Doraemon Story of Seasons Review (margs98)
A good but grindy farming sim. Every upgrade is expensive, and requires a lot of reasources which again requires energy which is hard to come by, escpecially at the earlier stages of the game. Late-game it's not really an issue anymore, as you hopefully would have gotten access to a kitchen and tons of ingredients stored for cooking. Money is also very hard to come by, before you gain access to makers late-game (after tons of money and rescources spent). And forget about trying to decorate your farm before that point. Furniture, fences etc requires rescources and a lot of money, and you don't really want to waste them when you have tons of other things to upgrade, e.g your equipment for less use of energy when using them, house and barn upgrades, makers etc.
The doraemon crossover fits really well with this type of game (although I've never heard of doraemon before). The story is actually quite interesting and not your typical "take over farm after grandpa died" which is so overused at this point. Each character has its own distinctive personality *looking you at pioneers of olive town with the most boring characters ever*. There's tons of cutscenes in the game that show off these personalites really well. Although day to day conversation is boring and consists of mostly "the weather is nice today", "I'm hungry, what's for dinner?". But the cutscenes make up for it. Some people would say that it's a turn off because there is no marriage in this game (you play as a kid so it makes sense) but in my opinion this game doesn't need a marriage system. It has a friendship system, but even building your friendship with other villagers was a grind because it's really slow and tedious, you have to give A LOT of perfect gifts to max friendship, 166 or so perfect gifts for each villager to gain max heart, which is absolutely wild! Most people will not manage to do it, I certainly didn't. The max I got was 6 out of 10 hearts with a few of the villagers, most other only 4 or 5 hearts.
The watercolor artstyle is lovely and I wish there was more farming sim games with this kind of artstyle as it fits really well. Each season is different and has lots of beautiful colors, escpecially autumn. Music is also very lovely and is easily one of the best I've heard in any of the other story of seasons games I've played so far.
All in all a great but grindy farming sim. If you're a big fan of farming games (escpecially other story of seasons games), it's an easy recommandation with a catch (if you don't like grind, don't play this!). The sequel is overrall a better pick, with less grind, more QoL features, but doraemon story of seasons is certainly worth a try if you really enjoy farming sims.
And an easy 100%, although it got really repetitive at the later parts of the game (mainly grinding for upgrades and money).