Cool Guy Berry

Wed, Nov 8, 2023 Year 2, Summer 19

Al and Micah talk about Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos.

Timings

00:00:00: Theme Tune
00:00:30: Intro
00:02:58: What Have We Been Up To
00:32:53: News
01:12:15: Harvest Moon: The Winds Of Anthos
01:50:34: Outro

Links

Disney Dreamlight Valley Upcoming Releases
Disney Dreamlight Valley Apple Arcade Edition
Roots of Pacha 1.1 Update and Console Release
Ooblets 1.4 Update
Everdream Valley 1.6 Update
Slime Rancher 2 Update
Echoes of the Plum Grove Kickstarter
Snacko Early Access
My Time At Portia Optimisation
Concerned Ape Cool Fruit

Contact

Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot
Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot
Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/

Transcript

(0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season.
(0:00:35) Al: My name is Al and we’re here today to talk about Cottagecore games.
(0:00:37) Micah: And I’m Micah!
(0:00:44) Al: And you totally didn’t forget and suddenly remember that you had to say your own name there, did you?
(0:00:49) Micah: I just, I never know when to like, you know, it’s, I’ve got the brain of a five year old.
(0:00:56) Micah: So I need someone to say, and now’s the time that you say your name.
(0:01:00) Al: Well, the problem is, right, that you’re on like two episodes a year, right?
(0:01:01) Micah: Yeah.
(0:01:06) Al: It’s not like, you know, the others are on like, you know, once a month or something.
(0:01:09) Al: It’s much easier to remember how it goes that way.
(0:01:11) Micah: I feel like I’ve gotten better about the outro,
(0:01:14) Micah: but yes, you’re totally right.
(0:01:17) Micah: It’s not, you know, it comes to me again as we’re doing.
(0:01:23) Al: Yeah, that’s the thing I could hear when you said, and I’m like, I could hear, you were like, “Oh yes, no, I need to say it now.” Welcome. Anyway, welcome. It’s been a while.
(0:01:28) Micah: You can hear the gears turning You can hear the cogs clanking around in there Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s always fun to be on Talk about some of my favorite genre my favorite genre of games
(0:01:39) Al: Welcome back. It’s good to have you on. I notice how you said ‘favourite genre games,
(0:01:49) Al: favourite games because well, we’ll see.
(0:01:52) Micah: Not all of them, you know [laughs]
(0:01:53) Al: Let’s not conclude on the game yet before we even said what it is.
(0:01:59) Al: So, first of all, transcripts for the podcast are available in the show notes and on the website if you need them, although they’re whether you need them or not, but now you know where to go if you need them.
(0:02:10) Al: We’re going to talk.
(0:02:12) Al: You know what it’s going to be because we got Micah on.
(0:02:15) Al: You know it’s going to be either Harvest Moon or Story Seasons.
(0:02:17) Al: We’ve got a Harvest Moon, the Winds of Anthos.
(0:02:21) Micah: We sure do.
(0:02:22) Al: So we’re going to.
(0:02:23) Al: We’re going to talk about that just as a preamble to that.
(0:02:28) Al: I will not be playing the game during the episode because I’ve already sold it so that probably explains my feelings in summary, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.
(0:02:38) Al: But, yeah, no, I.
(0:02:39) Micah: Well I’ve got a digital so it’s not even an option for me, so…
(0:02:41) Al: I know better than to buy a Harvest Moon game digitally.
(0:02:45) Al: Come on.
(0:02:46) Micah: I actually told you about this, but I’ll save it for when we get there, I guess.
(0:02:47) Al: Yeah, yeah, we’ll go.
(0:02:50) Al: We can leave that for the yeah, yeah, people can hear.
(0:02:53) Al: The fun story.
(0:02:54) Al: We’ve got a bunch of news, a bunch of exciting news to talk about.
(0:02:58) Al: But first of all, Makar, what have you been up to?
(0:03:01) Micah: Uh, I just recently got back from Japan and My partner and I went for about two Three weeks something like that something we’ve been planning since originally planned on going in spring of 2020 World event Happened and I don’t know. I just everything feels weird after
(0:03:19) Al: Classic.
(0:03:21) Al: Yeah, what happened in spring 2020? Nothing. Nothing happened. That’s the point.
(0:03:30) Al: I know.
(0:03:31) Micah: 2020 and I don’t know what it was.
(0:03:33) Micah: I Yes, it was a great time. It was something that we’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. I put a lot of time and effort into the planning the itinerary and Making sure that we had a full schedule, but also a flexible schedule, you know, I for a bit there It was getting to the point where I like I’ve got you know
(0:03:53) Al: Don’t do the minute.
(0:04:01) Micah: some levels of ADHD and OCD that I have been formally diagnosed with that manifest itself in things like that where I’ll just lock in on an Idea and then I’ll just run with it and then I’ll just keep going and then I’ll get deeper and deeper And it was pretty much to the point where I was like Google mapping If I took the train from this location at this time of day in Japan
(0:04:29) Micah: what train would I take and…
(0:04:31) Micah: where would I transfer and how much would it cost and then like figuring out travel costs down to like you know the individual train ride and things like that.
(0:04:42) Al: Oh, you’ve got to know the best way to pay for it, right? Do I get a travel card or am I buying individual tickets? You know, that’s important.
(0:04:43) Micah: That originally was the plan but then you know it just got to the point where it was it was like things that you especially knowing now you would not be able to like
(0:05:02) Micah: plan for really given like you know how travel works like mass transit travel works there but which beautiful by the way beautiful transit system could not say anything bad about that transit system and then we came back here where it’s just cars.
(0:05:22) Al: Well, you presumably weren’t traveling in peak hour, peak time, you’re commuting hour.
(0:05:28) Micah: Uh, there was a lot of it where we were, which was a little, you know, that was a little challenging being absolutely crammed into trains, like, just packed with people.
(0:05:29) Al: Oh, OK.
(0:05:46) Micah: It was an experience that I’m not used to, but yeah, it was an experience.
(0:05:52) Micah: I did a lot of looking at retro games and stuff like that.
(0:05:55) Micah: We did a lot of, you know, we did some–
(0:05:59) Micah: theme cafes and things like that, Dragon Quest Cafe.
(0:06:02) Micah: Went to the Dragon Quest Island.
(0:06:04) Micah: Dragon Quest Island was a bucket list item.
(0:06:06) Micah: And I was very excited to do that.
(0:06:06) Al: Of course.
(0:06:10) Micah: Very awesome, just like a real life JRPG.
(0:06:15) Micah: You just like walk around a town and get quests and then go fight stuff and then come back.
(0:06:21) Micah: And it’s a lot of, you know, like,
(0:06:24) Micah: what do you call it, fetch quests,
(0:06:25) Micah: but it still was a very cool experience.
(0:06:28) Micah: And while I was there, they were promoting and releasing Mario Wonder.
(0:06:35) Micah: So I picked that up while I was there because the exchange rate was absolutely in our favor.
(0:06:43) Micah: So a brand new Switch game wound up being like $36 or something like that.
(0:06:48) Micah: USD once you convert it.
(0:06:52) Micah: And I’ve been playing that.
(0:06:55) Micah: I picked up the metal gear.
(0:06:59) Micah: Collection was there too, because it came out around the same time and I played a little bit of that.
(0:07:05) Micah: But mostly it’s been I’ve been playing Super Mario Wonder and trying to get through the Pokemon DLC.
(0:07:14) Micah: And I’ve picked up Disney Speedstorm and I’ve been playing a lot of Disney Speedstorm, which is their cart racer.
(0:07:19) Al: Is it any good?
(0:07:21) Micah: It is actually incredible.
(0:07:24) Micah: It is remarkably good.
(0:07:28) Micah: There is two mechanics that I think separate it quite a bit from being just like Mario Kart.
(0:07:37) Micah: It does feel just like Mario Kart but with Disney characters.
(0:07:41) Micah: But one of the mechanics is that you instead of having like just this selection of power, like item block,
(0:07:53) Micah: you get the item block and there’s like a selection of items that you can get out of that.
(0:07:57) Micah: I
(0:07:58) Micah: And everybody gets the same thing. There is one item that is like your ultimate move For whatever your racer is and all the racers have different ultimate moves and Even beyond that there is a basic ultimate move and there is a charged ultimate move where if you charge you hold the button And charge it up then it’ll do something different So as an example, I’ve been playing a lot of Donald Duck and Donald Duck’s
(0:08:05) Al: Right. Okay.
(0:08:27) Micah: basic move.
(0:08:28) Micah: The ultimate move is that he puts a shield around himself, and if that shield gets broken, then he has these energy fists that punch all the other racers around him.
(0:08:42) Micah: But if you charge it, then it immediately does the fists, and it also boosts you.
(0:08:50) Micah: So there’s different ways that your ultimates can come through.
(0:08:55) Micah: The big thing for me I think is that there is
(0:08:58) Micah: a combat mechanic to it where you can slam into other cars and push them into an obstacle or whatever and a lot of the power-ups and stuff like that or a lot of the items can be translated directly into combat So it really there’s a there’s a really
(0:09:28) Micah: Powerful feeling of getting into a race and immediately shoving everybody around you into the wall as Donald Duck and then just like blasting your way through the finish line. There’s something so Kind of yeah, yeah, it does have it the especially in in the single-player because if there’s not, you know, if there’s
(0:09:43) Al: So it’s basically it’s Mario Kart crossed with Barnett.
(0:09:56) Micah: There’s opportunity.
(0:09:58) Micah: There’s time for that. It slows down a little bit and shows the cart that you hit spinning out or whatever.
(0:10:03) Al: Yeah, classic. Yeah, yeah, sure.
(0:10:05) Micah: Obviously, you can’t do that in multiplayer, but that definitely makes it feel more like burnout in that way.
(0:10:13) Micah: When you’re hitting something and it’s spinning out and you’re watching it in slow motion.
(0:10:18) Micah: Yeah. It was good.
(0:10:18) Al: Burnout was always my favourite racing game when I was younger, just because of that.
(0:10:22) Al: I was never a huge fan of the realistic races, because it just isn’t fun. But Burnout was like, “Yeah, I can drive and smash people into walls.” Amazing.
(0:10:26) Micah: Yeah.
(0:10:28) Micah: Yeah.
(0:10:31) Micah: It’s great and it’s yeah, that’s like the big difference for between it and Mario Kart like there’s obviously there’s combat Kart combat quote-unquote with the items that you get and things like that in Mario Kart, but this is like physical combat. It’s like It’s much more cutthroat it feels it is a really satisfying game and it’s doing the whole you know Like they’re they’re doing seasons and they have a battle pass and you can buy like a premium battle pass that gives you you know more or whatever.
(0:11:01) Micah: It is not bad. A lot of it is very cosmetic focused because there’s outfits for racers. There’s different like paint jobs for racers and things like that. They have things like victory poses that you can get. There are some bundles where it’s like you can buy these upgrade packs for like the specific items that you need to upgrade your racers and stuff like that.
(0:11:02) Al: So that’s my next question, how bad is that? Because obviously it’s free to play game.
(0:11:31) Micah: There’s a lot of content to it. There’s like for the single player portion of it. There’s there’s seasons and every season has like a single player chunk where it’s all of these like kind of it. It’s like chapters and each chapter has, I don’t know, 8 to 10 races in it and the races will unlock it.
(0:11:38) Al: Is that something you can get for free if you work hard enough? Or is that?
(0:11:41) Al: Right, okay. See, that’s the key for me.
(0:11:59) Micah: and the races will unlock.
(0:12:01) Micah: You can unlock chests that have the upgrades and stuff like that in it.
(0:12:05) Micah: But there’s like, I don’t even…
(0:12:09) Micah: 10 chapters or something like that for each season.
(0:12:11) Micah: So right now the season is highlighting Aladdin.
(0:12:15) Micah: And you can select the battle pass.
(0:12:19) Micah: Through the battle pass you can unlock Jasmine.
(0:12:22) Micah: And you can unlock Genie as racers.
(0:12:26) Micah: And you unlock them really early in the battle pass.
(0:12:31) Micah: And you can get them early even without the premium battle pass.
(0:12:38) Micah: But then all the way at the end of the battle pass you get special outfits and special car colors and whatever.
(0:12:45) Micah: Like paint jobs and stuff like that.
(0:12:47) Micah: But the single player portion of the season is all Aladdin based story content.
(0:12:55) Micah: Where it’s like races that you have to do with specific conditions.
(0:13:02) Micah: And there’s so much content for it.
(0:13:04) Micah: There’s like an unbelievable amount of content that’s just like free content.
(0:13:09) Micah: So there is a lot of opportunity to get that stuff yourself without paying anything for it.
(0:13:17) Micah: It’s good though. It’s a really really good racer.
(0:13:18) Al: OK, that’s good. That’s good.
(0:13:22) Al: I’ll need to try it because I’ve tried a number of different car racers and most of them, I’ve just not enjoyed the controls.
(0:13:31) Al: Like, they’ve just never felt like they’ve worked as well as Mario Kart.
(0:13:34) Al: So I’ll need to try this one and see how that goes for me.
(0:13:35) Micah: This definitely is the most Mario Kart similar I think Right Yes, I do too
(0:13:38) Al: It doesn’t need to be the exact same.
(0:13:41) Al: I just use that as an example because like I like the controls in Mario Kart.
(0:13:46) Al: it’s very smooth and it’s very controllable.
(0:13:48) Al: Every single version of it, whereas like, you know, if you take like crash team racing or sonic racing or whatever, I hate, I just, I know I don’t enjoy how they control.
(0:13:56) Micah: Yeah, we’re in the exact same boat.
(0:13:59) Al: I always feel like I’m just not in as, as control as, as I am with Mario Kart.
(0:14:03) Micah: Yeah, given that and how similar I think our feelings are on that, I feel like you’ll probably like it because I’m very much the same way.
(0:14:13) Micah: I did not, was not a fan of Crash Team Racing and Sonic Racing and how that felt.
(0:14:19) Micah: It does.
(0:14:20) Micah: Um, I think probably just because of history with it, I’m most attuned to-
(0:14:26) Micah: to like Mario Kart controls and things like that.
(0:14:31) Micah: And it feels the most like that.
(0:14:32) Micah: Like, you know, there’s- you go off a jump and you can hit a button to do like a flare or whatever to like give yourself a little bit of boost.
(0:14:39) Micah: And the drift feels like Mario Kart and there’s like drift chaining and stuff that-
(0:14:45) Al: I have actually downloaded it on my switch. I’ve just not opened it yet because it’s like free to play game that I know I’m going to play at some point. Of course, I’m going to download it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It came out of early access a few months ago, I think. So yeah. Oh, interesting.
