I never reviewed this like I meant to, and now it's been almost a year since I last played it?? Probably forgetting some points I wanted to address, but here goes:
I did finish the main story, but there is still a TON to do after you finish the storyline and first year. I was starting on that because I was still very much enjoying playing, but other games cropped up.
This is honestly one of the best life/farm sims out there. The characters are diverse, flawed, and feel incredibly real. The town is lived-in and homey, and there's an excellent storyline instead of it just being a "farm until you don't care about this game anymore" situation.
You don't get to create your own character, but the controlled character, Tara, is genuinely solid. The NPCs are expressive, the voice acting is actually really great, the outfits that you can eventually start crafting are super cute, and the way that you build up your farm, magic abilities, and progress the story feel very natural. You eventually get into a really good flow with your crops and other production (like needing mulberry leaves from your trees for your silkworms to eat to produce silk threads which you then can dye or turn into silk for dyeing/turning into clothes/etc., a process which takes several in-game days) I definitely cried a few times too, because of story events. Like, this game had no business having me in such a chokehold.
There were a few times I can remember getting pretty frustrated, namely in summer. Once you've done however many storyline quests, a drought hits, so a bunch of the shops close due to lack of crop/product availability, and various other issues pop up around town. You can continue on without moving forward to fall (because you get to choose when to advance the seasons), but you're essentially forced to change the seasons because the town is barely functioning in the drought and you can't do much.
At first, energy and money were a reaaaaal struggle to contend with. You increase your energy bar over time, but finding ways to refill it after doing some farming, mining, whatever in the early game was a chore. Random foraged stuff didn't give much, and you needed to find recipes and have the crops for them to get more energy from meals. Otherwise, you'd be buying meals, which cut into your already-limited funds. It's definitely a matter of just taking your time building up your resources and slowly improving your farm (which makes sense, of course). I've been an Animal Crossing fan since the GameCube days, so any time these types of games make me work a little harder to see progress, it's frustrating but also a welcome challenge.
You don't really get to decorate or arrange anything. Your house stays as-is, and your farm expansions are basically pre-set. The town carpenter slowly has more upgrades available (I'm talking like, it was almost end of year before I was able to do one or two of them), such as a bigger plot for crops, a greenhouse, the barn, etc. The only thing you really control is where you dig your plots for crops within that given area, and you can arrange where your fruit trees are within that plot as well. There's no housing or farm décor, and the greenhouse/barn/etc. have specific spots.
One other thing of note is the in-game clock. You can adjust it in the settings to something like easy, moderate, or challenging. I like real-time clocks the most, which very few games have, but I generally switched between the easy and moderate, never challenging. Early game, the energy issues made me want to just move forward to the next day, but then there are times you're really busy with your farm, NPC quests, etc., and that extra time is great. I really liked being able to adjust it. I THINK I remember there being a 2am cutoff for bed, but it doesn't force you to be in bed at that time, or make you pass out or one of those other stupid mechanics. It does make Tara tired the next day if you go to bed too late, from what I remember.
There are several romanceable characters, and you have the ability to marry/divorce. I only romanced and married one character. I'd honestly love to come back to this game again, but I think I'd probably restart rather than continue into the next year. I'll have to check to be sure, but I thiiiiink I was around 65 hours when I "finished" this one. All in all, a real gem of a game that truly deserved all the time I spent with it.
