Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns | Marvelous
Well it’s been out for a while, but I finally played it. Story of Seasons‘s latest sequel, Trio of Towns, offers a lot to fans of the Harvest Moon series…both the good and the bad.
Released on February 28 this year for the Nintendo 3DS, SoS2 varies the ‘city boy arrives on a farm in a new community’ story slightly. Your reason for coming to the farm in SoS2 is to prove to your father, Daryl, that you can and will become a farmer, thus proving him wrong that doing so is a waste of time. Your Uncle Frank, one of the many, many villagers in this game you can befriend, shows you around your farm and helps you get started. The rest of the game involves completing Farming Tips from your father and befriending not one, not two, but three villages in total. They are called Westown, a Western place; Tsuyukasa, a Japanese place; and Lulukoko, a tropical place.
Completing the Farming Tips is the main storyline, but the rest of SoS2 offers unlimited gaming time. You can raise animals (the cute llamas and Alpacas make a comeback, as do the iconic rabbits), raise pets including Capybaras who can help to herd animals and find items, grow and harvest crops varying from turnips and potatoes to cacao and coconuts, process your vegetables into products like butter and jam, grow tea leaves, give gifts, collect recipes for cooking, and yes, even get married and have a child.
The Good
I like that there is, in fact, a much wider variety of crops to grow, villagers to meet, and items to make. You can do pretty much all kinds of things to fill up your day after completing your daily farm chores such as go fishing, cultivate fish, complete part-time jobs, and even deliver packages once the post office in Westown is unlocked. Beekeeping and critter finding (both are things you can do in the first Story of Seasons as well) have been improved and are simpler to do. To raise bees and make honey, all you have to do is add a flower to each beehive, instead of catching every individual bee and then starting over come Spring. To find bugs, all you have to do is press A when you’re near one. Your inventory doesn’t shrink as a result of finding insects. This makes beekeeping and finding critters a more enjoyable task.
Of all the villages you can visit, Lulukoko is my favourite. The Hawaiian look and feel of it extends to its festivals, the names of the villagers, and the language the villagers speak to you. I’ve even gotten married to the one bachelor in the village, Ludus, and gave my character a nickname based on Hawaiian terminology (granted, you only have 6 letters to fill in, which complicates things).
Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns | Marvelous
The Bad
A glitch occurs if you want to marry Ludus – who for me, unfortunately, is the only bachelor I really like – in that once you marry him you cannot enter one of the festivals, the Lulukoko Beverage Bash. The game freezes at a white screen, forcing you to restart the game. This should have been addressed and fixed before releasing SoS2. I would have been more choked if it were the Lulukoko Trilympics, but the fact that this massive technical bug only happens to the one bachelor/bachelorette option I genuinely like is discouraging.
Speaking of bachelors and bachelorettes, again, there’s only 1 bachelor I like and everyone else comes across as bland and uninteresting. This may be a downside to having so many more villagers to meet. For some reason, Rune Factory Frontier still leads in the highest number of interesting marriage candidates you can find in a Harvest Moon title (and yes, the Rune Factory series can be counted as such – the stories may be different, but the concepts in gameplay and design are still identical).
The Ugly
The exact same flaw that was pointed out in my review of Story of Seasons, the overwhelming sense of too much all at once, is present in SoS2. It gets to the point of being less fun and outright stressful at times. This is not a game I would recommend to those who want to collect everything, because in order to do so you have to play over 12 years of gametime to collect every single prize from the festivals, many of which are new recipes. The whole point of Harvest Moon is to have fun, but I don’t feel like that happened when, at one point, I found out I was missing 15 of one crop and by the time I realized it it was too late; I had to wait until next year to make the crop grow. You can find certain crops and items earlier in the game, but it requires Network playtime between you and friends playing the same game. As someone who doesn’t have that many friends with time to spare on video games, this feature made me feel left out of some possible fun.
Another disappointing feature is that you can grow tired of SoS2 too fast, making the need to replay it minimal at best. It shares the same flaw I saw in the last Rune Factory game I played, Tides of Destiny. It felt like things went on for too long rather than making me feel like everything was at a satisfactory pace. In some previous titles I’ve played, such as Rune Factory 4 and even the Indie hit Stardew Valley, I wanted to keep going even though I’d completed most of the content. That was not the case in SoS2.
Bottom Line
I do recommend playing Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns if you’re just starting out with playing Harvest Moon games, but I also highly recommend you play something else on the side – a lighter game that demands less from you. You also need to play SoS2 at a more relaxed pace and not give in to the temptation to make goals and meet them…which this game did for me, thus leading me to feeling the way I did and wanting to just get the game over and done with. And that’s not the point of playing these games. I had fun at first, but that feeling did not last very long. Give it a chance, but also take your time. Doing so will help you enjoy it more.
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