(0:14:48) Micah: Yeah, and it’s also, I think it’s on every platform now, but you can chain your account.
(0:15:00) Micah: It’s like super easy to link your account between platforms, so that’s also really nice.
(0:15:05) Micah: Oh, you know what it is.
(0:15:07) Micah: It’s coming to mobile soon is what I remember.
(0:15:10) Micah: So if, yeah, we’ll see how the game changes at that point, but you know.
(0:15:16) Al: - Yeah, I don’t, having said I liked all the Mario Kart,
(0:15:18) Al: I don’t like live, I don’t like Mario Kart live,
(0:15:19) Micah: No, I don’t.
(0:15:20) Al: I don’t like how, I just, no.
(0:15:21) Micah: Not a fan.
(0:15:22) Al: I want something like that, I want the new,
(0:15:27) Al: I like everything that it does in terms of the live service stuff,
(0:15:31) Al: I just want that on a switch with controls rather than the, no, I don’t like the, anyway, whatever.
(0:15:36) Micah: Yeah.
(0:15:37) Micah: Yep, no, I feel you.
(0:15:42) Al: So I too have been playing Mario Wonder.
(0:15:45) Al: No finished it, I think in the last episode I said I was nearly done and I just had one level to go.
(0:15:51) Al: I have no finished that one.
(0:15:54) Micah: Dang, I have not finished it.
(0:15:56) Micah: I’m very excited to see that.
(0:15:57) Micah: What are your thoughts now that you’ve finished it?
(0:15:58) Al: I really love it. I think it is one of the best 2D Mario games they’ve done. I think it’s really good. I think what I think is amazing is see if we had this game and one in every four levels had a wonderful hour. We’d think that was a really cool idea and it was really interesting that they did that. The fact that they’ve done this in every single level and every single level has a different thing that the wonderful
(0:15:59) Micah: It’s so good, isn’t it?
(0:16:28) Al: flower does. Every single level is incredible. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I also feel like unlike most Marios, I feel like I could figure out most of the secrets myself. So there’s a few that I just didn’t quite get and I had to Google. But with most other
(0:16:29) Micah: it’s insane. Yeah, it’s insane. And there’s like multiple methods through the levels to like, it’s just it’s crazy how much detail and love
(0:16:58) Al: Mario’s, I’ve been like, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with this here. I don’t know where to go here. And maybe that’s just me getting better at figuring out their secrets.
(0:17:07) Al: That’s a possibility. But I’ve just felt like, yeah, it just, and I feel like when I got to the end of the game, I wasn’t hugely far off 100% because it just felt like everything was really fun to continue doing. I like got close to 100% in each world that I did up to like four, and then five and six, I just was like, I just want to finish this now. So I did what I needed to, but I think, yeah, no, I think it was, and I think there are quite a few levels at the end that are like really difficult. And they’re not like, you know, Mario, Mario maker difficult, right? Like they’re not like insane. You have to have like split second reflexes to ever do this, but especially the very last level,
(0:17:53) Al: which you know, when you get to it, that one in particular was so frustrating.
(0:17:55) Micah: I had…
(0:17:58) Al: I, I’m not joking when I say I, it took me 60 lives to get through that game, that level.
(0:18:05) Micah: Holy smokes, I had actually read someone had had said that they felt like it was the closest to Mario.
(0:18:16) Micah: An official Mario game has come to feeling like a Kaizo Mario game, which if you don’t know, Kaizo Mario games you like, they call them like Iron Man Mario games.
(0:18:28) Micah: Like insanely impossible, like super, you know, reflex.
(0:18:35) Micah: Heavy like you have to jump with a shell at the right time and then kick off of that shell at the right time so that it hits a wall at the right time and then jump off of that shell after the fact, you know, all of these like really precise movements and things like that.
(0:18:51) Micah: And they said, well, it’s not a Kaizo Mario level.
(0:18:51) Al: Yeah, there definitely are a few levels like that. I understand there are people who are like, “I want more like that,” and that’s fair. But yeah, I certainly think there are some levels in this that are some of the hardest that have ever been in a Mario game. So yeah,
(0:18:54) Micah: It is the closest that a core Mario game has come to feeling like a Kaizo game.
(0:19:09) Micah: Yeah. It’s really fun.
(0:19:12) Al: I really, really enjoyed it. I think it was fantastic. Yeah.
(0:19:15) Micah: It’s such a I was and I was really kind of like on the fence about the the the theme or like the aesthetic of it being like, you know, I don’t know, LSD induced, whatever is happening, whatever. Yeah, whatever hallucinogenic effects these.
(0:19:30) Al: Yeah, I was thinking more magic mushrooms, but yeah, sure.
(0:19:39) Micah: Wonder flowers have on these wonder seeds have on everybody.
(0:19:43) Micah: I was a little bit on the fence of like, OK, I don’t know if I’m, you know, elephant Mario and whatever. And it just felt a little too wacky, maybe to when I first saw the like trailer for it and stuff. Obviously, it still looked good.
(0:19:59) Micah: I was still interested in it. I’m happy that didn’t like deter me from it at all because it’s it’s awesome. It’s such a good Mario game.
(0:20:07) Micah: and that like aesthetic is…
(0:20:09) Micah: It’s really well done throughout the game without feeling overly wacky or whatever.
(0:20:13) Al: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s been a really good year for games because I also have been playing Spider-Man 2 and I’ve been loving that. It’s a great game. I feel like I think I’m like 80% through the main story, but there’s still quite a lot of side stuff that I need to do. But I’m at the point where I’m like, I just need to like finish, I need to main line the story, finish that before I tidy everything up.
(0:20:17) Micah: They’re killing it with Mario lately, huh?
(0:20:28) Micah: Yeah?
(0:20:46) Micah: I don’t know too much about what’s going on in Spider-Man 2, but from what I understand it’s both Peter Parker and Miles Morales and…
(0:20:56) Micah: Okay.
(0:20:56) Micah: Are you like swapping between them?
(0:20:56) Al: So the first game was… Yeah, so the first game was Peter Parker and then there was a Miles Morales game where Peter goes on holiday, and that’s the explanation as to why you’re just Miles. Okay, fine, sure, whatever. So what you can do is there are specific things that need to be done by one Spider-Man. So obviously, the storyline with Miles’ mum has to happen with Miles, right?
(0:20:59) Micah: Right. And then there was a Miles Morales game, right?
(0:21:04) Micah: Okay.
(0:21:08) Micah: Got it.
(0:21:10) Micah: He needs a break.
(0:21:24) Al: It doesn’t make any sense for it to be Peter.
(0:21:25) Micah: Right. Right.
(0:21:26) Al: And the stuff with Mary Jane has to be done with Peter, it can’t be done with Miles.
(0:21:30) Al: And there’s like a few kind of like side stuff, like there’s one of the like collectibles thing is to do with Peter’s job, and one of them is to do with Miles’ uncle,
(0:21:43) Al: and so those obviously need to be done with that Spider-Man. But other than that…
(0:21:46) Micah: can’t be with Peter’s uncle but is that am I allowed to say that I don’t know I’m allowed to say
(0:21:55) Al: Wow.
(0:21:56) Al: Oh, my, but other than that, you can just freely switch between the Spider-Man.
(0:22:06) Al: So you’re just floating around and you can just pause the game and press square and switch to the other one and they’ll pop in and you can do whatever you want.
(0:22:14) Al: So I have generally just been going through the game because obviously the story switches you between them for different parts of the story.
(0:22:21) Al: So I’ve just kind of continued with whatever
(0:22:23) Al: and they’ve dropped me in on until they then switch me.
(0:22:26) Al: Just because I felt like that’s the way that kind of felt most natural to me.
(0:22:30) Al: But it’s been quite enjoyable doing that.
(0:22:34) Al: Obviously, they have different powers.
(0:22:36) Al: They’re not exactly the same.
(0:22:38) Al: And they do some things that I’m not going to spoil to kind of level Peter up.
(0:22:43) Al: Because obviously, Miles has his electricity powers,
(0:22:47) Al: which makes him objectively better than Peter.
(0:22:51) Micah: Oh, I didn’t even know that was a thing.
(0:22:52) Al: Oh, do you not know this?
(0:22:53) Al: this. Yeah, so miles can go invisible, first of all.
(0:22:54) Micah: What?
(0:22:56) Al: You don’t know this! Yeah, oh my word. There’s so much Spider-Man lore you don’t know. So miles can go invisible, but he also has electricity powers, so he can zap people and stuff like that, which Peter obviously doesn’t have. But those powers, one from a different reality.
(0:22:58) Micah: I didn’t know this.
(0:22:59) Micah: No.
(0:23:10) Micah: What kind of spider did that come from? Sorry, never.
(0:23:13) Micah: Oh, okay, well.
(0:23:16) Al: No, I’m not even joking. That’s serious. Anyway, not important. How far deep do we need to
(0:23:19) Micah: Yeah, I can see that.
(0:23:26) Al: go with this? But that makes him objectively better to play as than Peter Parker. So they have had to do something to level up Peter Parker. And I’m not gonna say what that is,
(0:23:39) Al: but they do it, and it feels great. Like, you don’t feel like you need to be miles.
(0:23:44) Al: It doesn’t feel like he’s automatically better than miles. I think they’ve balanced it really well. So you feel like you can be either of them. And it will be interesting to see whether
(0:23:57) Al: those powers continue on to the next game. I’ll be interested to see what they do then,
(0:24:02) Al: but it’s been good fun.
(0:24:02) Micah: I maybe this is what I thought I don’t know how I would know this is a spoiler but I thought I had seen me and maybe I’m like crossing the wires between other something else Spider-Man but this does Peter is like the was it the symbiote or whatever not in the that yeah like Venom’s like doesn’t just does Peter get because there’s like a symbiote suit for
(0:24:23) Al: Venom.
(0:24:25) Al: Venom is in this game.
(0:24:32) Micah: isn’t there like in in Spider-Man lore I don’t know I don’t know is it I thought I like I thought this was in the trailer but also I don’t know for sure okay because that’s a thing that’s existed in Spider-Man lore for like a while right is that at some point Spider-Man has like a symbiote like suit right I don’t know okay all right we can cut all this out
(0:24:34) Al: All right, so we’re just fully smiling this, then, are we?
(0:24:42) Al: I mean, well, Venom is in the trailer, sure,
(0:24:46) Al: but it doesn’t really talk about what that means.
(0:24:56) Al: Yeah, I don’t want to say too much. I don’t want to say too much. I mean, people who know a lot of Spider-Man lore are going to be able to predict a lot of this story, right? Like,
(0:25:03) Micah: I don’t know how to spoil anything but okay sure yeah
(0:25:08) Al: it’s not fresh and new, but it’s still fun to do. And, you know, I think a lot of people don’t aren’t that deep into Spider-Man lore. What I will say is one really annoying thing.
(0:25:19) Al: So yeah, Venom’s in this game. Do you know what Miles’ electricity powers are called?
(0:25:22) Micah: electricity powers?
(0:25:23) Al: No, they’re called venom.
(0:25:24) Micah: Wait, what?
(0:25:27) Al: He calls them venom! His venom powers! I don’t know why!
(0:25:28) Micah: I’m confused. Wait, why does he…
(0:25:31) Micah: Oh, that’s weird.
(0:25:34) Al: So there’s two venoms in this game and it’s driving me insane.
(0:25:36) Micah: What a weird decision.
(0:25:39) Al: Also, my other annoyance with this game, right? I love the game, but my other annoyance is they just refer to each other as Spider-Man.
(0:25:50) Al: So you’ll be like “Oh, hey Spider-Man, oh hey Spider-Man!” So they’re constantly just referring to Spider-Man when they’re talking.
(0:25:56) Al: It’s worse because the subtitles will say “Spider-Man is saying this” so it’ll say “Spider-Man colon” and then what he says.
(0:26:00) Micah: No way!
(0:26:02) Al: But you’re like “Which one?” But they try and deal with that by having a little face, right? So there’s two little faces, right?
(0:26:02) Micah: Oh, I see.
(0:26:08) Al: But it’s of the mask. But the problem is, do you know what the masks are? The masks are red and black or black and red.
(0:26:09) Micah: They’re both wearing a mask.
(0:26:12) Micah: Okay.
(0:26:15) Al: And these are teeny tiny little images on a 40-inch screen 12 feet away from me.
(0:26:23) Al: I can’t figure out which one it is, it’s dre-
(0:26:25) Micah: Yeah, this seems like an oversight a little bit
(0:26:26) Al: It’s real bad! And I’ve turned the subtitle size up to max, because I like reading subtitles.
(0:26:37) Al: It helps me understand what’s- But the picture’s still tiny! Why is the picture so tiny? And also,
(0:26:40) Micah: ID too, same boat
(0:26:44) Al: you change their suits, right? Nobody stays in the default suits in this game. That’s part of the fun of it, is changing your suits. So I needed to- Part of my problem is that I always- I have a very
(0:26:56) Al: specific aesthetic of Spider-Man suit that I like, but I can’t put them both in the same aesthetic,
(0:27:01) Al: because then I can’t figure out whose is who. So I’ve had to do like- So I have to decide that this is the colour for Peter, and this is the colour for Miles, and I’ve had to kind of stick with that,
(0:27:11) Al: so that I can tell them apart on screen. I know, I know. But it’s- But it is really fun. It’s a really fun game. It has done the same thing, in my opinion, for Spider-Man.
(0:27:13) Micah: What a nightmare.
(0:27:26) Al: Spider-Man games, that Tears of the Kingdom did for Zelda games. I think it’s done- It has taken a game and done what you think is basically the same thing, but then layered so much more on top of it that it feels so good.
(0:27:41) Micah: Yeah, huh It looks really good. I didn’t it seems like the reaction to it has been very good. I just saw today I saw it tick-tock that was somebody saying like I Don’t care what you say Miles and Morales and Peter Parker are my friends. They’re real people. They’re my friends They’re we’re we’re best friends. They’re the boys like And I think you know just saying that like the characters are done so well that it feels like they’re you know
(0:28:11) Micah: um but I Not knowing really much about spider-man There is a part of me that wants to play it purely out of like seeing how much Like open world traversal there is for like I’m a big sucker for when there’s like true to life in-game recreations of like real locations So like being able to traverse New York City, I feel like would be
(0:28:42) Micah: very fun, even if it’s just I Have not no I Uh Not no, not really that I can remember I mean I do I’ve seen people play them and I’ve seen like, you know, there’s a Again on tick-tock. There’s like occasionally I’ll see a tick-tock live of somebody. That’s just like No camera or anything. It’s just their their gameplay of them Swinging as spider-man and I’m assuming the like previous one but it.
