Sea of Stars came out this month and while that's not farm sim at all it came with a surprising amount of life activities. It might have my favorite fishing mechanic I've played in any game! Very cozy for something styled as classic JRPG.

Thank you :D It's been such a packed month, I just got overwhelmed and ended up not playing any farming games at all 😅😅 I went back and replayed Fantasy Life instead (after I blew the dust off my poor 3DS!!) So this summary is great! I'll put a couple of these on my list to try in the future, I think 😄

I was hooked on fae farm over 20 hours now I’m hooked on Harvest Moon. HM really surprised me. Loved Sunrise’s Order too.

This was such an enjoyable video! What incredible games came out this month!! I’m starting to get that farming game itch as the cozy season starts, and I’ve been playing Palia a ton but might just start Coral Island, Sun Haven, and one of these!!

Seeing Silent Hope makes me wish they used this type of 3D design for Rune Factory 5

Hello Josh! Long time watcher, I think this is my first comment lol! Love what you do! A note about HM: Winds of Anthos - From what I can tell you don't HAVE TO move your farm around. It's an option. Shipping crops in a town increases their development (not much from what I can tell) but so does doing requests for people that live there, so it seems like you can just pick the farm you like and settle down. As for multiple farms, I'm only using two at the moment, and the one that I teleport to every day I have sprinklers set up to water for me so all I have to do is harvest and re-seed. 😊 (It's just fodder corn for my animals) My main love about the game is running around and finding all the animals, and befriending them. ❤ That and mining is fun, characters are new and different, and I do enjoy the crop mutations. I do agree the beginning was slow and wasn't the best at guiding me, but after I realized I just needed to focus on the requests to get things moving I soared through and now I just CAN'T put this game down! (I even dug through my closet to find my overall dress like the main character on the cover is wearing - HM cosplay here we come!) 😂 Edit: and omg I just noticed I'm not subscribed to your channel! I'm so sorry 😅 YT always feeds me your videos so I thought I had!

Thanks so much for this video! Super informative! I love your channel so much!❤ I am currently obsessed with Fae Farm and bought Paleo Pines and Sprout Valley and can’t wait to start them! I’m super interested in Silent Hope! Something different and I love the progression system! I am patiently waiting for Critter Cove to come to the Switch! It looks like so much fun! Super unique and cute, amazing character-customization, lots to do and keep you busy! 😊

Love your content Josh! Can't wait to see more gameplay of Paleo Pines and WoA! You're awesome!

Great video. Nice to see a summary of the many different recent releases 😊 I’ve been playing and loving Fae Farm and Moonstone island! I’m actually a little surprised how much i’ve been loving them both. Especially Moonstone Island as I’ve enjoyed the creature collecting and fighting/deck building a lot more than I thought I would. The farming is actually pretty useful too to give better stats for fights and not to mention the plants that give lot’s of XP so I can level up my team faster. And now I’m descovering the decorating is great too even though it’s a little slow getting the recipes. I loved decorating in Fae Farm too. I don’t care too much about the social aspects of these games so these two games have been great for me 😂👏🏻

Brisk and entertaining! Thanks for the overview. Nothing i'll be picking up this month but love your channel for keeping an eye on the farming sim genre.

Immensely helpful video, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with all the options!

Thank you for this full in depth review! I had a hard time choosing either Fae Farm or Paleo Pines, but ended up just getting Sprout Valley. Pretty simple game but the cute pixel art really keeps me going!

Great video! That sure was a busy month game-wise! Thanks for all of this feedback! Been mostly playing Palia, Good Pizza Great Pizza, and Fae Farm this month, got started on the Critter Cove beta this morning and loving it so far, does make me want to play Sandrock soon haha

I'm so happy to see your channel taking off. You absolutely deserve it!

Yeah I'm the same way. I like farming games to be a chill experience and having to manage multiple farms gets overwhelming for me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the games!

I started playing Sproud Valley and for 5 dollars it was more then I would have asked for a game I can get this cheap ❤️ it can get some frame rate problems if you place to many bee houses but for the money and time I spend in that game I think it was a good investment and I also love how fast paste this game is but still stays really cosy i love it 💕

Man, you had a busy month! Thank you for taking the time to post this video. You've given us many valuable thoughts. I'm still torn on Winds of Anthos. Natsume definitely did decent, but it still doesn't seem like they've made a really good game. I'll just have to continue to keep an eye on this one and see if anything really convinces me one way or the other.

