Okay, I FINALLY got past the tutorial and things have picked up. It's a struggle, though... instead of having a shipping box at your farm to assure you of a steady income, you have to go to merchants directly and sell your goods... and at the start of the game, there's only one merchant, who is only there 2 days out of every week.

Since there's a ton of locations still blocked off, I run out of stamina quickly, and can't afford to eat enough food to keep my stamina up... I'm ending each day really early after talking to all the villagers. Every farming sim-type game like this has a slow start, but I feel like this one's beginning is SO MUCH SLOWER than every other game I've played of this type (And I've played a lot).

It also won't let me give gifts? I try to hand pretty girls flowers and it says "Now is not the time for gifts." Generally, giving your love interests random things every single day is the way to build relationships in the Harvest Moon series, so I am PERPLEXED. lmao.

This game has such a slow, frustrating tutorial. An old lady teaches you the basics of farming (which if you've played a harvest moon game before, you already know, but w/e). The frustrating thing, though, is she'll only teach you one thing "per day." You're forced to go through a routine of talking with her before bed, saving your game, getting in bed, and waking up the next morning.... where she talks to you some more, makes you breakfast, forces you to sit through a little animation of both of you eating, and then talks to you even more before you can move onto the next tutorial lesson. None of the dialog in these sections is interesting at all... but you're forced to go through this entire thing over and over again. It's pretty ridiculous.

My save file says I've been playing for an hour, and I've only barely unlocked full control over my char's life, haha. I want to keep playing (in theory) but if I have to waste any more time, I probably won't... :c