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Winds of Anthos
Sep. 28th, 2023 01:48 pmSoooo the new Harvest Moon is out and I've been playing it obsessively -- got about 20 hours in in two days :P
In short, it's quite good. It definitely feeds the "just one more day" addiction. I've also been streaming and gaining quite a few new followers thanks to it (like 5-6) so that's cool. Sadly I'm avoiding spoilers so I'm not WATCHING streams of the game... or else I'd be doing that right now... (can't play until after lunch...)
So let's talk about the game instead!
For whatever reason, this game follows the "open world" model trend, where you just have this massive world full of mostly nothing to run around in and "explore" but only a few select points on the map are actually relevant to anything (did we REALLY need such a thing in a farming sim?????). This design choice really turned me off of a lot of games -- Breath of the Wild and Final Fantasy XV to name two that I just could NOT get into. But for some reason it doesn't really bother me in this game.
I think the key is that there are not nodes of interest all of the map. In FF15, for example, there were little gathering spots and fishing spots and this and that like every 5 feet, and the completionist in me says, "You must go to ALL of the things!!!" and it just gets super overwhelming. In WOA, there is NOTHING on the map unless you pin searches. So if you're looking for tomato seeds, you can pin tomato seed to the map and then places where you can get them from wisps will appear on the map, but ONLY tomato and ONLY while it's pinned. You can pin like 25 things at once, but I keep my pins very tidy so I'm only searching for a few things at once and can actually go around and complete all the nodes when I want to.
The systems in the game are very fun.
The new dowsing mechanic makes mining a blast -- you press a button to dowse for buring items and stairways, and then can try to hit the ground at the center of the circles on the minimap. Much better than just whacking around randomly and hoping you find the stairs. It's fun to try to hit the center of the circle on the first try, too.
Fishing has gotten an upgrade and is probably the best fishing in a SOS/HM game I've played to date. Most games are just "wait til the bobber goes down and then press the button" with some of them being "mash the button" instead of just "press the button." Save the Homeland had a more in-depth fishing mechanic where you had to press directions while reeling but it took forever and was not very fun, and there wasn't enough feedback to the player to make it feel like you were actually doing something, so it just felt very awkward. Pioneers of Olive Town had a system where you reeled while the fish was resting and didn't reel while it was hyped up -- but it was just an icon on the screen.
In The Winds of Anthos, you reel while the fish is resting, and then fight it when the fish is fighting. It's very simple, but effective, and is actually quite fun. There's plenty of feedback so you feel when you're doing the right thing, and it's not SUPER easy so you feel a little rush of excitement as you do it. I've actually lost a big fish at the LAST moment, which was frustrating, but also very cool that the game adds that level of anticipation and hope.
The only farming game with fun fishing outside of the SOS/HM series is probably Stardew Valley. While that's probably my favorite fishing minigame, it definitely feels more like a minigame and less like fishing. The Winds of Anthos is more reacting to a fish you see in the water, and you feel like you're actually reeling in a fish, so it's a different kind of experience.
Farming is pretty standard, water the crops and pick the crops. Controls have been well-streamlined to make it easy to do. Gathering seeds from wisps is the thing again, brought over from One World. If you haven't played OW, basically instead of buying seeds from a shop, you now find them from little fairy dudes scattered around the map (making use of the open world mechanic, I guess). These will regenerate over time. For some reason I actually really enjoy this system of collecting seeds, though I don't know why. It's definitely a lot more frustrating than just buying seeds at a shop. Say if you have a request from a character to bring them 10 turnips, you may only find like... 4 turnip seeds in a day if you don't know where to look. So you'll have to take 3 days just to get enough seeds. But for some reason I really enjoy the wisp system, idk. Oh, and of course, there are mutations this time around, with fertilizers and stuff.
Speaking of the wisp system, they introduced a new system to this game in the form of Power Wisps/Wisp Fruits. You find a unique kind of wisp around the world called a Power Wisp that gives you a Wisp Fruit, three of which can be exchanged for either a bag pocket upgrade or a stamina upgrade. The bag pockets and max stamina are all very limited when the game starts, so you really get to decide how you want your character to progress. In the previous games, you just got stamina upgrades at fixed points in the story, and bag upgrades were buyable/craftable. About 20 hours in, I've found 11 Wisp Fruits and upgraded my three bags, but I am HEAVILY missing the increased stamina.
Ranching is pretty standard fare for Natsume games. You MUST care for the animals before you can collect products even if they are at max affection, which is kinda annoying, but it's fairly easy, so not TOO annoying. Also they added poop mechanics in their games (which they've been doing since 2014) so you get to clean up poops, which you can then compost and turn into fertilizer. I like cleaning poops, it's a tama caredaddy thing :P In seriousness, though, I do like the poop system. It adds another layer to animal husbandry, and it feels good to get the barn all cleaned up. And then you can make fertilizer with it, which is really cool.