(0:28:43) Al: So if you don’t play any Spider-Man game, even like the early 2000s ones or anything,
(0:28:50) Al: the Tobey Maguire tie-in film ones, no, that’s fine.
(0:29:06) Al: Yeah. It’s absolutely incredible. It’s absolutely incredible, Michael. There’s no traversal in another game that is as fun as this, and they added extra stuff on to what the games had before to make it even more… You have a wingsuit now, so you can fly. So you can swing and swing and go high, and then you fly in your wingsuit, and you can… You’re gliding, right? You’re not flying,
(0:29:36) Al: ages. And there’s slip streams around the city, so you can go so fast through the city if you catch the right slip stream, and they’ve added in a bunch of stuff. You can surf on the water for a short period of time and then jump back up and stuff like that. There’s so much in… It’s so fun.
(0:30:00) Al: It’s just incredible. And there’s also stuff like you might have seen… Have you you haven’t seen any of the NPC conversations.
(0:30:06) Al: There’s like full-on full-on 10, 15, 20 minute conversations that these NPCs have.
(0:30:07) Micah: I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve seen any of the NPC stuff or like
(0:30:17) Micah: Oh, like, not like cutscenes, it’s just like listening to people.
(0:30:18) Al: If you like just drop down onto the street, no, if you just drop down and there’s two people talking, they will have a full-on conversation for 15 minutes about the most random stuff.
(0:30:29) Al: But it makes sense.
(0:30:30) Al: It’s incredible.
(0:30:31) Al: Like there was there’s ones that I’ve seen which is like, you know, people who were on a work site and they were complaining about their boss.
(0:30:36) Al: And then there were people who were talking about like their children and then there’s just so many and it’s wild.
(0:30:43) Al: I cannot imagine like it just feels like they’ve gotten in some voice actors and said riff on this and they’ve just spent 20 minutes talking about it.
(0:30:50) Micah: Yeah, I can imagine that would be the best way to do that too is to just have people like That’s awesome Who’s the is it rocksteady as a developer Oh insomniac, okay
(0:30:51) Al: But it’s incredible.
(0:30:52) Al: Yeah.
(0:30:54) Al: But they’re everywhere.
(0:30:57) Al: I don’t understand how they’ve done it.
(0:30:59) Al: It’s like so much.
(0:31:01) Al: It’s not.
(0:31:02) Al: It’s Insomniac.
(0:31:06) Al: It’s incredible.
(0:31:07) Al: And it’s also they’re doing a Wolverine game as well coming out in a we don’t know when but presumably like five years or something like that.
(0:31:10) Micah: Oh, okay, cool.
(0:31:12) Micah: Yeah.
(0:31:13) Al: Who knows.
(0:31:14) Al: It’s made me really excited for that because like I’m just yeah.
(0:31:17) Al: Well I say so yeah having so much fun.
(0:31:19) Al: And we probably don’t need to get into a huge conversation about this but also been playing the watermelon games.
(0:31:26) Al: It’s a week out game or whatever they call it.
(0:31:26) Micah: Yep. I think everybody at least has touched it at some point or see.
(0:31:28) Al: It’s been good.
(0:31:32) Al: If you haven’t played it.
(0:31:33) Al: If you haven’t seen it go play it.
(0:31:34) Al: Go watch a video of it.
(0:31:36) Micah: And it’s like, what’d you say? $2?
(0:31:37) Al: Yeah.
(0:31:38) Al: Something like that.
(0:31:38) Micah: I bought it when I was on the Japanese eShop.
(0:31:39) Al: A thousand yen or something.
(0:31:40) Micah: So it was like, I don’t know.
(0:31:43) Micah: Yeah, it was like 200 yen or something.
(0:31:43) Al: I do even know is what that means.
(0:31:45) Al: Yep.
(0:31:46) Micah: Yeah.
(0:31:47) Micah: It was– yeah, it’s very cheap.
(0:31:48) Al: Yeah it’s very cheap and loads of fun.
(0:31:50) Micah: It’s like $2 on the–
(0:31:54) Al: I like I play a couple of times a day.
(0:31:56) Al: It’s good fun.
(0:31:58) Al: Oh this is.
(0:31:58) Micah: very good. Yeah, we there’s not a whole lot to say about watermelon. You drop you drop fruits into a bucket and they combine if you match them and just don’t overflow the bucket and that’s it. Yeah. It reminds me of there’s some like old arcade game I can’t remember what it was where you’d like shoot balls at each other and if you hit the same color balls then they would combine into like.
(0:32:01) Al: We talk a little.
(0:32:07) Al: Yeah.
(0:32:10) Al: It’s like physics version of Candy Crush or whatever.
(0:32:15) Al: Or marriage was the marriage marriage games.
(0:32:27) Al: Yeah, I think there’s a few, yeah, there’s a few different games that have done this similar sort of thing.
(0:32:28) Micah: a different color and it was like that same.
(0:32:31) Micah: Yeah.
(0:32:34) Al: This just does it really nicely and the physics aspect of it changes the game entirely because like you drop one and it bounces off stuff and you don’t know for certain where it’s going to go.
(0:32:45) Al: So it adds a little bit of, you know, just randomness to that as well, which is fun.
(0:32:49) Al: Oh my God, this isn’t going to be a short episode, is it?
(0:32:51) Micah: No, I guess not.
(0:32:52) Al: We’re going to talk about some news after half an hour.
(0:32:56) Al: Um
(0:32:57) Al: So, first of all we get Disney Dreamlight Valley. Um, so before we get into the brand new news about this, I just need to talk to you Micah. So, had you seen that the game’s no longer going to be free to play?
(0:33:08) Micah: I did. You are actually not the only person to have reached out to me after the news dropped to ask me how I felt about it. Well, I mean, I feel like, you know, if I had to pay for it,
(0:33:09) Al: How do you feel?
(0:33:25) Micah: then everybody else should. I’m just kidding. It’s kind of a weird move to like start something and say like it’s free to play because usually it’s the other it’s the other way around right like something is paid for it’s like a paid experience and then eventually when it’s not performing the way that they want it to anymore then they move it to free to play like that’s usually the way it goes not the other way around where it starts free to play and they’re like actually you know what we’re gonna charge money for this kind of a weird thing but
(0:33:30) Al: Justice!
(0:33:30) Al: Or it’s going to be free to play, yeah.
(0:33:55) Al: Yeah. Well, it’s also a bit weird because it never was and isn’t going to be now free to play. The weird thing is it’s not gone free to play too paid. It’s gone from paid but we’ll be free to play to actually, no, we’re not going to be free to play.
(0:34:13) Micah: Yeah, yes, like free to play, but you have to pay for, like,
(0:34:17) Micah: stuff to get access to it anyways, like.
(0:34:22) Al: It’s wild, it’s weird, it’s weird, but anyway.
(0:34:22) Micah: Yeah, it is a weird thing.
(0:34:25) Micah: I don’t I don’t really know how I feel.
(0:34:30) Micah: Other than that, like it’s it seems like a weird choice for them.
(0:34:34) Micah: I now my concern is, are they going to charge me
(0:34:34) Al: I mean you must be less frustrated about buying it now. So they’re not. So I guess what I should say, just a quick summary for people who haven’t listened. So the game is going to come out of Early Access on the 5th of December. There will be a new update at that point. We got more details about that.
(0:34:42) Micah: again for the actual
(0:34:43) Micah: game since everything that I bought was like basically cosmetic stuff and currency will there be an actual okay, all right good
(0:35:04) Al: last week, so I’ll detail. We’ll go over that in a minute. But your early access will continue on. And in fact, you will get extra stuff because you were early access. So you will you get like there’s a few extra cosmetics, including you get capybara. So, you know,
(0:35:16) Micah: Oh. Okay.
(0:35:24) Micah: Oh Now I’m not upset at all I was a little bit upset but now I’m not Yeah I’m not like opposed to that, but I’m curious to see the I know we have a roadmap that we’re gonna look at But I’m curious to see how frequent paid is gonna come into play because that can kind of
(0:35:27) Al: here we go. But, but, but.
(0:35:34) Al: they are doing paid DLCs, which will
(0:35:46) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple small things first. So first of all, the soundtrack for Disney Dreaming Valley is out. You can go get, go stream it or buy it now. So that’s, that’s a thing. I feel like it’s a pretty standard thing for games now. Except Pokemon games.
(0:36:03) Micah: That’s also interesting thing, because I don’t know.
(0:36:07) Micah: That’s not like, you know.
(0:36:10) Micah: Yeah, I suppose so.
(0:36:12) Micah: I feel like the standard thing is like, they’re available,
(0:36:16) Micah: or like you get the soundtrack with the game or something and not, you know, like, the soundtrack’s out and you can buy it if you want.
(0:36:23) Micah: I don’t know, maybe that’s.
(0:36:25) Micah: And I don’t know that there was anything really like distinct about the Dreamlight Valley soundtrack that had me like,
(0:36:30) Al: No, no, it’s no, it’s no Stardew Valley soundtrack.
(0:36:31) Micah: Oh, I got to get this.
(0:36:33) Micah: But I don’t know, yeah, that on the other hand outpaid over and over for that.
(0:36:36) Al: So the 5th of December update, the 1.0 update, if you will, has been detailed a little bit.
(0:36:48) Al: So Jack Skellington will be coming.
(0:36:49) Al: Weird that this is coming.
(0:36:51) Al: I mean, I guess maybe it makes sense it’s coming between Halloween and Christmas, but I feel like why isn’t this out just before Halloween?
(0:36:57) Al: I don’t know.
(0:36:58) Micah: You know, I just had this conversation about Nightmare Before Christmas with someone that I work with who said that Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas movie and not a Halloween movie and I argued that it’s both.
(0:37:12) Al: It’s both. It’s, of course, it’s both, right?
(0:37:14) Micah: But then there were other people that agreed with them that said, yeah, it’s more of a Christmas movie than it is a Halloween movie, which like, it’s actually both.
(0:37:15) Al: And it…
(0:37:16) Al: No.
(0:37:18) Al: It’s literally both.
(0:37:22) Al: It’s literally both.
(0:37:24) Al: This is not a diehard thing, and I’m not going to have that argument,
(0:37:27) Al: because my argument about a diehard is, “I don’t care, shut up.” Right?
(0:37:31) Al: But, like, this is not… This is literally half Halloween, half Christmas.
(0:37:32) Micah: No, this is explicitly bold.
(0:37:35) Micah: Yes.
(0:37:37) Al: It’s about both holidays.
(0:37:40) Al: It just seems like people…
(0:37:40) Micah: Thank you, I feel vindicated.
(0:37:42) Al: People feel this need to categorise things so that they feel they can watch it at Christmas, right?
(0:37:48) Al: And it’s like, you can watch it at Christmas, you can watch it at Halloween.
(0:37:53) Al: It’s both. I mean, you can watch it whenever you want, but like, no one’s going to look at it…
(0:37:53) Micah: You can watch it whenever you want. Yeah.
(0:37:59) Al: I watched it on… I hadn’t watched Nightmare before Christmas, before this year.
(0:38:04) Micah: Oh, really?
(0:38:05) Micah: Thoughts?
(0:38:05) Al: Just hadn’t got around to it, so I watched it a few days before Halloween. Really liked it.
(0:38:09) Al: liked it. It was good fun. Good say. I mean,
(0:38:12) Al: some of the songs are incredible. It starts out particularly well. Like it’s like comes out of the gate crashing. Like I’m a, it’s really good. Very weird. I enjoyed it. Anyway.
(0:38:25) Al: Uh, yeah. So Jax Galton coming to Disney Dreamlight Valley and also multiplayer. So if you really want multiplayer, I’m not going to play multiplayer. Don’t make me play multiplayer. But if you
(0:38:36) Micah: I can’t imagine the multiplayer being super smooth based on the gameplay, but I don’t know, maybe.
(0:38:45) Al: I feel like it’s going to be basically Animal Crossing multiplayer, like it’s not going to be like Stardew Valley multiplayer or anything like that, it’s going to be visiting someone’s village to see what they’ve done.
(0:38:47) Micah: I don’t know.
(0:38:49) Micah: Yeah, yeah, that probably.
(0:38:54) Micah: Well, because there’s, I mean, they say in the, what’s the wording for that?
(0:39:04) Al: enter the valley verse with your friends. Maybe that’s a special place then.
(0:39:07) Micah: » See, when I had originally read it, I thought maybe that it was like interacting with Jack Skellington in the Valleyverse with your friends,
(0:39:18) Micah: as if you can do whatever that story content is with them, but maybe I just read that
(0:39:27) Al: So this update also introduces the highly anticipated multiplayer mode, allowing you and up to three friends to visit each other’s valleys.
(0:39:34) Al: Oh, there you go, visit each other’s valleys.
(0:39:36) Micah: Okay, yeah.
(0:39:36) Al: From showing off your eye for design to checking ScroogeMcDuck’s stock in another v- It’s Animal Crossing.
(0:39:38) Micah: Next.
(0:39:39) Micah: Yep.
(0:39:43) Micah: Okay.
(0:39:45) Micah: That I can see a little bit more than like,
(0:39:47) Micah: ‘cause when I’d read it, I thought it was, you know,
(0:39:50) Micah: you could do story content with your friends,
(0:39:52) Micah: and that to me felt like that would be a very not smooth experience.
(0:39:56) Al: Yeah, that, yeah.
(0:39:57) Micah: But if it’s just like, come check out my valley,
(0:39:58) Al: Perhaps more exciting is the fact that the multiplayer mode would continue to evolve over time as new ways to interact with your friends are added in future updates.
(0:40:08) Al: Okay, well we’ll deal with them when they come, but yeah, basically the launch version is basically what Animal Crossing does.
(0:40:09) Micah: Hmm Yeah when they’re on a When they’re on a content roadmap, then we’ll look at it
(0:40:15) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, give us the give us the details.
(0:40:22) Al: So then we’ve had more information about the paid DLC so
(0:40:26) Al: we’ve got a content roadmap with a lot of stuff in this. I’ll link this in the show notes so you can go have a look at it but we have detailed five free updates and three I’m pretty sure three of the same paid DLC updates so this is I think one pack that you pay for and you get these three updates I don’t think these are three separate paid things because it’s all part of one One story, basically.