Josh, I love your channel and reviews. Thank you for disclosing how many hours played..I love your transparency and integrity. ❤

Nice video ! I was feeling a bit lost because i saw that a lot of farming games are being released. Now i know what game makes sense for me.

This is a great wrap up of all the games that released! I thought I knew about most of them but turns out I'd only heard of like half of these 😅 excited to have so many new games to check out!

loved the video, it is great to see all of the games together so we can really notice the small differences between them.

I definitely would appreciate if you did a full review of Winds of Anthos. I am still very much on the fence with this one. I haven't played any of the Natsume Harvest Moon games, this one is the first one that actually looks kinda appealing, but I am not sure about the multiple farms thing. More of your opinion after you played more of it would be really helpful. I love your content and hope the Gaming Garden grows and blossoms.

Thanks for covering these! I especially appreciate that you cover things that might make someone not want the game; like some people seem to think you either have to love it and recommend it to everyone or you hate it, no in-between. I can totally see how Fae Farm is so appealing to so many people, but you saved me some money because the thin NPCs would have been so off-putting to me. Sugar Shack currently holds the most interest for me, though it's not on switch! Hopefully the company will finish polishing it and do a port.

Looks like you've gotten pretty far in Silent Hope! I'm happy to see there's a lot of different abilities that you can unlock later on.

Glad you put all the fatming sim reviews in one video. Really was a LOT this month

Thanks for the video, Josh! I really enjoy your channel.

OMG HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT RUNE FACTORY 3 SPECIAL ON SWITCH I NEED IT tysm Josh 😊😊😊😊

I'm glad we got this little addition of Silent Hope. I was wanting a bit more info on fit before making a decision. Thanks so much for the overview of the games you've played this month Josh! Out of the ones listed, I have played: Moonstone Island, Paleo Pines & Wildmender, all of which I adore.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. So many good games this month!

Omg I just came out of the pouring rain haha, so excited to watch this. Thank you in advance for another great video!

I was SURE that I was going to be addicted to Fae farm…but honestly it couldn’t keep my attention🤯 I played 3-4 hours. I definitely did not think I would fall in love with HM: the winds of anthos. I’ve already put in 10+ hours and it’s so much fun! 2 of my favorite things are the animal models and the fact that you can move your whole house and barn and put in in any town you want!! Josh you should really give it another chance, it gets easier when you unlock teleporting/warping and you can increase your stamina through the goddess!😊

Great video Josh I’m currently getting mine all wrapped up! We made it though the farming sim apocalypse haha

Such a busy month and so many good games to try!

Thanks for the overview! I bought Fae Farm and while it's been great, it definitely has it's downfalls. Am looking at Harvest Moon next from watching your streams. Critter Cove also looks fantastic! I didn't feel the need to go back to RF3, but I have a game or two ahead of another farm sim :D .

This is a nice episode. I discovered games I didn't know exists.

Definitely saving to watch this later lol I’ve been debating for the last few days to step back from competitive games and play something a little more slice of life lol

I was super happy for the Rune Factory 3 special remaster cause it was/is so hard to find on the ds. It’s a fun balance

I know ppl were up n arms over fae farms price but imo its 100% worth it. The way it feels to play ....there is just something about it that no farming game has hit....the dialog with the islanders is definitely lacking but there is just so much to do. And there is 2 dlc still coming. I just hope they stick to their plans for the dlc cuz its gonna add a ton more gameplay with a new area and items.

I'm with you on Silent Hope, Josh! I was hoping it would be closer to, or include more Easter Eggs referring to the Rune Factory games. Honestly, I was really surprised after they introduced this Farmer character that crafting and farming in Silent Hope is as bare-bones as it is! I was hoping you could potentially delve into the alchemy, crafting, and farming, and that each character would have a story arc or personality you got to know, which would have made it worth the price tag for me. As it stands, it seems overpriced, since it's priced closer to games that have in-depth crafting, characters you can get to know, and more story development.

