Someplace in Harvest Moon: One World there’s a truly intriguing seed of thought for another interpretation of cultivating sims, which would be greatly valued following 25 years of fundamentally the same as games.
What’s more, in the correct hands, transforming a cultivating test system arrangement into a plot-driven, investigation-centred experience game seems like a splendid thought. But then One World falls flat in pretty much every manner to do anything intriguing or inventive with this groundbreaking thought other than the layer it on top of a profoundly unremarkable cultivating sim.
Not at all like its various Harvest Moon archetypes and contenders, One World doesn’t have you acquire an old ranch in a perishing town and go through years remaking them, becoming more acquainted with your neighbors, and for the most part, settling down. Or maybe, you’re given a versatile ranch (your researcher neighbor turns up close to home and says “Look, I made you a compact homestead” and that is the finish of the conversation) in the initial 10 minutes and shipped off on an undertaking across its reality, through five distinct towns with their environments, risks, and issues. You’ll stop your ranch in one spot for a season, finish whatever neighborhood plot is before you, and afterward proceed onward.
Be that as it may, the one universe of One World is exhausting all around. Everything looks insipid, except for the named character models, which are by and a large fine. Towns are dull and void with only a few indistinguishable houses each, the zones between them are generally long and same-ish ways, and everything simply looks level and basic. There’s no detail, no character – simply significant length of void space, possibly with a tree tossed in case you’re fortunate.
It likewise at times doesn’t work accurately. Sound much of the time falters when you’re moving from one territory to another. Characters and items show up and vanish from presence – once in a while deliberately as per their particular timetables, yet some of the time since they’re not stacking in quick enough. It’s particularly awful when you’re riding your pony. However, much I disdain to call anything “X-period illustrations,” the GameCube form of Harvest Moon was undeniably more definite and energizing to take a gander at than this. (In any case, at that point, that was before the first engineer headed out to make Story of Seasons all things considered).
The feel of One World is not where the ordinariness closes. Not at all like other Harvest Moon games where you become more acquainted with a town of unmistakable and charming neighbors, there are not many evolved characters in One World outside of its program of unhitched males and lone wolfesses and one other named character in every territory. By far most of the cast is comprised of same-looking people with names like “Abnormal Man” or “Insightful Woman” whose lone character quality is sending you perpetual mail to request that you bring them irregular things. Furthermore, that is a horrible thought because once more, these characters will, in general, vanish totally at specific occasions of day, once in a while directly before your eyes, and now and then as you’re going to turn in a mission.
The single men and unhitched females have somewhat more going for them in the character office yet are still generally lovely the Samey eventually. They all consideration about their particular towns, they need your assistance saving them, and they think the primary character is perfect. Generally, they are recognized essentially by their looks and what town they hang out in the most. The wedding one is insignificant, appearing to be practically similar to a reconsideration gated behind a great deal of time spent in the amazingly exhausting mines and, for reasons unknown, completing the primary plot – you can’t get hitched up to that point. You can have a child ultimately as well, yet your posterity takes after your life partner’s side of the family in that they don’t do anything intriguing at all.
Gracious, and you can’t be strange, notwithstanding Harvest Moon’s rival’s Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley having perceived what year it is now. The designers say this element was missed because of COVID-19, and that it will be available in future games, yet it’s still enormously disappointing when such countless different games offer it. What’s more, since One World doesn’t move toward you who is and isn’t dateable for a long time, I invested a great deal of energy giving blessings to Kirsi for reasons unknown.
With a vacant world and a callous cast, that leaves the genuine cultivating to convey One World… and it doesn’t. The Harvest Goddess is, as normal in Harvest Moon games, missing, which has made everybody on the planet simply neglect how cultivating and seeds work. So as opposed to purchasing seeds at the store, you need to chase them down. Collect Wisps dispersed all through the world will hand you one seed each day for every wisp, which means quite a bit of your capacity to utilize your ranch is likewise attached to investigating the world.
Furthermore, similar to the investigation point, One World’s cultivating has a few fascinating novel thoughts that may have made for an energizing new heading had it been dealt with abruptly. For example, each yield has certain seasons and districts of the world it fills better in. You can in any case plant crops slow time of year or in different territories, however, they’ll develop all the more gradually – or become various harvests. Eggplant that becomes outside of its supported zone may turn into a White Eggplant, or a Tomato may turn into an Ice Tomato in the cold locale.
There’s a lot of possibilities here for entertainment only experimentation with where you put your ranch and what you develop and when, yet it’s rarely figured out. The issue with this is that nothing is at any point truly clarified. After 20+ hours into One World, with the Harvest Goddess revived and the primary story completed, I’m as yet not altogether clear how they work. There’s no genuine log that shows precisely how to get which changes even after you’ve effectively gotten them, and regardless of whether you plant a similar yield in a similar district simultaneously, it doesn’t generally appear to transform. I’m certain there’s a stunt here I’m missing, and keeping in mind that transformations are to a great extent immaterial (I’ve had the option to discover seeds for every one of the changes I’ve made so far independently too), it’s truly disappointing in case you’re attempting to develop, say, an Asparagus from ordinary Asparagus seeds for a journey, however, continue to get Purple Asparagus all things considered and have no clue about why.
One World needs clear guidance all through, regularly setting you into baffling circumstances without an exit plan. One later journey that is basic to the story needed me to accumulate four of a particular sort of sheep fleece… in any case, there were just three spaces in my stable at that point and they were at that point taken up by a cow, a pony, and an ordinary sheep. Regardless, I would have to buy the unique sheep needed to get this fleece and sit tight various in-game a long time for it to turn into a grown-up and produce the fleece. Be that as it may, I would likewise either need to dispose of one of my different animals to make space for it in my outbuilding or extend my stable – which I had no clue about how to do at that point. Horse shelter development ends up being gated behind a long arrangement of bringing journeys that give no sign structure extension is toward the finish of them.
That was only one model, however, this insensitive mission and redesign configuration turned into a baffling impediment consistently all through One World, with numerous movement journeys requiring explicit seeds or apparatus updates and no allude to all regarding where those may be found. Your smartest option, outside of a guide on the web, is simply to converse with everybody continually and consistently and do every journey imaginable until you incidentally stagger over the thing you’re searching for.
I haven’t yet referenced every one of the numerous little irritations that sprung up as I played, none of which merit a passage all alone yet totally added to my developing bundle of disappointment with One World. For what reason can I not have more than one pile of a solitary thing in my capacity or stock at a time? For what reason does my endurance drop continually from strolling around? Is there any point in offering blessings to irregular anonymous NPCs? For what reason can’t my canine head outside? For what reason does keeping my creatures cheerful do nothing by any stretch of the imagination, and for what reason do they drop dead following a year or so naturally?
All that I can say around One World is that it’s fine – something you can carelessly play on quiet with a webcast on and feel not-frightful about. All things considered, with two Story of Seasons games out inside a month of this and Stardew Valley’s 1.5 reports, also, I can’t think about a motivation behind why any individual who adores the Harvest Moon custom should play One World. It’s missing pretty much every conceivable forward-moving element any comparative games have, and its efforts to experiment with the arrangement are crazy and disappointing.
Harvest Moon: One World has a clever thought for an investigation-centred cultivating game, however then sets that thought in an unfilled, tedious world. Its characters are dull, its missions are regularly confounding or baffling, and it comes up short on the character of pretty much some other cultivating sim choice out there, including a large portion of its immediate archetypes. Best case scenario, One World’s cultivating components are fulfilling enough to thoughtlessly relax with, yet there’s simply very little else here. Thus much else in different games in this classification.
