Review: Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Offers a Work-Life Balance

Maintaining a proper work-life balance is incredibly difficult. This can even happen in games, with titles like Persona forcing you to determine which relationships or stats to prioritize, ones like Princess Maker showing a delicate balance between actions improving one stat while lowering another, or farming sims sometimes forcing you to think only about the most profitable choices. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is weird in that it’s more of a champion of taking a moment and appreciating the world around you. It forsakes some elements of the series to tell a tale more focused on you and your loved ones, giving you plenty of time to manage interactions with people and tending to a farm.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life begins as many installments in the series does. You’re a young adult looking to start a new life following your dad’s death. As such, you move to Forgotten Valley to run a farm with his best friend Takakura. From there, you live your life. However, while in past games this means being caught in what is mostly a static snapshot focused on a specific window of your life, the “A Wonderful Life” subtitle refers to the fact that this does become the story of your life. It’s about you, the people you come to see as important to you, and the family you build. As such, things are also broken up to a chapter structure, covering different periods of the life of you and your family.

Screenshot by Siliconera

This means that Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life doesn’t behave as a typical Bokujou Monogatari installment. You start with a cow, two plots of land suitable for farming, and go through four seasons that each last ten days. Yes, the pace is quite sped up. However, it still feels rather full. You need to water crops twice a day, rather than once. Likewise, animals need to be tended and fed twice a day, which can result in getting say milk twice per day. Since the shipping works differently, you can open a small stall in-town at a plaza portion when Van isn’t there to sell the wares Takakura can’t take to town to sell for you via the shipping box.

Likewise, since Forgotten Valley is so small, there’s no ranch or general store. You can buy seeds from Vesta’s farm or get a meal at Gavin’s cafe, but everything else needs to be ordered through Takakura’s notebook or Van when he’s in town. (There’s also more of a focus on experimenting with plants, with the ability to fuse produce or trees to get an entirely new kind of hybrid crop.) Upgrading facilities or getting new ones doesn’t involve gathering stone or lumber. It means paying a fee and then enjoying your new pond or larger area.

Screenshot by Siliconera

It also means this is a game with more free time. Between tending farm in the morning and later in the afternoon or evening, you can do what you want. It’s a very small village, so it’s easy to find someone wandering around. This also means it can be rather easy to trigger events with characters, provided you started building up relationships. Setting up a stall in town is a good way to pass some time. You can also buy a fishing pole or dig at the ruins for artifacts. There is even an option to just… leave town for six hours. There’s a lot of time, and I did always feel like there was something to do.

What I also appreciated about Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life this time around is how much Marvelous did to make it more pleasant to play. There are so many quality of life changes here, and it really puts the past Special Edition to shame. This starts when you begin the game and can completely customize your character’s appearance, down to their face, preferred pronouns, and outfit.

Screenshot by Siliconera

When tending crops in the field, it feels effortless to perform actions like tilling soil, planting, watering, and harvesting, with it being possible to water over a larger space. The UI is also fantastic, making it easy to go through your tools on hand and the items in your backpack. The goat isn’t as useless, and you can breed them. You don’t have to waste time waiting for Van to arrive or setting up a stall for selling, as you can ship what is likely your most plentiful products (produce and animal products) from the shipping box. If you do sell to Van, you can sell eight items at once, which is a timesaver. It even feels easier to get around, given there is an extra area to cross over the river so you aren’t running back and forth to the one bridge between your farm and Vesta’s. Not to mention the romance elements do open up to include same-sex relationships. It’s also very transparent about your own abilities. You have a stamina gauge on-screen at all times to show how you’re doing, with a hunger indicator popping up when you need to restore fullness. (All of this also appears in your stat screen.) Character relationships are also very clearly shown in the menu, letting you keep track of things.

But really, the selling point is the connections. I feel so grounded when I play Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. Yes, I want to earn more money and make my farm successful. But the motivations here don’t feel the same as in Stardew Valley, where I want to customize my farming experience to make it look good and be as efficient as possible. It isn’t like a typical Story of Seasons game where I end up on a set routine for myself. It’s a little more open-ended, even though I know there is that chapter-based “schedule” waiting for me. I’m able to take things a bit more at my own pace and savor the moment.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Not to mention how much I appreciate how Forgotten Valley looks. The original game did have this almost historic sort of approach, with muted, sepia tones. However, I also felt like it could sometimes feel a bit empty at times, as though I was running through empty spaces that ate up valuable time. Things are a bit brighter, and it somehow also feels like the space is more effectively used. Though honestly, it might not be all that different and just feel better due to the way everything is rendered now. The town looks good, and as do the villagers living there. I especially like the new look for Gordy, though in my heart I’ll always have a soft spot for the “weirder” version of Gustafa.

I’ve got to tell you, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life feels like a game that arrived right when I needed it most. This is a game about redefining what matters to you. First, it’s about settling into a new community and forming bonds with your new neighbors. One of them being romantic. Then it’s about supporting your growing family both emotionally and via working hard on the farm. As time passes, you get to see how that influences things. It’s like you are building a life while farming, rather than working a farm and taking “you” time to be social when you can.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life will come to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC on June 27, 2023.