(0:40:50) Micah: Hmm, okay Oh sure
(0:40:57) Al: So this paid expansion, which is called a Rift in Time, you visit a place called Eternity Isle,
(0:41:05) Al: and you meet Rapunzel, Gaston, and Eve, and go through some adventures with them. And then the spring 2024 says, explore ancient’s landing to uncover more of its secrets and befriend a very lucky villager and you also see
(0:41:26) Al: in that picture Gaston, Eve and Rapunzel and then it says some
(0:41:29) Micah: Mm-hmm Who do you think the very lucky villagers I?
(0:41:34) Micah: Couldn’t figure out from that. I don’t have enough Disney knowledge to based on whatever that door is to maybe look
(0:41:41) Al: I don’t know and then summer 2024 it says foil Jafar’s schemes and fix the rift in time so that feels to me like three parts of this one paid day.
(0:41:54) Micah: Yeah, that makes complete sense, I think.
(0:41:58) Micah: I think that you’re totally right.
(0:42:00) Al: Yes, yes, so Jafar being very clearly, he’s the big baddie of this DLC, and that’s interesting.
(0:42:00) Micah: And obviously, introduction of Aladdin characters
(0:42:13) Al: Interesting that Jafar is the first Aladdin
(0:42:15) Micah: And also that it’s not like sticking to one series, like one movie.
(0:42:22) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(0:42:24) Micah: It’s like Rapunzel, Gaston, Eve versus Jafar.
(0:42:28) Micah: It’s not like.
(0:42:29) Al: And one other character, one other person that we don’t know who yet, like wild.
(0:42:30) Micah: And yeah, a mystery character.
(0:42:37) Al: Oh, yeah, actually, it does say so in these mysterious lands, you will embark on a new main story involving Jafar and the very fabric of time itself taking place across three acts all included in the expansion purchase.
(0:42:49) Al: confirmation that those three updates between.
(0:42:52) Al: December and summer will be the one purchase, which is thirty dollars, I think.
(0:42:57) Micah: It’s not too bad if it’s like a yearly thing, like a yearly expansion purchase or like even,
(0:42:59) Al: It’s not it does seem yeah.
(0:43:06) Micah: you know, half a year or whatever, which it seems like that probably they’re doing here December 5th to summer 2024.
(0:43:15) Micah: It’s like a six month, six months of content for like 30 bucks.
(0:43:20) Micah: I guess that’s not too bad.
(0:43:22) Al: It’s not terrible. It’s not terrible. We’ll see how it… And I think on top of that they are then obviously doing these other free updates. So obviously we’ve got the the 1.0 release in December which gives you Jack Skellington and the multiplayer and then late winter. It says 2024. It’s a very confusing saying winter 2024. What it means is January or February, right?
(0:43:39) Micah: which yeah of 2024 yet.
(0:43:46) Al: Yeah, it was just like don’t word it like that. Like this is just whatever.
(0:43:52) Al: That is obviously some monster ink related stuff. We’ve got Mike Wazowski and it says scream with excitement as a new realm door opens. And then we’ve got early spring 2024,
(0:44:04) Al: a vibrant new villager moves to the valley. I have no idea who…
(0:44:07) Micah: Don’t either I was trying to figure that out, but it there’s like there’s like a daisy duck on the front on the like Mast of that ship and I don’t know what that I don’t know if this is like a again, not sure I have the Disney knowledge to know what that’s from but I’m sure it’s from some specific Mickey Mouse movie or you know
(0:44:15) Al: Oh yeah, interesting.
(0:44:32) Micah: episode or whatever something I’m sure it’s from something really
(0:44:32) Al: They’re getting very vague at this point, realistically, right? Because then we’ve got late spring 2024 and it just says, “You don’t find a realm like this every dynasty.” And you’re like, “Oh, for goodness sake, where are we going with this? My word.” Like, someone will know this because there’s some insane fan who knows everything based on… I don’t I don’t know.
(0:44:44) Micah: Which like,
(0:44:46) Micah: I feel like that’s Mulan.
(0:44:53) Micah: Is that not based on the word dynasty?
(0:44:57) Micah: I don’t know.
(0:45:02) Micah: I feel like that that’s probably Mulan,
(0:45:02) Al: Do the flowers relate to that? Like, there’s flowers coming out the door?
(0:45:05) Micah: but they’re just doing like, they’re,
(0:45:11) Al: I feel like a Taylor Swift fan right now. And then we’ve got…
(0:45:18) Micah: ‘Cause the Mulan is set in the northern Wei Dynasty.
(0:45:19) Al: Yeah.
(0:45:24) Micah: So I don’t know. I don’t know.
(0:45:28) Al: And then we’ve got summer 2024, which that’s the princess and the frog.
(0:45:32) Al: Right. That picture is the, I can’t remember her name.
(0:45:33) Micah: yes. Uh, shoot. I forgot. Tiana. I think maybe, I don’t know what those are, maybe Benet’s,
(0:45:35) Al: I’ve never seen it.
(0:45:36) Al: Who’s the princess name from Princess and the Frog?
(0:45:39) Al: Ba ba ba ba. Tiana.
(0:45:42) Al: Good timing there.
(0:45:44) Al: Both Googling at the same time.
(0:45:51) Micah: which I like the, um, that like French.
(0:45:55) Al: the French pastry thing. I think a lot of French stuff is pastry.
(0:45:59) Micah: But it’s also like, it’s like a fritter, but it’s like a
(0:46:12) Al: So that’s five updates, five free updates in the same time that we’re getting the three parts of the one paid DLC.
(0:46:21) Al: So what I do have one small issue still that with this not free to play thing and and having paid DLC is that they’re still going to have their in game currency that you have to pay for as well, which just like you can buy the game, you can buy the DLC and you can also by around the world.
(0:46:42) Al: And it just feels like they’re, you know, double dipping there.
(0:46:52) Micah: Yeah, I don’t know. I I guess it my first thought was that it feels similar to like I don’t know like destiny or something where it’s like you have a Like expansion that you pay for and then they do like Event stuff throughout that like season quote-unquote like expansion season or it’s free stuff And you have to like still buy the main game and then the expansions
(0:47:22) Micah: So like there is precedent for it It just is a really weird move to go from like it’s gonna be free to play -
(0:47:30) Micah: It’s not free to play also We’re gonna charge you for it But also there’s gonna be paid expansions for it - like it’s like doubling down on charging for it like Interesting choice, but Especially interesting considering that I don’t feel like it’s a very like widely talked about game I feel like the fan base is…
(0:47:52) Micah: …not massive for Dreamlight Valley.
(0:47:53) Al: Yeah, I mean, let’s see, like, a lot of that may well be due to being early access, right?
(0:47:54) Micah: So it seems like a weird move to like…
(0:48:02) Al: And let’s see what happens over the next couple of months, right? Like, there might be a massive push for it, like, you never know what.
(0:48:08) Micah: Yeah, I didn’t realize that Gameloft was the developer for it, they are also the developer for Speedstorm, so they must, I don’t know, maybe Disney is just buying them out or something.
(0:48:23) Al: Well yeah, I think they’re still doing a lot of other stuff. But it’s interesting that they kept free to play with Speedstorm, and they’ve not done it with this. Well yeah, but it’s out of early access, and it is free to play. Disney Dreamlight Valley has not been, and is not going to be free to play now. You know, like it’s…
(0:48:30) Micah: Well so far We’ll see what happened Yeah, yes Which is also weird because they’re on like season four of speedstorm like they counted You know the like early access seasons as like seasons one on so I Don’t know Just weird decisions all around
(0:48:49) Al: Right, just to add to the confusion in purchases, because as we mentioned last episode there are about seven different ways to buy this game. It’s also going to have an Apple Arcade version which will be obviously included in Apple Arcade, so if you have Apple Arcade you can get the game for free. Just to add more confusion to this, that will not have have cross-save, so it is unique to Apple Arcade.
(0:49:19) Al: We’ll have cross-play.
(0:49:25) Al: You can play multiplayer between Apple Arcade and the normal version, but you can’t play your same save across Apple Arcade and the normal version.
(0:49:34) Micah: Interesting decision.
(0:49:37) Al: Here’s what I think is interesting.
(0:49:40) Al: The way that Apple Arcade stuff works is there are no in-app purchases.
(0:49:44) Al: That is a rule around Apple Arcade.
(0:49:45) Al: You can’t have in-app purchases.
(0:49:48) Al: Normally, what that means is-
(0:49:49) Al: You can get everything in the game for free.
(0:49:53) Al: But they haven’t detailed specific-
(0:49:57) Al: The wording is vague as to whether the stuff in the starpaths and the premium shop are accessible at all or not.
(0:50:04) Micah: I would bet, this is just a guess, this is a gamble, but I would bet that it’s probably all free, it’s probably all included, and that is why you can’t connect your save to other things because then that would just give you the ability to access all of that stuff on your PlayStation or your Switch or whatever, where you are only actually getting that stuff.
(0:50:34) Micah: free because it’s Apple Arcade.
(0:50:36) Al: that is exactly my theory as well. Because if you enabled cross save between them, you pay for one month of Apple Arcade, you get everything for free, and then you just play it on the normal game. There’s no way they would do that.
(0:50:52) Micah: Yeah, because that’s the other thing is that like you’re paying monthly for Apple arcade So it’s not like you pay a one-time thirty dollar charge for six months of content you’re paying I Don’t ten dollars
(0:51:07) Al: Exactly. Which is why they do this thing of not having in-app purchases for these games.
(0:51:12) Al: But yeah, so here’s the wording just in case. So it says, “This version, exclusive to Apple Arcade,
(0:51:17) Al: will get you all the latest story updates without seasonal star paths or the premium shop.”
(0:51:22) Al: Now that, I think what that’s saying is you will get everything and not have to pay for it.
(0:51:30) Al: But the fact that it says, “Without seasonal star paths or the premium shop,”
(0:51:35) Al: Does that mean you get the content?
(0:51:37) Al: I don’t know. I don’t think we’re gonna know until the game releases, which is releasing the same day as the game comes out of Early Access.
(0:51:52) Al: I mean, I hadn’t purchased the game before because I’d when we’ve talked about it before, I played it on Game Pass.
(0:52:02) Al: because I had game pass and I was like I don’t really want to buy this game when it’s coming free to play.
(0:52:03) Micah: Right Yeah, so there wasn’t ever really an option to play it without it without paying some kind of money for it right like even on Steam there wasn’t was there like an Early access version that was like not Paid to access. Okay
(0:52:07) Al: So let’s play through game pass.
(0:52:09) Al: And so now
(0:52:17) Al: No. There was-
(0:52:26) Al: No, it was all paid. It was all paid. It was all paid. So the closest is if you have Game Pass,
(0:52:32) Al: then you got it essentially for free, but you’re still paying for Game Pass. So it’s free in the same way any game in Game Pass is free, right? So I’ve purchased it for Switch now. My final thought about this, my final annoyance of free to play is not that I have to pay for it. It’s that if I want to play it on multiple platforms, I have to buy it twice. That’s the annoying thing.
(0:52:34) Micah: Right. Right, yeah.
(0:52:55) Al: so I don’t get to try it out on Steam.
(0:52:56) Al: I just have to decide, so I just decided to buy it on Switch and that’s that’s that.
(0:53:02) Micah: Yep. Which I don’t know how you would get around that, right?
(0:53:08) Micah: Because like they’re in order to have their their game on that platform,
(0:53:12) Micah: they have to pay some whatever.
(0:53:16) Micah: So I’m curious how you can handle that.
(0:53:18) Al: There are there are ways there are ways to do it, right?
(0:53:22) Al: You can have purchasing things like this,
(0:53:24) Al: like all these games have in-app purchases for some things, right?
(0:53:29) Al: Like if you take like a fall guys or a what’s the shitty one?
(0:53:33) Al: Fornite like.
(0:53:36) Micah: Oh, yeah, if it’s a free-to-play game, yes, then yeah, definitely.
(0:53:38) Al: But but purchasing is still purchasing, right?
(0:53:42) Al: So if you purchase on one platform, that’s available on another.
(0:53:45) Al: So you could absolutely do right.
(0:53:47) Al: you can download the game for free.
(0:53:48) Al: But you have to then do an in-app purchase to actually play the game,
(0:53:51) Al: and then that lock unlocks on your account, which then you can play.
(0:53:55) Al: You could absolutely do that. Obviously, maybe it’s possible that the stores would go, “You’re not allowed to do that.” It’s possible,
(0:54:06) Micah: Right Yeah [laughter]
(0:54:07) Al: but technically that would be possible to do. But anyway, we’ve talked about this game enough.
(0:54:13) Al: Roots of Patcher.
(0:54:19) Al: They have a 1.1 update, which also will coincide with the PlayStation and Switch release,
(0:54:32) Al: which will include the 1.1 update in that. So there we go. That is on the 28th of November,
(0:54:39) Al: so the end of this month. And Xbox is coming next year, so saws.
(0:54:45) Al: I wonder whether it’s possible that that’s like a…
(0:54:48) Al: This is just speculation. That could be like timing-wise, maybe they want to be in Game Pass and that’s when they need to release for that or something like that, it could be.
(0:55:00) Al: Or it could just be that they’ve had some…
(0:55:02) Micah: Yeah, maybe.
(0:55:03) Micah: It could be that too.
(0:55:06) Micah: Yeah, it could just be that there’s some kind of, uh, like process that they have to go through this longer with the expo.
(0:55:14) Micah: I don’t know.
(0:55:15) Micah: I don’t know.
(0:55:16) Micah: That’s just kind of how it goes these days, I feel like.
(0:55:20) Al: So there’s a bunch of stuff in the update, probably most things won’t matter to people who haven’t played the game. One interesting thing is they’ve added divorces into the game.
(0:55:33) Al: They’re calling it breaking.
(0:55:38) Micah: Yeah, that’s an interesting addition because usually it’s the other way around.
(0:55:43) Micah: They’re like adding marriage into the game, but.
(0:55:45) Al: A bunch of other things as well, including a way to get your own meat and mushroom and herbs, some new cutscenes, lots of stuff. If you like that game, it looks like a pretty good update. I presume you haven’t played this.
(0:56:02) Micah: Hm.
(0:56:02) Micah: Uh, no, I have not.
(0:56:07) Al: It’s one of these games where it’s on my list because it does look interesting and I probably do want to play it, but my word, there’s so many things.
(0:56:14) Micah: There’s a lot. It’s really just got to pick and choose at this point.
(0:56:19) Al: The Ooblets 1.4 update is out now, so if you wanted your Ooblets and little carts in Oobmobiles,
(0:56:25) Al: now you can. Oobmobiles. That is their official name. Oobmobiles.
(0:56:27) Micah: Oobmobiles? Is that the official name?
(0:56:33) Al: I don’t really know what to say. There’s a department of Ooblet vehicles.
(0:56:44) Micah: I love the way their brains work.
