The past year I have made an effort to explore the simulation genre more. It had previously always been a type of game I would sneer at. Between jankiness, quality or a lack of game element, its easy to dismiss. But I noticed that there really are a lot of games that fall into the category.

In any case, this one caught my attention. Farming Simulation is a continual project. It's become a bit of a sandbox game, bit of campaign, very open to modification or allows the player to pick what they want to do. It is part business/base construction strategy in the sense of managing finances and some aspects of planning) and the other part is 'tractor driver/operation simulator' (I like the first part, i don't like the second.)

+Lots of helpful info, guides and tutorials. The game is surprisingly educational.
-Overwhelming amounts of information and at times jangly mess of UI elements/controls depending on machinery (which is a lot to take in if you don't know much about farming and hence don't know the difference between wheat and barley, tractors combines, tillers, plows, cultivators, this 'n that.)

+Lots of stuff you can buy, equipment, large fanbase with even official mods that add more,
-Virtually all of it is european brands. And there is some lack of granular scale in your equipment options... (The need to buy half million dollar super large scale equipment to do what seems like simple things, Like spray bug spray. This is farming not the US DoD!)

+Side jobs you can do, for extra income or passing time as your own crops grow. Hired help to speed things up on your own farm
-Driving to a place to do said side job with your own equipment is a complete nightmare in terms of logistics unless you had forestight pack it all up on a hypothetical trailer. This is what made me quit. I just didn't want to take the time to constantly drive back and forth across the roads (surely illegal). I also of course had to get a second vehicle (Cargo transport) and drive it back to continue the job...

Yeaaaaaaa....

In short. Farming simulation truly is a sim, it has wide scope and is a continuous project. And while it isn't terribly unapproachable, its not very deeply gamified and requires some real interest and devotion to the subject despite what I thought was at first a very casual appearance (kind of odd considering it technically is a casual game) If you fall into the category of people who have a history/grew up as a farmer, rancher, etc. you'll probably love it, especially with some of the fancy peripherals available such as this one, but if you are just curious about sims, it most likely wont be a bountiful harvest.

Farming is boring

This game is too boring and repetitive. Almost every single aspect of the game involves driving a tractor over your fields over and over again with the only variety being which tool are you tugging behind you. Yes, you can automate that by hiring workers, but then the only thing left for you to do is going to and from the Shop (a ~3 minute slow drive) to retrieve the various tools and consumables, and going to and from the different selling stations. Both are even more boring and cannot be automated.

Besides, this is not a game for people who love farming. Is a game for people who like tractors and other farming equipment. Vehicle models are super detailed, bright-coloured. There are a zillion different tractors and tools that do basically the same job with slight variations in brand, size and power.

But crops? The actual crops you're harvesting are rendered with as few polygons as possible and are utterly dull, and even sad-looking. There's little if any variety. You can plan wheat, barley, soybean, and so on, but as far as I can tell, there's no option to select between different cultivars or even brands of seeds. Crops are just generic crops and come in a generic "seed" bag which somehow hold many different seed types at the same type. The same goes for fertiliser and pesticides. Generic products with no variation.

I couldn't care less about brands of tractor or harvesters, but I do care about the various trade-offs between higher yield but more expensive seeds. This is a game that might be appealing for some people, but not for me.

My background in the simulation genre comes from the Car Mechanic Simulator series. While that game combined its mechanics into a puzzle solving style of gameplay, Farming Simulator 19 struggles to keep the core gameplay loop engaging.

As someone who had no idea about the practicalities of farming, what I wanted first and foremost from this game was an introduction to the mechanics. In this aspect, the game is extremely limited. You do have some tutorials that teach you how to perform specific tasks, but it's not thought out as a comprehensive tutorial to farming as a whole. My education instead came from YouTube tutorials and community guides.

The game map contains a set of farmlands. You buy your own land, sow seeds, nourish the plants as they grow, harvest the grown crops, transport them to the market for sale, repeat. Each step involves a vehicle. For example, to loosen the soil before planting seeds, you use a cultivator tool with a tractor. To harvest the final yield, you use a harvester. You have to basically pick up the vehicle, activate the tool, and then carefully drive it over the farmland to cover the whole area. This is a painstakingly slow and repetitive task, so the game provides AI workers you can hand this off to. You still need to do the work of getting the vehicle and tool and setting everything up, but the AI worker will do the job of driving the vehicle evenly over the farmland until the job is completed.

To buy farmlands as well as equipment, you need money. The game allows you to start with a set amount of money, but you can also pick up contract jobs for other farm owners. This is also a good way to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of the game. So for example, you might be tasked to go to farm land #29 and perform harvesting. The farm owner will provide the required equipment if you don't have it. You can hand off these jobs to AI workers as well, but then your income reduces as you need to pay the worker as well.

The game also includes some advanced mechanics that become available to you later on. For example, some crops require specialized equipment, but return a better profit. Also, you can cultivate crops as fodder for raising animals. For example, you cultivate wheat as a feed to raise chickens, and then sell their eggs for a higher profit. There's also a forestry mechanic that involves planting as well as cutting down trees.

While the mechanics look interesting and detailed on paper, is the game able to combine these things into a fluid gameplay experience? The unfortunate answer is no. Without the external guides and tutorials, I never would have known the depth of the game. Even after getting to know the possibilities, the actual process of farming crops felt tedious. I made it through the farm-harvest-sell loop for one type of crop, and it felt exhausting. Because of a lack of a concrete objective for the career mode, I felt aimless during the farming tasks. The game does not define any specific victory conditions, and the game's community is made up of players who define their own criteria for success.

To see if the game could be more interesting, I turned to some community discussions and found the topic of mods. For example, the 'CoursePlay' mod turns the whole game into an automation blueprint. The 'Seasons' mod introduces season-specific effects on farming. I did not have a chance to experience the mods at the time of this review, but maybe I will try them out in the future.

To wrap up, Farming Simulator 19 is a game that simulates individual farming tasks with as much detail as possible, but fails to combine them together into an experience that feels engaging and rewarding. I prefer to have structure in my games and a clear goal to strive towards, and the lack of that makes this game a disappointment for me.