Fae Farm Review (Chef Rude)
Ok, so... here's the TL;DR, up front.
I regret the purchase, overall, but it was fun while it lasted, even while we complained. Eh. Your mileage may vary, if you enjoy grinding, fetch quests, tech trees, or are SUPER CHILL and play it AC style.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD SDV SUBSTITUTE
If you like Stardew Valley (SDV) solo or co-op, because you can make a farm that you can design yourself, where farming matters, you can have 80Million pigs, you can automate production, where you can spend hundreds of hours making your own fun, and having fun with friends and where you have NPCs you at least kinda like and care about... This game isn't for you. Don't bother.
If you like grinding, tech trees, and upgrading to the next level of "stuff" to make the next level of "stuff" (Ark Nova, 7 Days to Die, MineCraft (MC)) but wish those games had a little more direction, and NPCs, this game is probably for you.
If you like Animal Crossing (AC) for house decorating and flower growing, bug catching, farming isn't that big of a deal, exploration is interesting, you just want to chill, and you don't mind that NPCs are kinda meh, you MAY like this game.
Also, do not be the host and play this game in WINDOWED mode , it has a serious bug that prevents you from interacting with 75% of things, and the only way to fix it is to save, kick out the other players, quit to title and start the host session again.
See full review here, too long for STEAM
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The reason for my rating is this game has a lot of BREATH but very little depth. Middle of summer, maybe? 26 hours (after playing most of the 2 DLCs too, by the way), and we hit the "ending" and there's nothing really we care enough to do any more (played this Co-Op with a single friend, you can play max 4 people)
Basically it mixes ACs flower growing/recoloring mechanics, bug catching and fishing, with SDVs basic farming concepts (you have a farm, you can have and take care of animals), with MC/Ark Nova tech trees.
THE BAD STUFF
The UI is terrible. Enough said.
GATING
This is our biggest gripe. Gating. Gating is when a game, mechanically, prevents you from doing a thing through some obstruction. "You cannot have a chicken, until you have enough money to buy a chicken" is a gating mechanic in SDV. It's a relatively small and easily surmountable gate.
FaeFarm (FF) gates you a LOT and makes prior zones and resource pretty useless.
ANIMALS
This is so annoying. You can only have 18 animals total. You get 6 types to choose from (available in pairs, and set up to live in 1 of 3 barns). They must be walked TO/FROM vendors, and breeders. They are mostly pointless, tedious to interact with, and largely forgettable relatively early. And they are TEDIOUS to get to, because you cannot move the barns. Hated them very quickly, though they were cute and different at first.
GUIDANCE
This game is downright terrible at telling you what to do, how or where to do it. It just says "You can make this, but you need this special processed thing... good luck!"
DIRECTION AND QUESTS
There are 4 kinds of quests. Only 2 “matter” Main Quests (main tech-tree progression stuff, which usually involves completing a 25 level mine and NPC fetch quests) and Side Quests (You did a thing, do this secondary other thing). Ignore the rest (NPC quests, Job quests). DLC also have quests, but… probably don’t need the DLC. Otherwise, you need to do them, and they’re tracked like main quests.
Main quests are auto-completed for all in Co-Op. Side quests are tracked in Co-Op but turned in Solo.
FARMING
You can grow food, after a little while, you gain access to animals. After that, its tech-tree, “magic” crops that are annoying to plant, slow to grow, and limited in usefulness, and totally random what you get from what. Hated this. Upgraded can is “more water” only. To do 3x3 or 5x5 watering requires mana, and it’s VERY power hungry.
SELLING and MONEY
Money only really matters for buying tool upgrades, and more stalls to sell your stuff. Maybe some seeds or animals, when you can be bothered. Otherwise, money is pointless.
Stalls and tables to sell stuff in (no produce box), are not near your farm, limited in space, and annoying. Enjoy.
CRAFTING
Cooking, wood cutting, smelting, potion making, the cutting stations (there are 2) are great most of the time. Artisan food table is good if you don't have gems to sell. The rest are useful sometimes, for gated things. But you can tear them down and get resources and seeds back, no problem.
MULTIPLAYER
The Co-Op quest tracking/completion is a nightmare. The bugs forcing world-restarts is a nightmare (they've had the same bug for YEARS and never fixed it, probably because they were purchased by a block chain company that scrapped the studio). The hosting is a tedious multi-step process. You can't just say "I'm hosting, let my friends join in automatically". And if someone disconnects by mistake, any money they spent or resources they had disappear. DEEPLY frustrating, I promise you.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
We became so frustrated with inventory management. Want to combine stacks? Tough, can't. No chests, just ONE shed (with multiple access points for it, which is kinda convenient). All Inventory interactions require 3+ clicks, unless you auto-dump everything into your shed. HANDY! Until you want to keep SOMETHING in your inventory, and have to remember what it was and go find it again with 3+ clicks.
NPCs
They are boring, forgettable, and you can ignore almost everything they say, even if they are quest givers. Read the quest log instead.
COSMETICS
Almost everything is cosmetic, and pointless. If you care, grow flowers, and breed them for new colors. Or just be ok with tons of recipes and shop items you will never have access to.
HEALTH, ENERGY, MANA
In FF you do it by making furniture with the latest Tech-Tree resources. (Helpful but annoying). Furniture gets larger and larger, cram it all in, put the bed by the door, and don’t bother decorating.
But... the bed doesn't matter, no punishment for not sleeping in it.
STORY
Wake up to a slideshow. All skippable, Quest/Story NPCs are only interactable when they want something.
THE GOOD STUFF
FISHING
The fishing minigame is a vast improvement over the SDV fishing minigame. Its intuitive, unless you hit a "too strong fish" which whips you around the map and that sucks.
JUMPING, SWIMMING and EXPLORATION
JUMPING IS GREAT. I LOVE JUMPING. You can even DOUBLE JUMP later on! And Hover in ONE of the DLC Zones. Swimming is cool! No water death, no PHYSICAL BOUNDARIES, except where there are some for no reason or for gating.
Exploration is COOL at the beginning, and then it just becomes "Oh, another recipe I can't and will never use" (they're all themed decorations).
MINES AND MONSTERS
Mines are more diverse and interesting, with cooler monsters but they scale up to be punishing and unavoidable. In later zones, they repeat a lot. Boring.
SOME DLC CONTENT
Coasts of Crokia is cool, cuz you can make bugs follow you and give you stat boosts. But they follow you on the same slot as farm animals, which is annoying. Very skippable.
Skies of Azoria gives you wings, is heavily dependent on flower growing, and gives a few useless crops except for DLC quests. Skippable unless you like puzzles and annoying platforming.