(0:56:47) Al: Your obliques need to be level 10 to get a license.
(0:56:53) Micah: God, what a unique… Nobody’s doing it like them.
(0:56:57) Al: I love this game so much. I understand why some people don’t like it, but I love this game so much. I need to… There’s been quite a few stuff since…
(0:56:58) Micah: It’s really good.
(0:57:12) Al: I mean, that’s basically the only thing they added in that update, so there we go.
(0:57:17) Al: Everdream Valley also have an update coming, the big November update, 1.6, it is out now.
(0:57:24) Al: There’s owls, new sheep, they’ve got a lawnmower, new breed of sheep, butterfly houses, more flowers, a pond for your ducks. There’s lots of stuff.
(0:57:29) Micah: New sheep!
(0:57:42) Al: If you’re playing this game, I haven’t played this game either. I love that this was meant to be the big October update, but they didn’t get it out in October, so now it’s just big November update with a big scratch out on the October.
(0:57:45) Micah: I have also not played this Yeah It looks pretty though. It’s just I Never really been on my radar. It’s a nice-looking game
(0:58:00) Al: Yeah, yeah, Micah, I didn’t see this coming. There’s a Slime Rancher 2 update.
(0:58:06) Al: There’s an update to Slime Rancher 2. It’s just wild.
(0:58:08) Micah: I’m blown away by that I saw that in the notes and was had to double take read it again
(0:58:13) Al: Yeah, I’m reading this correctly. This is the Come Rain or Slime update, which by the way, I love that.
(0:58:24) Al: And it’s coming out on the 14th of November.
(0:58:29) Al: Expect to see our new video.
(0:58:30) Al: A new dynamic weather system and the return of fan favourites The Tangle and Dervish Slimes.
(0:58:37) Al: No, you’re not deep in the Slime Rancher lore.
(0:58:37) Micah: Don’t know what that means not enough slime rancher knowledge to know what that means, but Not enough I guess I gotta brush up on my slime rancher before this big update Yeah, weather system that’s like also like weird thing to be their next their big update is that they just added a weather system
(0:58:45) Al: But also weather.
(0:58:49) Al: Yeah, yeah.
(0:58:54) Al: I just…
(0:59:00) Al: But it’s like, I think this is the, like, this is…
(0:59:05) Al: Oh, this game is still in early access, apparently.
(0:59:08) Micah: Ohhhhhhohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
(0:59:08) Al: I missed that. I missed that. Well, um…
(0:59:15) Al: Yeah, I don’t… That’s interesting. It’s been in early access for over a year now.
(0:59:25) Micah: That’s a long time, man.
(0:59:31) Al: Well, there you go. So I don’t know what to say.
(0:59:36) Al: I guess what I will say is that Echoes of the Plum Grove,
(0:59:42) Al: their Kickstarter is now live and is already funded.
(0:59:47) Al: I mean, they did have like a five thousand dollar goal.
(0:59:49) Al: It’s not a very big one, but yeah.
(0:59:53) Al: Have you looked into this game?
(0:59:56) Micah: Have not echoes of the plum grove. I have not
(0:59:58) Al: So, oh my word, this game…
(1:00:01) Al: We’re pretty sure there’s murder in this game.
(1:00:05) Al: Right! Right! This is very… I described this last week, it’s very Paper Mario-esque art, right?
(1:00:05) Micah: Oh.
(1:00:06) Micah: You could have fooled me from the…
(1:00:11) Micah: the… uh… the page art.
(1:00:13) Micah: The Kickstarter page art.
(1:00:20) Al: That is basically what it is. But there’s a bit… I need to find it. There’s a bit which basically says, like, get to know people and bring them onto your side. And if not, there’s other persuasive tactics and
(1:00:31) Al: then it shows a funeral.
(1:00:33) Al: I yeah. I think it was on the steam page. I saw that. Let me just find it so echoes of the Plum Grove on steam says.
(1:00:33) Micah: What?
(1:00:34) Micah: Holy cow.
(1:00:50) Al: So there’s a little bit that says make friends or enemies and it’s like over an image of a funeral.
(1:00:57) Micah: That’s crazy.
(1:01:01) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s also…
(1:01:02) Micah: On the Kickstarter page, it shows a funeral and it just says how it just talks about how death comes for everyone and there’s no telling when someone will pass on.
(1:01:14) Micah: So cherish the time you have with them while you do.
(1:01:17) Micah: You know, I didn’t need existential crisis to go with my car.
(1:01:27) Al: Winter brings new levels of danger to players. With your very survival at stake, you’ll have
(1:01:31) Al: to work your land, fish the sea, cook… Let me tell you, what did we need? What did Cottage Court games need? More death, apparently. More stress. You can die by not sleeping in this game. Make sure you keep your sleep meter full by sleeping or your hunger meter full by eating. If you allow either to empty your character, will we
(1:01:40) Micah: Yeah Death and maybe we could put taxes in there to you death and taxes Oh
(1:02:01) Al: an unfortunate end.
(1:02:04) Micah: It’s a good thing that this isn’t realistic because my sleep meter has long since been depleted.
(1:02:16) Al: Where’s the persuasive bit? I need to find that because it was really odd wording. Oh, yeah, here it is. It’s in the description for this theme app. So, “A new life awaits in Honeywood. Build a thriving community that will last generations in this cozy farm simulator.
(1:02:31) Al: Farm, socialize, make friends, cook, craft, forage, and uncover the secrets of the island. If someone doesn’t want to be friends,
(1:02:39) Al: there are always other means.”
(1:02:41) Micah: Whoa!
(1:02:43) Micah: Yeah, that’s something.
(1:02:46) Al: I am fascinated by this. I’ve backed it on Kickstarter, right? Like this was a no-brainer for me. I am fascinated by this, like,
(1:02:56) Al: I really hope this isn’t just like, “Oh, we’re going to make it sound more interesting than it is,” and it just ends up being like, “Oh, don’t be friends then,” right?
(1:03:06) Al: Like, but I really, like, if you can murder people in this game, I really hope you can murder people in this game.
(1:03:06) Micah: Yeah, it’s.
(1:03:09) Micah: Al’s blood thirst needs to be quenched.
(1:03:16) Al: I didn’t think I wanted… I didn’t think I needed… That’s not something I ever considered I would want in a farming game.
(1:03:22) Al: But now I want it. Now that they’ve mentioned it, now I want it.
(1:03:23) Micah: Yeah.
(1:03:26) Micah: There was a I’m not going to go off on a huge change in here because I can already feel that I could, but there was a
(1:03:27) Al: I think I know what you’re going to say, but yeah.
(1:03:36) Micah: internet mystery, I guess, for a long time about a farming game that had some kind of like murder and cover up plot in it that people just could not figure out what it was or when it what it came from.
(1:03:47) Al: Yes.
(1:03:48) Al: If it even existed.
(1:03:53) Micah: If it even existed, there’s this whole I watched a video on it where they just did a whole breakdown of like all of the forum posts and everybody trying to find this game and see if it’s real and everything.
(1:04:05) Micah: So there is definitely.
(1:04:06) Micah: A market for that for a farming sim plus murder plot.
(1:04:09) Al: Yeah, well.
(1:04:11) Al: So the interesting thing is there is someone making one now.
(1:04:13) Micah: Yeah.
(1:04:16) Al: It’s called Grave Seasons, and it’s a basically it’s a murder.
(1:04:19) Micah: Which was a response directly to that, right?
(1:04:23) Al: I think so, yeah, it’s a murder mystery farming game.
(1:04:27) Al: So anybody could be the murderer and you have to figure out who they are.
(1:04:31) Al: So, yeah, that that does exist.
(1:04:35) Al: And I’m excited for when that eventually comes out.
(1:04:39) Micah: This has a little bit of like an uncanny, um, I don’t know, it’s like, it’s almost like Cabbage Patch Kids kind of character art that there’s like a little bit of a, maybe it’s because my, my initial impression of it is that maybe it also murder in the game that It’s adding to the slight creepiness factor of the character art.
(1:05:06) Al: Yeah. I think so. I think before that you’re like, oh, it’s just a cute little kind of farming game in the style of Paper Mario. And then you’re like, I’m sorry, what you might be able to murder in this game? Well, that changes everything. Like everything becomes creepy then.
(1:05:23) Micah: - Yeah, it’s just, it’s that everyone is smiling,
(1:05:26) Micah: they’ve all got like static smiles,
(1:05:28) Micah: and they also have like the proportions of like Cabbage Patch Kids,
(1:05:32) Al: In the funeral image on Steam, there’s one person smiling in the crowd.
(1:05:33) Micah: which are pretty creepy looking.
(1:05:41) Micah: Hmm, I’m gonna have to tune in for this one, I think.
(1:05:42) Al: Just saying, just saying.
(1:05:49) Al: So yeah, we’ll keep you up to date on that game, but there we go.
(1:05:55) Al: Snacko, speaking of games that we’re excited about.
(1:05:59) Al: I didn’t say that, but there we go.
(1:06:00) Micah: Snacko!
(1:06:01) Al: Snacko.
(1:06:02) Al: Snacko is going to come to Early Access, so they originally weren’t going to do this,
(1:06:06) Al: but they decided that they want to, so it’s fine.
(1:06:10) Al: Go for it.
(1:06:11) Al: They haven’t said when Early Access is coming, but I suspect it will be soon.
(1:06:17) Al: I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this year, if not really early next year, because 1.0,
(1:06:23) Al: they’ve said, will release next year on both PC and console.
(1:06:27) Al: They haven’t detailed what consoles.
(1:06:29) Al: Yeah. So, um, that, I mean, that’s really all.
(1:06:32) Al: There is to that. Um, I’m still very excited for this game. Um,
(1:06:36) Micah: Yes, they update so frequently on what they’re doing,
(1:06:39) Micah: what they’re working on.
(1:06:40) Micah: They can take however long they need, in my opinion.
(1:06:45) Micah: I have played the, they’re currently doing,
(1:06:48) Micah: I think right now, the Kickstarter beta is going on.
(1:06:51) Micah: And I played the, I haven’t played it yet since this one,
(1:06:55) Micah: ‘cause I’ve been out of the country,
(1:06:56) Micah: but the first Kickstarter beta,
(1:07:01) Micah: or alpha that they did, or whatever it was,
(1:07:03) Micah: it was a lot of fun.
(1:07:05) Micah: I’m very excited to see.
(1:07:06) Micah: How much things have changed since then because I know that there is a lot.
(1:07:08) Al: Yeah, I mean, I’m.
(1:07:11) Al: Yeah, and like my mind, I wasn’t I didn’t do the alpha or beta on Kickstarter.
(1:07:18) Al: So I haven’t played them, but I did play a really early build in when was that?
(1:07:24) Al: Twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
(1:07:27) Al: Something like that.
(1:07:29) Al: So it’s been years.
(1:07:30) Micah: Yeah, yeah, it’s been in development for a long time
(1:07:31) Al: So I’m really excited to see what happened,
(1:07:34) Al: really excited to see what how things have changed.
(1:07:37) Al: ‘cause even back then it felt really.
(1:07:38) Al: Good, and it felt really well put together so I can’t imagine how much better it’s going to be now I just I need to I need to find out.
(1:07:46) Micah: I just I just love that game so much already just as much as I’ve played a bit I already love that game a lot so I’m very excited for to Be able to play it on I don’t know switch or whatever handheld I’m sure I can play the beta and figure out how to play the beta on the steam deck, but You know, it’s always a more complicated experience than just
(1:08:08) Al: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it’s through… Well, it will be… Because the early access will be easier, because obviously that will just be through Steam. So you could just wait
(1:08:14) Micah: Being able to load it up directly from the store
(1:08:24) Micah: Right, yeah.
(1:08:26) Micah: Yeah, and I know that the beta went through Steam,
(1:08:32) Micah: but it was like a, you know, added non-Steam key,
(1:08:34) Al: complicated, yeah, more awkward.
(1:08:36) Micah: or whatever it is, yeah.
(1:08:38) Al: A couple small things just before we finish. So context to this one, obviously My Time at Sandrock, the sequel to My Time at Portia just came out last week, I think, and they’ve updated My Time at Portia. So what they say is we’ve used the optimization techniques we learned while porting my time at Sandrock and applying the water to the sandrock.
(1:09:04) Al: I will say the it is very significant difference I will also say it still takes six seconds to load the world when you leave a building. So I mean it’s better it is a 50% improvement but it’s still very slow.
(1:09:27) Micah: Sure Yeah It’s uh, I don’t know I saw I I didn’t even realize that it was happening But I did see in the every now and then I’ll go and check the e shop see what came out recently And I did see that my time at Sandrock was in there and there’s a little bit of like a oh, yeah Yeah, I forgot that was there I mean I’m not going to because of my experiences, but
(1:09:50) Al: Don’t do it, Micah.
(1:09:52) Al: Don’t do it, Micah.
(1:09:56) Al: Yeah.
(1:09:57) Micah: That’s my experiences, it’s not.
(1:09:58) Al: Ah.
(1:10:00) Al: I’m glad that some people liked my time at Pocha,
(1:10:02) Al: and I’m glad that people are enjoying my time at Sandrock,
(1:10:05) Al: but I’m not doing it.
(1:10:07) Micah: I had a lot of enjoyment in my terrible part. It’s mostly just the Switch port of it that I was not having the greatest time with and uh…
(1:10:16) Al: Yeah, yeah. Whereas, fundamentally, I just didn’t enjoy the crafting, which was my massive thing, which is a big flaw in a game that is a crafting game. It’s like saying you don’t like the farming in a farming game, right? Like, you’re just never going to enjoy that game in that case.
(1:10:35) Al: And Concerned Ape has posted something. I don’t know what this is.
(1:10:38) Micah: I feel like this always happens.
(1:10:42) Micah: I feel like every time I’m on, there’s like a cryptic concerned ape tweet.
(1:10:46) Al: - It’s not just every time you’re on.
(1:10:48) Al: It feels like every single episode for the last three months there’s been something.
(1:10:52) Al: What is this?
(1:10:53) Al: This is a fruit of some kind?
(1:10:55) Al: A blue fruit maybe is a Jojo-based thing, I don’t know,
(1:10:58) Al: but it has a face and sunglasses.
(1:11:01) Al: What is happening?
(1:11:02) Al: Is it Jojo Berry?
(1:11:02) Micah: That’s the… that’s the… the…
(1:11:04) Micah: Cool fruit.
(1:11:06) Micah: Cool… cool guy.
(1:11:09) Al: Is he alive?
(1:11:10) Al: I don’t know what to make of this.
