When it comes to reviewing the year, it would be remiss if I didn't mention a game other than Dota 2 which has eaten up a large chunk of it. Given how much I have to say about the game, it's worthy enough of its own post.
This game was one of the games club's monthly review games, but I didn't have time to go to the meeting that month, unfortunately. The game is based on the Harvest Moon type games, as the creator said he wasn't happy with the way that series was headed, so he decided to create his own version of the game, trying to deal with some of the issues he saw in the franchise. As you can imagine, farming plays a large part in the game, as well as getting to know the local townspeople (along with trying to find a partner). The only Harvest Moon games I played were the one on the Gamecube and the PSP. I really hated how tedious farming was in the GC version, and I barely got to interact with the townspeople, because my entire day was spent tending to the farm, and so I got quite bored. The PSP version went in the opposite, as eventually, you unlock a robot who does all the chores around the farm except harvesting and selling the plants, so I got quite bored.
I can't remember who it was, but I was talking to someone who mentioned how easy games are these days, because there are walkthroughs / guides for every little part of the game. There's no sense of exploration and discovery anymore. It becomes a matter of looking up the most efficient path from A to B, and in games like this, learning which of the crops has the best cost-to-income-to-time ratio. The game stops being about playing the game, and just becomes an exercise of you executing someone else's set of instructions on how "best" to play the game. So I decided to go into this game mostly blind - which meant I couldn't look anything up, and the only help I could get was from talking to other people who had played the game (that ended up mainly being MrFodder and IP).
Of course, being me before I hung up my hat, I had to start building dossiers on people, because you pick up quests to do things for the townspeople, and I have a horrible memory for faces.
Even worse, because I couldn't look things up, I had to write down things to save myself from constantly having to walk somewhere to find information. (I later found out that you can access the community centre info from the pause screen. I also didn't realise that not every task in the community centre requires you to get everything, so I could have finished them a lot earlier if I had known!)
I found the game really pleasant, though slightly repetitive in parts. Fishing is fairly straightforward in this game, and you don't need to use bait if you don't want to, so it's one less thing you have to keep track of. To catch a fish, all you need to do is keep the fish within the green bar.
My first experience with gift-giving was this:
So for the most part, I gave up on gifts, and becoming friendly with the townspeople, because it seemed like too much effort, and I'd be better off doing it all at once. But I slowly became more friendly with them by doing quests for them, and as you become more friendly, you unlock cutscenes with them and find out more about their personality. I decided I was going to make Leah my waifu (because the game seems to allow you to develop romantic relationships with people of either gender), but I guess I was being too creepy.
I thought I should back off a bit.
The people of the town are growing on me though, and I really want to see what happens to them. (Plus, there's an achievement for becoming good friends with all of them..... *sigh* The things that motivate me....)
I also made the mistake of doing far too much farming, which left me very little time to go to the mines and get metals to upgrade my stuff.
This means I was even more disadvantaged later, as I didn't have the crafting materials required to build enough sprinklers, which saves time and energy as you don't need to water your plants every day (I have one in the above screenshot, which waters 8 plants at a time). MrFodder said it would have been far more efficient to have a smaller farm and just explore the mines in the early game. We both started a farm at around the same time, but he was already mining gold in Winter, whereas I was still in the upper copper levels.
I do find the seasons tend to drag on a bit, but it's probably a necessary evil, as most plants only grow during certain seasons, and some plants (like grapevines), only need to be planted once, and will continue to produce fruit all season. Those plants wouldn't be nearly as viable if it weren't for the 28 day seasons.
It is becoming a bit frustrating not being able to look up people's likes and dislikes, but I do feel that it is a bit more "authentic", as if I were to befriend people in real-life, I can't really look up a guide on what they like or don't like (or is that untrue, as a lot of people have their "likes" on Facebook....?). It is pretty exciting to discover new things though, like when I find an NPC I haven't seen before, who sells seeds I haven't used before. I'm tempted to do this for more games, at least to start with.
I find Stardew Valley is an enjoyable game, but I don't think I'd be able to play it if I didn't have Netflix to watch in the background. It's a nice relaxing game, and a good way to wind down before bed, but at this point, not engaging enough to capture my entire attention. I still really enjoy it though, but if it weren't for Netflix, I'd probably only be able to play it a few in-game days at a time, and probably only for a couple of real-time days at a time. It is one of those games that makes you want to play it whenever you're not playing it. Whenever IP brings it up during lunch, and talks about the latest things he has done on his farm, I feel that compulsion to play again.
It is definitely a huge improvement over my experience with Harvest Moon games. I love the sprinkler system, as I still feel involved with my farm, and I love that you can build a stable to get a horse to ride around on (and I also like that, even though it's cruel, you can leave your horse behind anywhere, and it'll be back in its stable the next morning).
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