Rebekah Valentine
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Writing For
IGNLatest Reviews
Pioneers of Olive Town recognizes it does not need to reinvent the plow to present a full, relaxing, pleasant farming game. Aside from its sprawling size, there is not much novel about collecting materials, upgrading tools, clearing land, raising animals and crops, and befriending the townspeople – and there doesn't need to be. It is enough to simply have a wealth of interesting things to plan out and do, colored by ridiculously cute animals and interesting characters and fleshed out with piles of new things to unlock over 30 hours and beyond. While the struggling framerate and tedious crafting can be annoying, these are small blips in a pleasantly packed day-to-day cycle of tending to your farm, exploring interesting new areas, and flirting with Bridget...or Reina….or Blaire.
After a 22-year gap, New Pokémon Snap is a successful modern reinvention of all the best ideas of Pokémon Snap, with more courses, more Pokémon, and more reasons to revisit familiar spots in pursuit of the perfect shot. Some of its supportive systems, like its photo scoring and tutorials, can drag down momentum or even frustrate at times. But at the end of the day, some artificial grade is utterly secondary to the clever environmental storytelling you’ll experience as you level up courses, the fun of discovering surprising photo opps, and the sheer joy of observing a moving ecosystem of believable, personable, and lovable Pokémon.
Harvest Moon: One World has a novel idea for an exploration-focused farming game, but then sets that idea in an empty, uninteresting world. Its characters are dull, its quests are often confusing or frustrating, and it lacks the personality of just about any other farming sim option out there, including most of its direct predecessors. At best, One World's farming elements are satisfying enough to mindlessly pass the time with, but there's just not much else here... and so much else in other games in this genre.