Dating system is kinda lackluster, probably my least favorite thing in the game so far. It's not a bad system by any means; it's just kind of... Well, the system is fine -- it plays like any other SOS/HM game, talk every day, gift every day, affection goes up. But the actual dates have been really boring so far. So I guess it's not the dating system I'm disappointed in, but the writing. One World had a good story and the characters were really interesting. I was actually moved by the story of the characters. This is just like "I like animals!" and the date is like "Let's pet animals together! K Bye!" Like seriously this one character's personality is just "fish." I don't think she's said anything other than "I like fish" in some form or another. Even her dates have just been her rambling about fish for a few lines. The character events in One World were like whole cutscenes that progressed an overall story. The events in this are a few lines of text with maybe a little something extra happening, like showing you eat together during the talking.
The design of the characters are really nice though -- everyone is really cute and I'm not sure who I want to marry based on that. I've met 3 of 5 girls and 4 of 5 boys so far. I think there's also a 6th boy and girl from the DLC which is still unreleased.
S: Judy, Aolani, Westley, Arnold
A: Neil, Vivi
B: Kaimana
My ranking so far :P
Let's see... what else is there to the game. Oh, festivals. There are no festivals at the start of the game, but you can revive them all through sidequests. I have revived the flower festival, but it doesn't come until Spring and I'm in Summer so it will be a long time before I see a festival. My next goal is to unlock the fishing festival. I actually think there are two fishing-related festivals...? Like a fish banquet/feast, and a fishing contest...? Or maybe I just misinterpreted what I was reading XD I haven't really paid that close of attention to the requests I've gotten related to those yet.
Oh and then there's the exploring. What's nice about it is you can basically explore as much or as little as you want. You can just run from one major point of interest to the next pretty much, or you can go through every nook and cranny trying to find wisps and fruits and mushrooms and whatever. But it's not NECESSARY to find all that stuff. The only thing you're really missing out on by not exploring is the Wisp Fruits, which will be your only way to upgrade your max stamina/bag capacity... but I've done very minimal exploration and found 11 Power Wisps already, so...
OK, think I'm gonna go lie down. Was gonna play but kinda not feelng great, so I may hold off until tonight and just play a couple hours then play a lot more tomorrow.
In short, it's quite good. It definitely feeds the "just one more day" addiction. I've also been streaming and gaining quite a few new followers thanks to it (like 5-6) so that's cool. Sadly I'm avoiding spoilers so I'm not WATCHING streams of the game... or else I'd be doing that right now... (can't play until after lunch...)
So let's talk about the game instead!
For whatever reason, this game follows the "open world" model trend, where you just have this massive world full of mostly nothing to run around in and "explore" but only a few select points on the map are actually relevant to anything (did we REALLY need such a thing in a farming sim?????). This design choice really turned me off of a lot of games -- Breath of the Wild and Final Fantasy XV to name two that I just could NOT get into. But for some reason it doesn't really bother me in this game.
I think the key is that there are not nodes of interest all of the map. In FF15, for example, there were little gathering spots and fishing spots and this and that like every 5 feet, and the completionist in me says, "You must go to ALL of the things!!!" and it just gets super overwhelming. In WOA, there is NOTHING on the map unless you pin searches. So if you're looking for tomato seeds, you can pin tomato seed to the map and then places where you can get them from wisps will appear on the map, but ONLY tomato and ONLY while it's pinned. You can pin like 25 things at once, but I keep my pins very tidy so I'm only searching for a few things at once and can actually go around and complete all the nodes when I want to.
The systems in the game are very fun.
The new dowsing mechanic makes mining a blast -- you press a button to dowse for buring items and stairways, and then can try to hit the ground at the center of the circles on the minimap. Much better than just whacking around randomly and hoping you find the stairs. It's fun to try to hit the center of the circle on the first try, too.
Fishing has gotten an upgrade and is probably the best fishing in a SOS/HM game I've played to date. Most games are just "wait til the bobber goes down and then press the button" with some of them being "mash the button" instead of just "press the button." Save the Homeland had a more in-depth fishing mechanic where you had to press directions while reeling but it took forever and was not very fun, and there wasn't enough feedback to the player to make it feel like you were actually doing something, so it just felt very awkward. Pioneers of Olive Town had a system where you reeled while the fish was resting and didn't reel while it was hyped up -- but it was just an icon on the screen.
