Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town returns to its roots in more ways than one. While the game follows the regular path of inheriting a farm from an old relative, Pioneers of Olive Town is about rebuilding a farm from the ground up, discovering the wilderness and the creatures that inhabit it, which translates to more building and crafting than seen in past installments.
But rather than try something innovative or bold, the newest Story of Seasons title also brings back the regular old farming simulator formula: tending to a farm’s crops and animals, getting to know the villagers and possibly even marrying one, and assisting with Olive Town’s objectives. Since Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Marvelous has made graphical enhancements and, though Story of Seasons was the original farming sim that popularized this format, the mechanical improvements in Pioneers of Olive Town are inspired by other titles in the same genre. But with many gameplay details borrowed from other places and nothing that makes it stand out against the bunch, Pioneers of Olive Town has little to claim as its own anymore, something polished graphics simply can’t fix.
Pioneers of Olive Town checks all of the boxes that any standard farming sim would. Players will inherit a run-down farm that needs quite a bit of maintenance before it’s fully functional again and looking organized. This game adds more customization than its predecessors, however. Because Pioneers relies so heavily on crafting, players are allowed more freedom regarding the farm’s layout and can modify the overall look with paths made from different materials, fencing, paints, and even some decoration.
But crafting is much more important beyond customizing the farm. Olive Town’s goal is to bring more tourists in and boost the economy, which the player can assist with by donating materials via the Town Hall’s bulletin board. Building materials like ingots and lumber are also required to unlock and refurbish dilapidated structures such as the coop and barn. And rather than purchasing animal after animal to fill these buildings, a variety of new animals will be found wandering the farm’s vast land and claimed by taming them. While unrealistic, the adorable designs of the animals are some of the few highlights of Pioneers of Olive Town.
To obtain the needed crafting materials, players will gather resources found on their farm, such as from the puddles, grass, trees, and rocks, all of which respawn annoyingly fast. This means the player will spend most days cutting grass or scooping puddles, oftentimes resulting in an excess of materials while grinding and quickly running out of others, like silver ore. And to turn crafting materials like silver into silver ingots, for example, crafting machines are required and take time to process the resource. Most often, progression in Story of Seasons is slowed by waiting for machines to finish crafting enough needed materials.
And even though the player has much more freedom than in past games, it still falls short of what one might expect from sandboxing and results in mild frustrations. For example, crafting machines can’t be placed immediately next to one another, meaning a row of them take up large chunks of land, which is tedious when any player’s farm will have dozens of machines scattered around. Additionally, if players want to move a farm building, the animals inside will be released back into the wild and they’ll need to be reassigned to the building, or an entirely new barn or coop can be built to transfer them over.
But to make life on the farm easier, Earth Sprites can be automatically collected simply by doing tasks like harvesting crops or mining ore. After enough Earth Sprites have been collected, the player can then visit the shrine on the north end of Olive Town to receive upgrades like increased stamina and the overall quality of crops as well as unlock new areas thanks to a mysterious Spirit, somewhat similar to the Harvest Goddess in past games.
However, much like half of the villagers in Olive Town, the Spirit’s existence is unmotivated and it’s unclear why her presence is essential to the game. If she wasn’t in the game at all, it wouldn’t have any impact. Most interactions between Story of Seasons’ NPCs are inorganic and bland.
In terms of marriage and relationships in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, there’s a diverse array of archetypes around town. There’s the cold Damon and his sister Bridget, there’s the fisherman Emilio and the florist Linh, and there’s the perky waitress Blaire and the outdoorsman Ralph.
But beyond their nice exteriors, the bachelors and bachelorettes of Pioneers of Olive Town echo what it feels like to play the entire game: though they look interesting and unique on the outside, there’s not much to be found within. Surface-level attractiveness isn’t enough to keep the relationships interesting as the characters have barely enough dialogue to constitute a story or any form of character development, making the purpose of marriage in the game and their short cutscenes feel hollow and forced.
It’s difficult not to compare Story of Seasons to Stardew Valley with so many mechanics pulled from the latter but with a heftier price tag slapped on top. Stardew Valley‘s affordability makes it hard to beat, and Pioneers of Olive Town doesn’t add anything new.
However, even on the default difficulty setting—the only other is an easy mode called “Seedling”—Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is easy. Money from crops racks up quickly, the enemies in the mines are minimal, and gifts to villagers are typically obvious. The town’s main objective can be completed by Spring of Year 2 without stress, meaning this is a great game for casual audiences.
In fact, with rudimentary characters and extremely basic tasks, it almost feels like the Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town gameplay was made for those who haven’t played any farming sims in the past. But for folks familiar with the genre, they’ll find that there’s not much to find here and little reason to justify spending $49.99 on an unoriginal, redundant farming sim aside from being a relaxing and easy-going experience.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town releases on March 23, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch. Game Rant was provided with a Switch code for this review.
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