(1:11:16) Al: Certainly Stardew Valley is a haunted chocolatey.
(1:11:18) Micah: Someone in the replies says “Broberry?”
(1:11:22) Micah: Someone also said “Mr. Coolberry?”
(1:11:24) Micah: I did not read that before I said that out loud.
(1:11:27) Micah: Yeah, someone said “Forbidden Jojo Berry.”
(1:11:33) Micah: I don’t know.
(1:11:34) Micah: It’s, I almost just wish that it’s like just,
(1:11:38) Micah: they made some pixel art that they thought was fun and posted it without context.
(1:11:40) Al: The question is, is this better or worse than the the tweet last week which was just wild
(1:11:52) Micah: You know, top contenders, both.
(1:11:56) Al: Oh, he must just have so much fun just posting these random things.
(1:12:01) Micah: Fruit, fruit with the sunglasses, pretty good though.
(1:12:04) Al: Oh my word, right, that’s the news.
(1:12:05) Micah: I’m pretty happy about that.
(1:12:11) Al: What a wild journey.
(1:12:13) Al: Uh, cool.
(1:12:16) Al: Should we talk about this game?
(1:12:18) Micah: Yeah, let’s do it That’s a good way to start it [laughing]
(1:12:19) Al: Harvest Moon, the Winds of Anthos.
(1:12:21) Al: Oh, Micah, I’m tired.
(1:12:26) Al: I’m so tired.
(1:12:27) Al: So, I want, I have so many thoughts.
(1:12:29) Al: The stuff that I’ve written down is the stuff that I wrote down on the first day I played this game, but I’ve just had so many thoughts the last few days trying to, like, form them.
(1:12:40) Al: Okay, in the year 2023, farming game developers, you need to give me a reason to play your game instead of Stardew Valley, right?
(1:12:51) Al: That’s still where we are.
(1:12:52) Al: Stardew Valley is still an incredible game, and it is a cosy game.
(1:12:56) Al: It’s a cosy, comfy place to live, and you need to give me a good reason to play it.
(1:13:01) Al: Fae Farm gave me a reason to play it, with its incredible traversal.
(1:13:05) Al: Other games like, you know, you’ve got what’s it called?
(1:13:10) Al: Oh, my word, words.
(1:13:11) Micah: my tenet portion i’m just kidding [laughs]
(1:13:12) Al: Roots of…
(1:13:13) Al: No, no, My Time of Portia did not give me a reason to play it.
(1:13:16) Al: Roots of Patcher gave me a reason to play it because it was interesting, different being,
(1:13:22) Al: you know, Stone Age type thing.
(1:13:24) Al: Ooblets give me a reason to play it because it’s just-
(1:13:26) Al: so ridiculous and cute.
(1:13:27) Al: Snacko gives me a reason to play it because cats.
(1:13:32) Al: I don’t know what this game is trying to do to make me play it.
(1:13:33) Micah: Yes, also art.
(1:13:36) Micah: Can can real quick before we start talking about the actual game,
(1:13:40) Al: And I just-
(1:13:44) Al: This game-
(1:13:51) Micah: let me just can I just give my first experience with the game?
(1:13:55) Micah: So I we were in talks about doing this episode
(1:14:00) Al: months ago, months ago.
(1:14:01) Micah: months ago before the game had actually
(1:14:03) Micah: come out. The timing was a little bit wonky because it released like a couple days before I was supposed to leave for Japan. So that doesn’t really leave a window of time to record an episode about it. Also not a whole lot of time to be able to play it if we’re recording before I leave. So we opted to record it after I got back and the game came out.
(1:14:33) Micah: I was kind of you know excited in that like it’s something that I’m looking forward to looking into. Like I’m excited about the idea of inspecting this new Harvest Moon.
(1:14:37) Al: It’s a new thing.
(1:14:47) Micah: Not that I’m actually excited for the game itself just I’m looking forward to the experience.
(1:14:51) Al: spoilers well especially considering what the previous one was that was that was fun in its own way
(1:14:59) Micah: Yes, I was a big selling factor of this game for me as has been the case with Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon in the past was that if you preordered it, you got a cow plush that I was very excited about.
(1:15:19) Micah: The release date came and my game had not shipped, and I instead got an email from Amazon that said something along the lines of.
(1:15:29) Micah: We don’t know when it’s going to ship and we’ll send you an email when it will will keep you updated, which is never a good sign so then I went to social media to see what other people’s experiences were and it was just people talking about how they had gotten their game.
(1:15:53) Micah: But they did not receive the cow plush and.
(1:15:59) Micah: Eventually, when people started getting them there were more people saying that they were not getting the cow plush and that they just did not have the cow plush anymore there also is a point where you could go on their website the like natsume website and just buy the plush so I kind of wonder if they just sold them all and then didn’t have enough for the preorders.
(1:16:19) Al: Oh no.
(1:16:29) Micah: Yes.
(1:16:33) Micah: And if you’re just flat out selling them, for like, I don’t know what it was,
(1:16:39) Micah: $10 or something, then the likelihood that people are gonna,
(1:16:44) Micah: you’re gonna have enough for your pre-orders is probably pretty low.
(1:16:48) Micah: So not the, not the greatest experience, but, so So I wound up canceling the pre-order and just, um, I had some
(1:16:59) Micah: you know, eShop credit and stuff that I had accrued, uh, always, by the way, redeem your gold coins from your physical software when you buy it. Always do that because you get gold coins and you can accrue a lot pretty quickly and then you can get free stuff on eShop. Well, you know,
(1:17:17) Micah: not free, but you get it. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. It does add up over time. Um,
(1:17:17) Al: Yep.
(1:17:18) Al: I mean, with each one you get 50 gold coins, which is worth 50 cents or 50 pence, wherever you are.
(1:17:25) Al: Like, that adds up.
(1:17:29) Micah: so I just bought it digitally, uh, cause I was running out of time. I wanted to play it on the flight. Um, and I wanted to play it while, when I had time, while I was overseas, uh, so that I could come back and then we could talk about it. So I unfortunately just caved and bought it, um,
(1:17:47) Al: I’m so sorry you had to do that.
(1:17:48) Micah: digitally. Uh, so, and I got no plush cow to show for it, which is the real, the real bummer.
(1:17:49) Al: Now it’s going to be sitting on your Switch home screen forever taunting.
(1:17:59) Micah: Story of seasons could never, although I’ve always gotten my pre-order plushies or whatever from marvelous. Um, yeah, so that was my, that was my first experience with the game,
(1:18:07) Al: Okay. No, not great. So, so yeah, okay, right. So, I, yeah. So I think, would you agree with me when I say that this is, this is, this is now a story farming game. This is not like,
(1:18:13) Micah: which was not off to a, uh, a really great start.
(1:18:30) Al: so many farming games that will do, they will have some story, but like the story is there as a thing that you can do alongside everything else.
(1:18:37) Al: Whereas this game very much feels like it’s saying “No no, the farming is a thing you do to do the story.”
(1:18:43) Micah: Yes, I do feel like it.
(1:18:47) Micah: This is where it’s weird because I felt like that so much with the Doraemon story of seasons, that it was like primarily story.
(1:18:55) Al: Yes.
(1:18:57) Al: Yeah, but that was a good story.
(1:18:58) Micah: I do feel like there is a lot more.
(1:19:05) Micah: Non story gameplay in this, at least as much as I have played.
(1:19:12) Micah: And I think a lot of that is because.
(1:19:13) Micah: There’s much more open world stuff to do.
(1:19:17) Micah: I will start this by saying, I think it’s safe to say it’s clear that you are not a fan of this game based on what I’ve heard.
(1:19:18) Al: It’s a big game. It’s a big game, definitely.
(1:19:20) Al: I am not. I’m not a fan of– So it’s interesting, like, if we take each individual part of this game,
(1:19:25) Micah: So.
(1:19:31) Al: there are things that I dislike, but in general, each individual part is actually generally pretty good. I have some issues with them. But part of the problem is, I just, even with that,
(1:19:41) Al: it doesn’t feel like everything meshes well together, and it’s hard to explain why,
(1:19:45) Al: but the game really did not grab me.
(1:19:48) Al: Like, I don’t know why, even like, you know, the farming, I have some issues with the farming,
(1:19:55) Al: but the farming was fine, right?
(1:19:56) Micah: Right.
(1:19:58) Al: The open world traversal, it’s not amazing, but it was fine.
(1:20:02) Al: The characters, nothing amazing, but they were fine.
(1:20:06) Al: All of these mechanics are fine, but together it feels like it’s less than the sum of its parts.
(1:20:15) Micah: Uh, yes, I, I don’t know.
(1:20:21) Micah: I’m like in a weird spot because I’m pleasantly surprised with it.
(1:20:28) Micah: Not in like a, this is the best game I’ve ever played, but it is better than I expected it to be.
(1:20:35) Micah: My, to be fair, my expectations were on the floor.
(1:20:39) Micah: Like they were pretty low, especially after one, one world.
(1:20:40) Al: Well, do you want to know something interesting? I actually thought One World was a better game than this. So I think this game, it looks nicer. The graphics are nicer on this. I think the character models are really nice. There’s lots of stuff about this game that looks really nice. Especially like the, what, the conversation art? That’s really nice. I think that’s really
(1:20:44) Micah: It was…
(1:20:45) Micah: …a little bit.
(1:20:47) Micah: Huh.
(1:21:02) Micah: Mm hmm. I think the linearity of it, because one world was also very story based.
(1:21:11) Micah: It was it was very story based and very linear because it was just go to this area,
(1:21:16) Micah: finish the thing in this area.
(1:21:18) Micah: Now hurry, go to the next area, move it along, and you’re going through each area.
(1:21:23) Micah: That’s like the seasons.
(1:21:26) Micah: And then, you know, you get to the end and you have the like harvest goddess farm or whatever and it’s you’re like.
(1:21:32) Micah: In game farm, but I did not feel I feel like this is the impression that I got from this game is that they took everything that they wanted to actually do with one world and then they did it in a much better way here.
(1:21:51) Micah: Like there’s still the idea that you have which I actually kind of like this concept that you have these different villages that are.
(1:22:02) Micah: Season based and instead of like you are locked to growing these specific crops in those specific seasons you can grow it in those in those villages that are for that like you can grow the autumn crops in the autumn season any time of year, you know, and the winter crops in the winter winter village any time of year, things like that.
(1:22:26) Micah: I like that idea because it is enough of a departure.
(1:22:32) Micah: It’s like an interesting departure from the classic farming game style of just it’s spring. So these are the things I plant and it’s now it’s summer and these are the things I plant like I’m not fine.
(1:22:42) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
(1:22:45) Micah: And the other thing too is that you’re never in a position with this where you’re you’re you’re like killing crops because you’re growing them in the wrong season or something.
(1:23:02) Micah: You’re growing them in the wrong season town or whatever you just get like a variation of that thing you get like a like a subspecies of that crop or whatever like a fair sub variant for, you know, like the spring variant of a pumpkin or something, you know, whatever it is.
(1:23:11) Al: Yeah.
(1:23:12) Al: Yeah.
(1:23:17) Al: Or it grows slowly or something like that.
(1:23:20) Al: Yeah, like I think I agree with you with that.
(1:23:22) Al: Like, I think that is good.
(1:23:24) Al: And I think that’s something they should definitely continue forward.
(1:23:26) Al: And I think that was one of the best things about One World.
(1:23:29) Al: And I’m glad that they pulled that forward.
(1:23:31) Al: What I would disagree with is like, so you say like, you know,
(1:23:35) Al: a lot of the things they do, they do it better.
(1:23:39) Al: I think if this, if one wrote an ex-
(1:23:41) Al: this, I would probably enjoy this game more. Not because One World did stuff better necessarily,
(1:23:47) Al: but I felt like some of the things were an interesting idea and a new concept, but not one that I want to continue. So if we take, for example, getting the seeds, right? And in both this game and One World, you get, you basically just get your- by going to these harvest sprites that are all over the map, like they’re literally everywhere. You go go to them and they give you a few seeds and you use them.
(1:24:11) Al: And what I would say is, that makes no sense in this game thematically in the last game,
(1:24:22) Al: they existed like that because the whole point of the last game was people don’t know how to farm anymore. You need to remember how to farm and show the world how to farm.
(1:24:32) Al: And so that you couldn’t just go buy seeds because people didn’t have them. Of course they didn’t have them. They didn’t know what they meant. So you went and found the harvest and you’ve got your seeds and you–
(1:24:41) Al: and that was an interesting thing, it was an interesting story thing,
(1:24:44) Al: but mechanically I find it really frustrating, especially in this game.
(1:24:49) Micah: Yeah I do agree with you there. I do agree that like it it would be nicer to just be able to say I want you know like go into the shop and buy whatever rather than having to to get your yeah yes
(1:25:02) Al: A mismatch of random things that I’m growing.
(1:25:06) Al: And it’s especially frustrating because this is a huge world.
(1:25:10) Al: So yeah sure, the sprites are everywhere.
(1:25:13) Al: But you have to walk so far to get to any of them.
(1:25:16) Micah: You do. I will say one nice thing about this is that they have made it a little bit easier and that you can add filters to the map that show you exactly where like if you say you want daisy seeds, you just put daisy seeds as the filter on the map and it shows you every single harvest sprite that gives you daisy seeds, and you just go to them and yeah. So that’s nice.
(1:25:25) Al: Yes, the map’s great.
(1:25:36) Al: Yeah. You have to have had the seed before, but yeah, I agree.
(1:25:43) Al: That’s great.
(1:25:44) Al: But it still feels like you’re taking forever to get to them.
(1:25:45) Micah: But yes, I do still agree.
(1:25:46) Micah: Agree that it would have been well, and that’s the thing is that like it the the traversal is that while I do think the like open-worldness of this game is a way better experience for me than the linear experience of one world was especially just because it feels more polished of a of a like a like a an environment like the the setting in general feels much more polished. There were so many like horrendous glitches that I had in one world that were just I haven’t hit any yet. I’m sure they’re in here for sure. I had one where the the game locked on like loading between cutscenes and it just I had to restart. But otherwise, you know, travel like traveling around the map has been a like pleasant experience except for the fact that you move incredibly slow. If they had sped up traversal a bit more, I feel like the experience would have been a lot better. Yes. Mounts and. Yeah. Oh, God. Mounts and fast travel, which are things that like it takes a good chunk of time to get those things and it. Yes.
(1:26:49) Al: Oh, my word.
(1:26:50) Al: I think the problem is they’re trying to encourage you to get mounts, right?
(1:26:59) Al: So they make the walking speed slow with a ridiculous running animation.
