Orange Season Review (aschfonistfabre)
I cannot recommend this game as it currently stands. I had a blast with it in a previous form during early access (if anyone remembers the mushroom folks in the caves or the witch or the feet on backwards spirit, those were the times) but since the game was overhauled, the quality has tanked.
Mechanically, while I do enjoy having a large backpack first thing in the game, that's pretty much the only positive thing I can say here. There are bugs aplenty, from listing the town blacksmith as one of my animals in my general info tab on the menu, to listing player name as PLAYER NAME and playtime as zero regardless of how long you've played. Many forage items are difficult to tell from the backgrounds, and any forage item on a bush or tree currently respawns each time you enter its area. Hit boxes for gathering are also hit or miss (you know things are rough when successful interaction with a door counts as a good patch).
They've also now put in a town map, and while it does technically show who is in which area, it's also effectively useless as a tool. There is no way of telling whose house is whose in town, because anything that isn't a store isn't labeled with a sign, and the town map doesn't actually show the town. It merely indicates a loaded area. Even with this aid, completing the generic Your First Quest Is To Meet Everyone task takes frustrating in game days to accomplish (and even when you do manage it, there's no notification that pops up or--more damning--no update even to your task info).
Town is also centered around a circular park, which arranges the surrounding houses in a semi-circle that is extremely awkward to navigate given the WASD nature of movement. To make matters even worse, the roofs of the buildings in the foreground block the view of the street when you need to go behind them, causing you and any nearby characters to completely go out of sight. One of the buildings doing the most blocking isn't even a location you can enter, as far as I can tell. Outside of town, if you want to see behind a tree on your farm, your only option is to cut it down.
The writing is also, well, let's just go with unintentionally creepy in places. The florist sounds like she's party of a fairy murder cult, and our own character's opening dialogue sounds like a desperate cry for help (why did we move out here? Why, to feel alive for the first time in our life!).
If I could roll this game back to some of its previous early access forms, I would in a heartbeat.