![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Game Review: Stardew Valley
2018-Jul-15, Sunday 17:14
I've never played Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. I've never played Farm Simulator or anything like that. But when Stardew Valley was announced as a Harvest Moon-like that fix all the annoyances and problems that had crept into Harvest Moon over the years, I was incredibly excited and I couldn't wait to play it.
I think it's because the one time I lived in a rural farming area it was amazing. Most of Chiyoda by land area was rice fields, and despite being foreigners and not speaking Japanese that well, our neighbors would drop off extra vegetables during the harvest season, invite us to local festivals, and buy us drinks when they saw us in the local izakaya. None of our friends who lived in Hiroshima City had any of that happen to them, but we drank sake and ate pickles and roasted fish with the neighbors as all of their kadomatsu burned in a giant bonfire in the center of the field. I don't have a connection to my Chicago neighborhood the same way I did to Yae-Nishi, and I'm not likely to get one any time soon. Even if I knew my neighbors' names, there are too many of them to really get a feel for the community. City living provides anonymity, for both good and ill.
In Golden Sky Stories, a translation of the Japanese RPG ゆうやけこやけ that I could describe as "Stardew Valley from the perspective of the junimos," there's a particular line that I loved that I could easily apply to Chiyoda:
The portraits in the screenshots below come from the Rikuo's Character Portraits mod, which edits everything to be more anime.
The falling cherry blossoms really cement the resemblance.
( Read more... )
I think it's because the one time I lived in a rural farming area it was amazing. Most of Chiyoda by land area was rice fields, and despite being foreigners and not speaking Japanese that well, our neighbors would drop off extra vegetables during the harvest season, invite us to local festivals, and buy us drinks when they saw us in the local izakaya. None of our friends who lived in Hiroshima City had any of that happen to them, but we drank sake and ate pickles and roasted fish with the neighbors as all of their kadomatsu burned in a giant bonfire in the center of the field. I don't have a connection to my Chicago neighborhood the same way I did to Yae-Nishi, and I'm not likely to get one any time soon. Even if I knew my neighbors' names, there are too many of them to really get a feel for the community. City living provides anonymity, for both good and ill.
In Golden Sky Stories, a translation of the Japanese RPG ゆうやけこやけ that I could describe as "Stardew Valley from the perspective of the junimos," there's a particular line that I loved that I could easily apply to Chiyoda:
Only a single rail line passes through it. A two-car train comes every hour, and no more. In front of the station are a row of shops not seen anywhere else. Many of the roads around the town are narrow, too small for cars to pass. Some of them are mere dirt paths, used by cats and rabbits more than people.I could just as easily apply it to Stardew Valley.
You can see open fields here and there. The rice paddies outnumber the houses. If you look into the distance, you’ll see only mountains and trees. Narrow rivers flow from mountains, from ponds, gathering into one big river. The water flows in, the water flows away
The portraits in the screenshots below come from the Rikuo's Character Portraits mod, which edits everything to be more anime.
The falling cherry blossoms really cement the resemblance.
( Read more... )