(1:27:05) Al: It’s like I’m running faster than I’m moving.
(1:27:17) Al: Oh, so far! So, oh my word, so much story you have to go through to get to the fast travel. I was like, I thought there was fast travel in this game, and it just like, keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, and then you’re like, oh right, okay, finally I’ve got fast travel. You think it’d be the first time you go to another village? No,
(1:27:33) Al: it’s not. You have to go back to that village three more times. Oh, my word, it’s so dreadful.
(1:27:38) Micah: Yeah, it’s it is a lot to.
(1:27:40) Al: But the fast, once you’ve unlocked it, the fast travel is great. I think it’s good, and I think the map is good, yeah, but oh my word.
(1:27:41) Micah: Yeah.
(1:27:47) Micah: I think that another part of that, too, like it comes hand in hand that it’s not just that the traversal is slow or feels slow.
(1:27:47) Al: the traversal.
(1:27:58) Micah: It’s also that the days are incredibly short in this game.
(1:28:03) Al: Yes. Yep.
(1:28:05) Micah: They feel so short.
(1:28:07) Micah: Uh…
(1:28:08) Micah: The day/night cycle is so quick that it…
(1:28:12) Micah: Especially early game going from…
(1:28:15) Micah: What is it, Lechtenberry or whatever it is, the first starting town yet, to…
(1:28:19) Al: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It does.
(1:28:23) Micah: going from the the spring village to the next village was so much walking that I…
(1:28:25) Al: “Village 1 to Village 2”. There you go.
(1:28:29) Al: Oh. It’s your whole day.
(1:28:33) Micah: when I would have stuff to do in the second… in the second village, I would just…
(1:28:38) Micah: wait till the next day because by the time I got the stuff I needed to do, I was like, “There’s no way I’m gonna make it end back to go to bed.”
(1:28:40) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.
(1:28:45) Micah: Because it just takes too much time.
(1:28:49) Micah: Yeah, yes.
(1:28:49) Al: Trying to balance the story with the farming was quite difficult in that aspect of things.
(1:28:57) Al: Because it’s like, you know, which one do I focus on?
(1:28:59) Al: And I think that’s why One World, I think, worked better, because you could do things pretty quickly and then just get on with the rest of your day doing the story.
(1:29:07) Micah: See, but there was the same like they this is where I feel that same feeling of like this does what one world did but better where one world had these like predetermined plots that you can you can Put crops on and this does too, but there’s more space per like predetermined crop or either like predetermined plot of land and it’s a little bit more like
(1:29:34) Micah: Like you’re getting I don’t know what it is
(1:29:37) Micah: a Six by six plot or something Pretty much everywhere you’re going it and then you know bigger later and whatever but in one world it was like sometimes you have a plot that was like Two spots here and then four spots here and it’s like spread out across that it was so like haphazardly placed that it never felt like it was a farm and I just
(1:30:05) Micah: Don’t
(1:30:07) Micah: I don’t know. I don’t know what it is specifically about how this does it. Maybe it’s just because it’s more like there’s more space and it feels more like structured and contained and it felt more like a farm that that’s what made me feel like it felt better.
(1:30:19) Al: I think so. I think it is more consistent, definitely. I don’t think there’s more plots in this one than there was in One World. More spaces in each farm. I just think it’s less.
(1:30:33) Al: I totally get your annoyance with the random bits and pieces. I think that’s annoying as well. But I still feel like these farms are really small. I mean, it doesn’t really matter because you can’t really be getting lots of stuff, right? So it contradicts with a lot of the standard things that we…
(1:30:49) Al: like with farming games of like, you know, you do a bunch of stuff to start with and then you get more money so then you buy more seeds so you make more and it’s… it just… I just find it like… I found that as an interesting idea in one world for that concept and now they’re doing the same thing here and it feels annoying here because oh I have to do this again it’s not fun.
(1:30:58) Micah: It absolutely is the like.
(1:31:10) Micah: Yeah, I mean one world had that thing too where you like pick up your whole farm or whatever Which is like fine, but it doesn’t I don’t know when you had like different sized farms and stuff it felt weird I guess I don’t I I do think that the Farming has definitely become a background element to the game I
(1:31:36) Al: That’s what I was mostly talking about at the beginning, where it’s like a story game
(1:31:38) Micah: I don’t know if it like…
(1:31:40) Micah: Maybe it’s like the backbone of the game, but more that it’s like the background.
(1:31:49) Micah: Like it… ‘Cause it is… The whole story is structured around farming and, you know, the seasons and specifically getting the right crops to make the right things, like making the stew for the Spring Fairy or whatever, you know.
(1:32:05) Micah: And all of the… It is extremely side-quest heavy, which I will say…
(1:32:10) Micah: Personally, I’m a sucker for that. I love side-quests. I don’t know what it is about side-quests. I really like ’em.
(1:32:15) Micah: And there are a ton of ’em in this game.
(1:32:19) Micah: Um… Yeah.
(1:32:19) Al: Oh my word, everybody wants you to do something.
(1:32:22) Al: Oh my word.
(1:32:22) Micah: And so…
(1:32:23) Al: It’s like nobody, it’s like nobody else in the world can do anything.
(1:32:24) Micah: I know…
(1:32:26) Al: I’m the only person who can do anything.
(1:32:26) Micah: And all of those things too are also, you know, like farming ba… Like it’s… I need…
(1:32:35) Micah: need it to some degree it’s you know I need X number of
(1:32:40) Micah: whatever crop to complete my to complete the side quest or I need X number of like you know building material or something and so you do still have to do the farming game mechanics in order to get through the story and to get through the quests and stuff like that, but it’s definitely that not the primary focus. The primary focus is like advancing through the story.
(1:33:08) Al: I think it’s fine, right? Like, I’m not against that. I don’t have an issue with that. I didn’t find the story compelling in this one. And I didn’t, because, like, the thing is, there’s not really the - in the last one, there was mystery to it, right? You’re trying to figure out why this happened and blah, blah. Whereas this one is like, “Oh, no, there’s no why. It doesn’t matter why. It’s just the volcano erupted.” Right? Like, that’s it. Deal with that, right? Like, you’re moving on,
(1:33:34) Al: you’re trying to reunite these communities. That’s all you really care about. And I didn’t really
(1:33:38) Al: like there was that hook to be like, “Oh, I want to figure out what the deal is.” Like, it’s…
(1:33:43) Al: It’s…
(1:33:45) Micah: I guess there is a little bit of like a I don’t I don’t know there’s a little bit of intrigue to me in You know what about the like making the the sprites dormant Because of the like villages being sealed off or whatever made You know what if that causing
(1:34:10) Micah: Was it that that caused them to be dormant and what happened to the like harvest goddess and all this stuff? It’s this
(1:34:15) Micah: Same like similar style of plot where it’s like the end goal is where’s the harvest goddess what happened to the harvest goddess?
(1:34:22) Al: but you find her so quickly. Like I feel like they did, they like, they have like, okay, sure,
(1:34:22) Micah: but like
(1:34:29) Al: there’s a mystery for five minutes and then you find the harvest goddess and she explains it all to you and then you’re like, okay, fine, but there’s still a lot to go here and now you’ve removed all, there’s not mystery now, now it’s just you’ve been told what to do, now go do it.
(1:34:43) Al: And then it’s just like a million of the same thing now and it’s like, okay, sure, I’m reuniting these families, but I don’t care about these people.
(1:34:43) Micah: Yeah.
(1:34:52) Al: You know, he’s trying to do the stardew thing of the stories are in the people and the stories are in the relationships,
(1:35:01) Al: but it doesn’t do the stardew thing in actually making you care about those people to therefore care about the story.
(1:35:04) Micah: Yeah, very, very bland in that regard.
(1:35:06) Al: Absolutely.
(1:35:09) Micah: But I’ll say, like, compared to One World,
(1:35:12) Micah: I felt a lot of the same feelings about One World.
(1:35:16) Micah: Like, I just…
(1:35:17) Micah: Oh, sure. No.
(1:35:19) Al: For the record, I’m not saying either of these are good games, I don’t, and I don’t think anybody should play these games, either of them.
(1:35:23) Micah: I think that this…
(1:35:26) Micah: That… Well, yeah.
(1:35:27) Micah: And that’s all I’m, like, vouching for,
(1:35:30) Micah: is that I feel like this is a big.
(1:35:34) Micah: Improvement on where they came from from one world is I mean if we’re talking about like the history of harvest moon Once it you know was primarily in not some his hands like this is Worlds above what they had they have been doing They’re getting much better at like kind of figuring out what they want to do Which is I think making it more story based?
(1:36:02) Micah: Which like if that’s what they want to do then you know that’s what they want to do that’s their that’s their choice but does it communicate as a farming game or you know it’s kind of
(1:36:18) Al: Yeah, I think this is the point. Yeah, they’re like, I think I agree with you in some aspects.
(1:36:23) Al: I mean, both of these games, I think, are miles better than any other Harvest Moon game that Natsume have made. I will agree with that. But yeah, the problem is, I don’t think either of us are against the idea of a farming game being story-based. The problem is that story needs to be good. And I think they have improved in some things, and I think they’ve gone backwards in some things. I think this game would have been
(1:36:38) Micah: No, not at all.
(1:36:40) Micah: Yes.
(1:36:48) Al: better had they not done what One World did with the Harvest Sprites and you could just buy seeds. I think that would be better in this one. I think it worked fine in the previous game because that was part of the story. I think that some things are better. I think that the graphics are obviously better. I think that I agree the consistency of plot is better.
(1:37:12) Al: Plot size, I mean not like plot as in the story. But I think I honestly
(1:37:18) Al: think that being open world has made it less fun because it’s too big and too bland in lots of cases.
(1:37:24) Micah: Yeah, I really think that that is primarily an issue with balance that they just didn’t figure out.
(1:37:33) Micah: I do think that it could be a much better and much more comfortable game if they had found a better balance between how fast the day goes and how long it takes to get from point A to point B, which they really didn’t.
(1:37:48) Micah: That’s arguably my biggest gripe about the game, is those two things.
(1:37:54) Micah: It takes way too long to get to places for how short the bay is.
(1:37:57) Al: I don’t know why, because the thing is, there’s nothing between the villages really. You might find some farm plots and you find the harvest sprites and the animals, but that’s it. It’s like the distance between the villages is so big and there’s nothing there. It’s not even like in Scarlet… It’s not even… Well, yeah, but they didn’t need to be. It’s not even like in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, where there’s very little in between, but there’s still Pokémon everywhere.
(1:38:08) Micah: Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, well there’s a lot of harvest sprays Yeah
(1:38:28) Al: Like it’s harvest sprites and you go up to one and they give you a watermelon seed and you’re like,
(1:38:34) Al: “Gee, thanks. I’ll plant that next to my one hibiscus, my three wheat and my two carrots.”
(1:38:41) Al: And it’s like just the most annoying thing in terms of that. And then, OK, let’s talk about farming. I hate the farming. The farming’s fine, but I hate it. So they did an interesting thing.
(1:38:54) Al: Okay, I’m going to bounce around a little bit. Like, the cameras in this game-
(1:38:57) Al: I’m not a huge fan of, right? Because, like, when you move the camera, it’s really slow.
(1:39:01) Al: Even when you turn it up to the fastest speed, it’s still so slow. There’s, like, one fixed camera zoom, so you can’t go further out. When I game, I really like, in a third-party view,
(1:39:16) Al: I really like to zoom out really far so I can see lots of stuff. You can’t do that at all here,
(1:39:21) Al: and it’s just one, and I feel claustrophobic.
(1:39:24) Micah: Yeah, it is very tight and I do agree that even at max, the camera is very slow, which is crazy because the default camera speed that they that they start you at is just unbelievably difficult to deal with.
(1:39:28) Al: So slow. So slow.
(1:39:38) Al: It’s like a snail.
(1:39:42) Al: It’s absolutely dreadful.
(1:39:45) Al: The one thing that’s interesting with the camera is they have a farming view, where if you press in one of the analog sticks, it flips the camera up to the top like it’s a 2D game, a 2D farming game, so you can see.
(1:39:55) Micah: Yeah.
(1:39:56) Micah: Mm-hmm.
(1:39:57) Al: But you’re still really zoomed in!
(1:39:58) Al: So it’s like, yeah, sure, I’ve got a much better angle, but I can see three plots of land here.
(1:40:05) Al: I can’t see it, so I can’t see where I’m going.
(1:40:07) Al: I don’t know how much further I’ve got to go.
(1:40:08) Al: Like that just made everything so frustrating.
(1:40:11) Al: The actual like farming aspect of it was fine, but like, you couldn’t do it quickly.
(1:40:17) Al: And because you’re like, you’re constantly dealing with this mishmash of different vegetables to deal with.
(1:40:24) Al: And it just like, it just all, it’s not a satisfying farming at all.
(1:40:28) Micah: Yeah, yeah, it’s really it’s really not Yeah, I don’t know I mean again like it I’m not I’m not saying that this is any like masterpiece of a farming game at all I just think in the context of I think that’s the the problem too Is that I’m really looking at this game in the context of like coming from one world or coming from?
(1:40:37) Al: No, no.
(1:40:54) Micah: You know was it lighthouse of hope or whatever it was light of
(1:40:58) Micah: hope or she no it was the No, that was that was it. That was a What 3ds or DS one or whatever it was?
(1:40:58) Al: tree tree tree house.
(1:41:07) Micah: There was the switch one. That was the it was like a light of hope or so. I don’t remember. It was a top-down farming, you know version of it that was very not good coming from mad - coming from you know one world like You [laughing]
(1:41:14) Al: Oh.
(1:41:20) Al: Mad Dash was amazing. Do not, do not, do not, do not, no. I can’t, I’m not having this slander. Mad Dash was amazing. I don’t care what you say, it was amazing. [Laughter]
(1:41:28) Micah: It’s no, yeah, it’s no amiibo festival, but, you know.
(1:41:39) Al: It was fun to- it did one thing and it did-
(1:41:42) Al: one thing really well. Light of Hope, you’re right. Light of Hope. That was the the first Switch one.
(1:41:47) Micah: Yeah, yeah, so I think that like this is oh, right. I Mean might well might as well been So I am definitely coming at it from this like perspective of in the greater context of the Natsume Natsume harvest moon Library of games
(1:41:48) Al: Uh, Skytree Village was the one I was thinking of, which is 3DS. Not Treehouse of Horror.
(1:41:58) Al: Oh…
(1:42:00) Al: Oh…
(1:42:16) Micah: But…
(1:42:17) Micah: And I think that, like, I’m seeing actual real growth in how they’re treating the games, which is…
(1:42:26) Al: I agree with that.
