Farm, Fight, and, er, Fish: The Life Sims Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Farm, Fight, and, er, Fish: The Life Sims Megathread

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

I'm currently playing Moonglow Bay, which is a fishing and food stall life sim game. It took me a bit to get into it mostly because it's finicky on mkb so I switched to controller, but it's got a good mix of story goals, mindless meditative fishing and exploration.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 07:48

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 14:10

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

My Time at Portia is addicting even though I think it is a fairly terrible game. The mechanics are mostly annoying, none of the writing is very good, it's quite ugly, and YET. I have hours and hours of playtime.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2022 05:38

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

I'm giving up on Moonglow Bay. I never got any glitches, but dealing with the fish catch rate for some quest requirements is really frustrating and I'm done with it. I did like the story and the little loop of going out exploring new places, bringing back new fish and cooking them up, but getting the same eel twenty times in a row when im looking for a top hat fish just killed all my joy.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2022 11:45

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Varsity posted:

Hey, gently caress you, I wrote two of the missions for My Time at Portia in a weird 'working for a random Chinese company' experience.

... But, you're right.

Lmao, sorry! That's cool though, I would never have expected to run into a writer for that game here. What was it like working for them? Which missions were they? Maybe I liked them, actually!

# ¿ Sep 8, 2022 07:42

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

I've been playing Coral Island early access on Gamepass. It's really fun! It's very much a Stardew Valley clone, but a really good one imo. It's obviously got a lot of features missing at the moment, but I'm definitely going to keep my eye on it as it develops.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2022 02:17

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Yeah I think the writing and gameplay of RF5 are still as charming as the previous games, but it definitely suffered transitioning to 3D. But if you enjoyed RF4 and want to play another one -- it's definitely worth it at half price imo.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2023 12:04

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

I really enjoyed the demo when I played it. It's definitely building off Stardew pretty directly with the artstyle and basic gameplay, but it did interesting things in the demo so I'll pick up the full release.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 06:16

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Log082 posted:

If you want 3D Stardew, just play Coral Island.

I've been working my way through it, and while it's far from complete, it is a very good game. I was going to write up a full review when I finished the available content, but I'm close enough to the end I might as well give my impressions now.

First is that, mechanically, it is very much 3D Stardew. The details of farming, mining, etc will all feel very familiar. For me this was a good thing, but some people might be looking for more innovation, I dunno.

Next, the negatives: The game is still in EA, and while there's a good amount of content already, you will run into places where you can't progress any further until a future update. Most of what's in the game is very polished, but there are a few minor bits that need another pass. I've only had one crash, and one other bug where I got stuck until the day ended. That's still more than in Stardew, though.

My biggest issue after that is the controls. At first swing speed for your tools and in combat feels slow and clunky. This improves with tool quality, skill levels, and a ring you can find, and by the end of the early game it feels okay and by late game it's fast and feels great. I still think this is a poor design decision, though, because things feel worst right when you're starting and forming your impression of the game. Combat always feels a little clunky since you can't cancel out of a swing to dodge, but luckily it's easy enough that this doesn't matter, so I just ignore it and push through. It isn't like Stardew where you have to be at least halfway decent at the deeper levels. There's also a few tricks from Stardew in the controls that they didn't replicate, which feels weird when you hold down a button expecting to harvest or plant faster. I haven't found any tricks to speed up planting, but for harvesting at least you can use your scythe on anything, not just wheat and grass, and it'll harvest without damaging plants that give repeat fruit.

I'm also not a huge fan of the fishing minigame, which is surprisingly challenging before you skill up and buy higher quality gear, but it's not bad or anything. I just don't like it as much as others I've played.

The positives: I really like the island environment. I think I even prefer it to Stardew, if only a little bit. I'm not sure why, to be honest; something about the graphics or the setup just feel relaxing and fun to me.

I'm also a big fan of the characters. The designs are great, and the game manages to do a lot with (currently) relatively limited dialogue. There are more, both dateable and in general, than in Stardew and I think it contributes a lot to making the town feel alive.

As I said previously, most of the farming mechanics are basically copied from Stardew, so those feel great. Fishing is a bit mediocre, but they've added bug catching and diving as additional activities. Bug catching is fun (and profitable) to do as you run around on other tasks, and diving is essentially an entire additional part of the game. Clearing trash underwater (using the scythe) should probably feel repetitive, but I instead found it satisfying and rewarding.

There are also a ton of collectibles. I have almost 200 separate pieces dropped off at the museum, and the only category I've completed is bug catching, which is the smallest and easiest. It's not mandatory for success either, so if hunting down tons of artifacts and fossils isn't your thing that's okay. There's also the chance to buy those from the black market for money.

Finally, one thing I really like is that there are a lot of fast travel stations, and more open up with offerings to the goddess (the Community Center equivalent) past the initial offering that unlocks the system. it makes it easy to zip around the island and get tasks done quickly.

Overall I really enjoy the game and am looking forward to future updates with additional content.

Totally agreed! I played it a while ago when EA first came to Gamepass, and I really enjoyed it. It's super promising, and I stopped fairly early on after I knew I liked it because I wanted to wait for its full release, since I knew I'd burn out playing the EA version.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2023 08:11

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

As I come to the end of Spirittea, I'm starting to think that it's a little too long in the tooth. There's just a little too much of everything and I feel like if they cut a few things the devs could have focused a bit more on deepening various aspects.

For example: there are too many characters. You could easily cut four or five and you would barely notice - in fact, some of the characters are seasonal and I didn't even realise they weren't living in town anymore because they were so forgettable. Four entire characters are teachers at the local school, which is an incredible bit of redundancy. There are no actual child characters, the kids at school are just npcs you can't interact with. The school itself is this massive building with nothing going on in it except that's where the teachers live during the day, and you can't hang out with them because they're working. Plus there's a principal and a school nurse who work in there too. Idk all in all it feels like a total waste because there's no characterisation that comes from them being teachers, and no events relating to the school, and you don't know any kids who are in their classes so there's no relationships there. Characters in this only receive really limited characterisation so I feel like cutting some might have given more room to expand on the ones who are actually interesting. Eg, please get rid of the character who calls me "new kid" and only talks about streaming. She's boring.

It just feels like there's a lot of mechanics that are in there because it's a "Stardew-like" when they don't really work that well. Seasonal bugs and fish are an annoyance more than anything because nothing else really gets affected by the seasons. Cooking is a massive chore because you have to buy 90% of the ingredients from the shop (which has a random assortment of ingredients every day so you might have to wait a week for the pork you need) rather than gathering them or farming them. You can plant seeds but I only found that out by googling how to get a certain plant because I am 20 hours in and it is never tutorialised. Then when you have the ingredients you have to tediously look at the recipe and pick out the ingredients and choose the right method rather than any kind of intuitive UI.

I still really like it overall, but there's just a few things that have started to grate on me after playing for a while. The spirit quests have all been really fun and inventive. They're obviously where all the best writing and gameplay is concentrated, and I wish you did get more spirit interaction after you unlocked them.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2023 02:32

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Holy poo poo I really do have to get sandrock if it stands up to rune factory 4!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 05:06

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

This is one thing I really enjoyed about Spirittea. There's no gifting, to build up friendship you hang out with people and do their favourite hobbies together.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2024 04:01

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 14:10

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Sandrock is on sale on switch so I grabbed it. You all better not have let me down about how good it is!

# ¿ May 20, 2024 02:44

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