my saltiest stuff, a lot of late game stuff are tied to RNG. To get 1 rare fossil, to get quest that upgrade your normal dungeon and waiting for your spouse to ask for 2nd baby. It came to a point where i just sleep early for multiple days just because i failed to roll what i needed, wasting lot of my time.
This game is awesome game which everyone should play but you should install at least some QoL mods first. All my hatred toward game is petty things, while i still enjoyed hundred of hours time i played. I could play the bigger content mods, but i already ran out of extrinsic motivation.