(1:42:27) Micah: They’re definitely trying to do something that is not just capitalizing on the name.
(1:42:33) Micah: And, you know, because for the longest time, that was what it felt like.
(1:42:37) Micah: They were just making the bare bones minimum effort, farming sim, to get people to buy it because…
(1:42:47) Micah: They were familiar with the name.
(1:42:49) Micah: And now it feels like they are actually trying…
(1:42:53) Micah: They’re actually putting effort into making something that is unique to them.
(1:42:57) Micah: And it’s an actual playable experience and not just something to capitalize on, you know.
(1:43:06) Micah: The name is kind of like shady business tactic, you know.
(1:43:11) Al: Yeah.
(1:43:11) Micah: It feels like they really care about what they’re trying to do now, which is…
(1:43:17) Micah: And whether or not they are accomplishing that and whether or not, you know, like the…
(1:43:24) Micah: We feel like they should focus a little bit more on the farming and less on the story and things like that.
(1:43:29) Micah: Or, like, make the farming at least a little bit more interesting.
(1:43:33) Micah: Regardless of that, at the very least, they are not making, you know, bare bones minimum effort garbage anymore.
(1:43:44) Micah: Which is neat to see, like it’s neat to see…
(1:43:47) Micah: This… kind of, you know, this like… growth over time from them, but…
(1:43:56) Al: I think ultimately we’re generally agreeing on things. I think we’ve kind of stuck on a couple of bits where like I think that this game does do some things better than One World, but I think One World did some things better and that’s fine. I think I agree with you that it does now. I think both with this game and with One World, it felt like they were actually trying to do something and it felt like they actually cared about making a good game. And yeah, there is the difference
(1:44:23) Micah: Yes. Yeah. And that’s what I mean. Like it’s right.
(1:44:26) Al: actually succeeding. Yeah, I don’t think either of us are saying they’re succeeding in that,
(1:44:30) Al: but they’re definitely trying and that’s at least it makes a better game even if it doesn’t make a good game. One small point before we end up finishing off. Have you tried holding down A during conversations? Like holding the A button during conversations?
(1:44:44) Micah: Have I tried, what’s that?
(1:44:45) Micah: Oh, A, during conversations, and it just like, skips everything.
(1:44:51) Al: Absolutely, like so many games you’ll hold A and it will like speed up the individual text.
(1:44:56) Al: Box and then you have to press it again to go to the next one. No, no, no, no, you press A.
(1:45:00) Al: You’ve missed 10. You hold down A for a second. You’ve missed 10 conversation pop-ups. It’s incredible. It’s so good. If you don’t care about the story, it’s incredible, but if you do care about the story, don’t be careful. Absolutely is incredible. I think that was my last kind of mechanic thing. I don’t know, is there anything else we need to discuss this?
(1:45:05) Micah: Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty wild how Which you know you seem to be in the boat that you can just blast through that [laughs]
(1:45:26) Al: I had some little points about the story, but honestly I don’t care. I just, I don’t care.
(1:45:30) Micah: Yeah, I mean, I think the like basic premise we kind of touched on is that, you know, the volcano erupted and sealed off these towns and the villages are, you know, people were were kind of all over.
(1:45:44) Micah: So they were maybe not necessarily in their hometown when it happened.
(1:45:48) Micah: So connecting the towns again and reuniting them.
(1:45:51) Al: Yeah, which is an interesting premise, but the problem is, your interesting premise can’t be the most interesting thing about your story. And there is. There’s nothing else interesting about it. You’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting. What are they going to do with that?” And the answer is nothing. That’s it. That’s the story. Unless there’s something big at the end that I missed. Which is an interesting thing because both of us had finished one
(1:45:58) Micah: Yes, correct Yeah Yeah A lot of it is just yeah, I guess neither of us know for sure what these the end of the Yeah, I would say though that
(1:46:23) Micah: One world was such a like linear experience though that it was a much either
(1:46:28) Micah: And it was such a like the barrier for completion on like story beats was so minimal that it was a much easier game to to just like
(1:46:40) Al: Yeah, I also felt like I wanted to, though. I felt I wanted to get to the end of that,
(1:46:44) Al: whereas this game I just went… I put way more hours…
(1:46:50) Micah: Yeah, I I just I think that there’s like a little bit more to they give you a little bit more to do in this game That it doesn’t it’s not as Hand-holdy straight through the story as one world was But whether that’s you know a bad thing or a good thing I guess I don’t it’s up to you because you know it I am Sometimes in the camp that like I don’t want to spend 50 hours on a game I just want to spend 10 and have like a good experience
(1:46:57) Al: Yes.
(1:47:09) Al: It’s a thing.
(1:47:21) Micah: if you know as far as farming games or you know sims like lick life sims go Usually not spending you know Only 10 hours in it. I’m usually spending a lot more time so But it’s Again, it’s it’s it’s up to what you want to get out of it. I suppose
(1:47:34) Al: Yeah… Yeah…
(1:47:36) Al: I mean, what you want to get out of it is not playing this game.
(1:47:46) Al: Yeah, do not play this game.
(1:47:47) Micah: Please realistically play something else, but
(1:47:50) Micah: the summer, the, the, my final summary for it is, play another farming game. If you are, if you only have, you know, like, if you’ve got enough money to pick a farming game, play something else, but maybe keep your eye on what they’re doing with Harvest Moon in the future, because I feel like it’s only getting better as time goes on.
(1:48:20) Micah: So hopefully that means that, you know, we’ll get better and better experiences out of it. It’s definitely like a unique experience to other farming games. So yeah, that’s true. You’re right. Yes.
(1:48:32) Al: but it’s always getting your head shot off. It doesn’t make it something you want to do.
(1:48:36) Al: There are so many games that have come out this year, right? Go play Fae Farm, go play One Lonely Outpost, go play Roots of Patia, go play Smooshy Come Home, go play Song of the Prairie, go play Paleo Pines, yeah, go play Sprout Valley or Sunhaven or go play Story of Seasons of Wonderful Life,
(1:48:58) Al: Go play any of those games or you know what just go play Stardew again you don’t want to play this game don’t play this game
(1:49:07) Micah: It is most certainly definitely a game that is available to play.
(1:49:11) Al: It is up to personal taste, I guess.
(1:49:14) Micah: A good one!
(1:49:16) Micah: That’s up to you.
(1:49:22) Al: Go play Disney Dreamlight Valley, for goodness sake.
(1:49:23) Micah: Yeah, we played Disney Dream as well.
(1:49:25) Al: My word.
(1:49:26) Micah: If you already pre-purchased it, I guess.
(1:49:26) Al: Or My Time of Sandrock, if you must.
(1:49:28) Micah: I don’t know.
(1:49:29) Micah: If you must.
(1:49:31) Al: Coral Island?
(1:49:32) Al: Go play Coral Island!
(1:49:32) Micah: Yeah, true.
(1:49:34) Micah: My partner Becky has been obsessed with paleopines.
(1:49:41) Micah: She’s also very, very big fan of dinosaurs.
(1:49:44) Micah: So that was like kind of a no.
(1:49:46) Micah: I showed her the trailer and she was like, that’s it.
(1:49:48) Micah: This is my game.
(1:49:49) Micah: And she’s been nonstop playing it since.
(1:49:51) Micah: I since have also picked it up.
(1:49:54) Micah: But the amount that she has enjoyed it makes me feel like I probably will also enjoy it.
(1:50:00) Micah: So there are definitely better experiences that are worth your money out there.
(1:50:02) Al: Yeah.
(1:50:07) Micah: But I do hope that they continue to make stuff and for Harvest Moon and improve on what they’re doing and hopefully make cooler and cooler stuff with it.
(1:50:19) Micah: I don’t know.
(1:50:19) Al: That’s fair. I could definitely see them coming out with an actually good game in five years,
(1:50:23) Micah: Yeah.
(1:50:26) Al: but they’ve got a long way to go. But it’s definitely progressing in the right
(1:50:32) Micah: Yeah, so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.
(1:50:34) Micah: Hey, of course, you know, I’m dedicated to it when, you know,
(1:50:35) Al: Well, thank you, Micah, for joining us.
(1:50:43) Micah: I get it digitally and can’t sell or return it, so.
(1:50:45) Al: Oh my word. I’m so sorry.
(1:50:47) Micah: Don’t it’s really it’s not to me’s fault for, you know.
(1:50:51) Al: Can’t believe he did that.
(1:50:54) Al: Yeah.
(1:50:57) Micah: Ruining my plush cow experience, so.
(1:51:01) Al: We need a class action lawsuit on the cow plushies.
(1:51:02) Micah: Don’t apologize. Yes, now we’re talking.
(1:51:07) Micah: In fact, just make it a playable sim class action lawsuit.
(1:51:11) Micah: Primarily on Instagram now, I think is where I’ve been spending most of my time.
(1:51:13) Al: That would be a better game.
(1:51:16) Al: Where can people find you on the internet maker if you want them to find you?
(1:51:26) Micah: @mikethebrave, M-I-C-A-H, the brave. Yeah, I’ve been posting.
(1:51:32) Micah: A lot of pictures from Japan. Been kind of posting some art stuff there, too.
(1:51:40) Micah: Haven’t been on Twitter as much or sorry, X as much.
(1:51:45) Micah: Because it kind of sucks there, but.
(1:51:49) Micah: But yeah, that’s primarily Instagram is where you can find me.
(1:51:50) Al: Yeah.
(1:51:51) Al: Cool, you can find me on mastedon.scot or on Twitter at sorry, on X at the Scott Bods.
(1:52:04) Micah: I think we should just keep calling it Twitter honestly out of spite at this point
(1:52:06) Al: Look, I am, no matter how terrible the person, I still strongly believe in supporting somebody’s self-identification.
(1:52:20) Al: Even if it makes no sense, and it was a stupid decision, it’s their decision to make.
(1:52:26) Al: You can follow the podcast on Tumblr or on X/Twitter at THSPod.
(1:52:34) Al: The best place to find us is on harvestseason.club, our website where you can find everything to do with the podcast there, including a feedback form to send us some feedback and links to everything, including our patreon,
(1:52:50) Al: where you can find us at THSPod as well.
(1:52:52) Al: And you can get access to the Slack, where there’s lots of fun conversations about the podcast and about games and, well, life in general.
(1:53:02) Al: And we also have extra episodes of the podcast,
(1:53:05) Al: The Greenhouse, of which we have one upcoming where we talk about the Pokemon DLC.
(1:53:13) Al: And if you find this episode depressing.
(1:53:17) Al: Uh…
(1:53:19) Micah: No, it wasn’t, you know.
(1:53:21) Al: Look, we also talk about watermelon game a little bit at the end.
(1:53:23) Micah: Yes, that’s the key takeaway.
(1:53:24) Al: Go play a watermelon game! It’s a good game.
(1:53:26) Micah: Yeah, what is it?
(1:53:30) Micah: Two bucks compared to, what was Harveson 50?
(1:53:30) Al: I don’t even… I don’t… I don’t even… Whatever. I…
(1:53:35) Micah: I mean, really, it’s a no-brainer.
(1:53:36) Micah: It’s a no-brainer where the value is.
(1:53:38) Al: Absolutely. I just put out an episode yesterday of the Greenhouse with me and Kelly talking about Hades which is a
(1:53:50) Al: less depressing episode. I’ll put it that way. I think that’s everything, so thank you Micah for joining me again.
(1:53:53) Micah: Yeah, Hades is good.
(1:53:55) Micah: Thank you for having me.
(1:54:00) Micah: I appreciate it.
(1:54:00) Al: Always fun.
(1:54:01) Micah: Everybody, um, play Dragon Quest.
(1:54:03) Micah: Play Picross.
(1:54:06) Micah: Um, help them, uh, help Dragon Quest become more popular in the West.
(1:54:12) Micah: That’ll be cool.
(1:54:13) Al: I was like, oh, it’s going to be a dangerous day when they make a Dragon Quest farming game. And then I remember they’ve done two, and I literally covered them on the podcast.
(1:54:20) Micah: Yeah, well, yeah, they’re more like Dragon Quest Minecraft games, but yeah, you know There is farming But you know, it’s it’s built. It’s primarily building structures out of blocks, which I feel like it’s very specific thing
(1:54:23) Al: So.
(1:54:24) Al: There’s farming. It counts.
(1:54:33) Al: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s fun.
(1:54:43) Al: They’re fun. And no, stop trying to make me play Final Fantasy 14. I’m not doing it,
(1:54:49) Al: listeners. Please and thank you. On the moon. Apparently, I’m still not doing it. People are like, oh, it’s you can play it for free, basically. And I’m like, I’m still not doing it.
(1:54:51) Micah: heard there’s farming now farming on the moon I haven’t played it a bit but it’s a good game I just have
(1:55:05) Micah: Stand your ground, Al.
(1:55:06) Al: Um.
(1:55:08) Micah: There’s a Dragon Quest coming up that is Dragon Quest Monsters.
(1:55:15) Micah: Technically, it’s three, but they’re not calling it three.
(1:55:18) Micah: But if you like Pokemon, it is a similar ish experience.
(1:55:18) Al: Did they just have one?
(1:55:25) Micah: They had Dragon Quest Treasures, which originally was going to be a Dragon Quest Monsters game.
(1:55:25) Al: Oh, for goodness sake.
(1:55:32) Micah: So it has similar ish combat.
(1:55:35) Micah: Where you and the monsters are like attacking together in combat.
(1:55:40) Micah: Where Dragon Quest Monsters historically has been that you are commanding the monsters to fight for you.
(1:55:48) Micah: All Pokemon, you know, whatever.
(1:55:50) Al: My God, I hate this.
(1:55:52) Micah: You know.
(1:55:54) Al: OK, fine.
(1:55:55) Micah: Just look.
(1:55:58) Micah: I don’t ask for much, OK?
(1:55:58) Al: Oh, dear.
(1:56:05) Micah: It’s franchises I like so that they’re more popular here, please.
(1:56:12) Al: Where was I?
(1:56:13) Al: Thank you listeners for listening.
(1:56:15) Al: And until next time,
(1:56:17) Al: have a good harvest.
(1:56:19) Theme Tune: The harvest season is created by Al McInley, with support from our patrons, including our pro farmers, Kevin, Stuart and Alisa.
(1:56:34) Theme Tune: Our art is done by Micah the Brave, and our music is done by Nick Burgess.
(1:56:38) Theme Tune: Feel free to visit our website, harvestseason.club, for show notes and links to things we discussed in this episode.
(1:56:53) Micah: Have a good harvest. I’m sorry. It was later. I was talked it up to you like I was finally getting used to it