In The Winds of Anthos, you reel while the fish is resting, and then fight it when the fish is fighting. It's very simple, but effective, and is actually quite fun. There's plenty of feedback so you feel when you're doing the right thing, and it's not SUPER easy so you feel a little rush of excitement as you do it. I've actually lost a big fish at the LAST moment, which was frustrating, but also very cool that the game adds that level of anticipation and hope.
The only farming game with fun fishing outside of the SOS/HM series is probably Stardew Valley. While that's probably my favorite fishing minigame, it definitely feels more like a minigame and less like fishing. The Winds of Anthos is more reacting to a fish you see in the water, and you feel like you're actually reeling in a fish, so it's a different kind of experience.
Farming is pretty standard, water the crops and pick the crops. Controls have been well-streamlined to make it easy to do. Gathering seeds from wisps is the thing again, brought over from One World. If you haven't played OW, basically instead of buying seeds from a shop, you now find them from little fairy dudes scattered around the map (making use of the open world mechanic, I guess). These will regenerate over time. For some reason I actually really enjoy this system of collecting seeds, though I don't know why. It's definitely a lot more frustrating than just buying seeds at a shop. Say if you have a request from a character to bring them 10 turnips, you may only find like... 4 turnip seeds in a day if you don't know where to look. So you'll have to take 3 days just to get enough seeds. But for some reason I really enjoy the wisp system, idk. Oh, and of course, there are mutations this time around, with fertilizers and stuff.
Speaking of the wisp system, they introduced a new system to this game in the form of Power Wisps/Wisp Fruits. You find a unique kind of wisp around the world called a Power Wisp that gives you a Wisp Fruit, three of which can be exchanged for either a bag pocket upgrade or a stamina upgrade. The bag pockets and max stamina are all very limited when the game starts, so you really get to decide how you want your character to progress. In the previous games, you just got stamina upgrades at fixed points in the story, and bag upgrades were buyable/craftable. About 20 hours in, I've found 11 Wisp Fruits and upgraded my three bags, but I am HEAVILY missing the increased stamina.
Ranching is pretty standard fare for Natsume games. You MUST care for the animals before you can collect products even if they are at max affection, which is kinda annoying, but it's fairly easy, so not TOO annoying. Also they added poop mechanics in their games (which they've been doing since 2014) so you get to clean up poops, which you can then compost and turn into fertilizer. I like cleaning poops, it's a tama caredaddy thing :P In seriousness, though, I do like the poop system. It adds another layer to animal husbandry, and it feels good to get the barn all cleaned up. And then you can make fertilizer with it, which is really cool.
Dating system is kinda lackluster, probably my least favorite thing in the game so far. It's not a bad system by any means; it's just kind of... Well, the system is fine -- it plays like any other SOS/HM game, talk every day, gift every day, affection goes up. But the actual dates have been really boring so far. So I guess it's not the dating system I'm disappointed in, but the writing. One World had a good story and the characters were really interesting. I was actually moved by the story of the characters. This is just like "I like animals!" and the date is like "Let's pet animals together! K Bye!" Like seriously this one character's personality is just "fish." I don't think she's said anything other than "I like fish" in some form or another. Even her dates have just been her rambling about fish for a few lines. The character events in One World were like whole cutscenes that progressed an overall story. The events in this are a few lines of text with maybe a little something extra happening, like showing you eat together during the talking.
The design of the characters are really nice though -- everyone is really cute and I'm not sure who I want to marry based on that. I've met 3 of 5 girls and 4 of 5 boys so far. I think there's also a 6th boy and girl from the DLC which is still unreleased.
S: Judy, Aolani, Westley, Arnold
A: Neil, Vivi
B: Kaimana
My ranking so far :P
Let's see... what else is there to the game. Oh, festivals. There are no festivals at the start of the game, but you can revive them all through sidequests. I have revived the flower festival, but it doesn't come until Spring and I'm in Summer so it will be a long time before I see a festival. My next goal is to unlock the fishing festival. I actually think there are two fishing-related festivals...? Like a fish banquet/feast, and a fishing contest...? Or maybe I just misinterpreted what I was reading XD I haven't really paid that close of attention to the requests I've gotten related to those yet.
Oh and then there's the exploring. What's nice about it is you can basically explore as much or as little as you want. You can just run from one major point of interest to the next pretty much, or you can go through every nook and cranny trying to find wisps and fruits and mushrooms and whatever. But it's not NECESSARY to find all that stuff. The only thing you're really missing out on by not exploring is the Wisp Fruits, which will be your only way to upgrade your max stamina/bag capacity... but I've done very minimal exploration and found 11 Power Wisps already, so...
OK, think I'm gonna go lie down. Was gonna play but kinda not feelng great, so I may hold off until tonight and just play a couple hours then play a lot more tomorrow.
