Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, the farm and life simulation that I originally sold my soul to as a child, is being remade as Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. And now, thank goodness, it's confirmed to be coming to PC too.
The remake of A Wonderful Life was originally announced during a Nintendo Direct in September but did not specify whether it would also be launching on any PC stores. Surely it has to, I thought, after other recent Story of Seasons games made it to PC. I immediately reached out to publisher Marvelous to check, trust me, but I didn't get an answer right away. A new trailer today broke the news.
A Wonderful Life is hardly the first Harvest Moon game, mind, but it's the first that so many people around my age got to know back on the GameCube and PlayStation 2. As is tradition, your main character moves out to Forget-Me-Not Valley (Forgotten Valley in the remake, funnily) to take over a farm from his (or hers or theirs, now) deceased father, eventually marrying and having a child while purchasing new crops and animals for the property. It was the first game of the series where your child would grow up and choose their own career too.
"This remake of a beloved classic features plenty of new events, enhanced festivals, more recipes to cook, and a cornucopia of never-before-seen crops," Marvelous says of the remake. "With the option to play as a male, female, or non-binary protagonist, as well as all eligible marriage candidates available for romance regardless of that choice, you can truly be who you want to be."
In the remake's trailer you can spot a proper character creator with choices between two outfits, a variety of skin colors, hairstyles, and a few faces. Like the name of the valley, marriage candidates and other characters have had their names changed too. That's likely the effect of the rat's nest of rights and licensing in the transition from the Harvest Moon to Story of Seasons name. Rest assured though that the jaunty main melody of the game sounds the same. Music really sets the mood in the valley.
I did actually haul out my childhood GameCube to play some of A Wonderful Life several years ago and, yeah, the thing's clunky to control and otherwise lacking in the same modern conveniences of the many, many games like Stardew Valley (which was itself inspired by Harvest Moon, of course) that we now have on PC.
The A Wonderful Life remake looks quite fresh though, more so than the recent Story of Seasons remake of the 2003 Game Boy game Friends of Mineral Town. I'm a sucker for nostalgia, but the attention to a proper character creator, new crops, and open marriage candidates smells to me like a good sign that this Story of Seasons game could be a genuinely S-grade remake.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life doesn't yet have a release date, but is expected to launch summer 2023 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series X/S.
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