While working on the fields, you can hire a worker for a small fee to finish the task at hand. If that's too tedious for you, the game has you covered. It is surprisingly relaxing to crank up some country music and harvest some crops.
However, it's in those situations where I understood why so many people enjoy this series. For most gamers, this may be a negative point. After the novelty of new controls wears off, the title boils down to continuously driving across vast fields. However, using the machines to plow the fields takes time.
Within a short amount of time, we understand which machines to use and how to use them. The game provides a constant - and modifiable - on-screen overlay that tells us the available actions to ease us into the subject matter. Basic controls like brake/reverse and moving forward are controlled by ZL/ZR, while the L/R buttons are modifiers to access specific functionalities of the machine and its attachments. Thankfully, our fields are ready to be harvested from the get-go, and we get some basic tutorials on how to control our mechanical harvest monsters.
Depending on the difficulty level, we start with different levels of debt and are subjected to different economic conditions when growing and selling crops.įarming Simulator's primary focus is on authentically replicated farming machines, and that can be overwhelming in the beginning. We choose a male or female farmer, which doesn't make much of a difference since we seldom see our character model in-game, and we're placed on our pre-purchased farm that has barns, basic equipment, and some fields. This review is mostly for people like me, who wondered whether Farming Simulator could have more mainstream appeal.Īfter being greeted by an intro that shows several farming machines tearing through fields of crops, we jump right into the campaign. Fans of the series have likely already picked up this decent port.
It is feature-complete, except for mod support. I ended up grasping the basic appeal of the Farming Simulator series, but the experience was not without its hiccups.įarming Simulator Nintendo Switch Edition is a direct port of Farming Simulator 2017, which has already been released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The Farming Simulator Nintendo Switch Edition could be the next logical step for me to get some digital farming action. On the other hand, I have always been charmed by the light organizational aspect of farming games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. The games are exceptionally successful in Germany, but I've never taken a thorough look at them, even though I am German. Having been in the video game field for more than a decade, few things confuse me, but one thing that baffles me has been the extensive interest in games like the Farming Simulator series.