I played sea of stars. It‘s just a perfect game, i love it so much. ^__^ And now i play Moonstone Island, Paleo Pines, Harvest Moon winds of Anthos and Faefarm. 🙈

I have my eyes set on Fae Farm and Sprout valley! This month i finally got my hands on Harvestella (it was on sale) and I've been dividing my time between this and studying. Let's see how things go but I'm loving Harvestella so far!

I’m actually pretty excited about Winds of Anthos, but I guess I’ll have to check it out to see.

I miss playing Sugar Shack, should be fun and easier with multiplayer! 🍁🍁🍁 I need to get back to it after playing hours on Moonstone! I appreciate all of these reviews, thank you so much Josh!

I came back to say I downloaded the Silent Hope demo and OMG it’s amazing!! I’m addicted and I can’t wait for the full release in a few days. The Archer and Rouge are currently my favorite to play. Which are your favorites Josh?

I got Sprout Valley since it was so cheap. Still have a lot of games to go through, but I am waiting for these sales lol. I think my favorite part about this channel is you don't compare every game to Stardew Valley, you mentioned Animal Crossing + My Time at Sandrock + Windwaker and that just sounds so much more descriptive than Stardew which everyone does nowadays for ANY farming game.

I just finished Rune factory 3 for my first time and I loved it.

The fact that the new Harvest Moon series is dabbling in open world so much while Story of Seasons and Rune Factory still haven't even tried is just wild to me. One thing I can compliment is that Harvest Moon is trying new things. New SOS and RF games have just felt a bit recycled lately.

I saw on twitter from Fea farm, that they are looking into npc dialogue!! I really hope this means the characters will have actual dialogue

Any chance that Sugar Shack game is coming to Switch or is it just Steam only? Would love to play it as I’m Canadian as well.

My first Rune Factory game was Rune Factory 3 for the DS. So when RF3S was announced, my nostalgia goggles slipped on and I was very excited. I got it, put a few hours into it and really started missing the QOL changes from RF5. I stopped playing RF3S for a bit to play some RF5. I intended to pick it up again this week but my Silent Hope copy is arriving this week so will be playing that. RF3S is an amazing game but it really is missing of the great QOL improvements from RF5, not sure why they could not just implement it.

Sprout valley is relaxing with simple stuff to do, the down side is that i've ran into a lot of glitches. the main one being talking to your basement ghost friend sometime freezes the game and i have to start the day over. :(

I'm curious about and would like to see more on Wildmender. (Also it's Wildmender, not Windmender.) Love your content!

So, Stardew is still the GOAT

Thanks!

love mineko night market.

I may give the new harvest moon game a try if it goes on sale. At least it looks like some effort was put into it

Omg how did you find the black Dino?? Is it like a shiny? I know there’s different rarities to colours but I’ve never seen a solid black one

I started out strong with a little Palia, then Fae Farm when it came out. I enjoy Fae Farm a lot, but the fact time doesn't pause in some menus is QUITE frustrating. I've been binging the heck out of Coral Island the last few days. I probably love that the most of all! I had it through Microsoft GamePass, but then that version broke for me and I lost my save ... I bought it on Steam in May and got the two DLC packs. I might just have to buy it for PS5 because I love that console and my PC's kind of an aging turd bucket, haha! I'll get RF3 eventually, as I always wanted to play that, but it's not top priority as I still haven't quite finished 4 or 5.

yeah but for moonstone island... do they evolve? or learn new moves?

I ended up replaying Rune Factory 4 Special because I was traveling on a plane for several hours in mid-September and needed something to do. Otherwise, I'm not only holding off until I get through my backlog, but I've also restarted Cattails so I'm caught up when Wildwood Story comes out later this month. Fae Farm looks interesting, but I think I'll wait for a sale. It's a bit pricier than most games of its type.

Looking for the Silent Hope video! It looks interesting, but also was not sure if it's actually gonna feel rewarding or *too* repetitive to be fun after the first 5 hours...

I went for Nhamashal in Fae Farm and his date cutscenes were pretty cute though the gameplay loop is not fun imo, a lot of running back and forth to the mines with linear progression.

RF3 Special is indeed a great introduction to the RF serie, but for when it was released. It's the episode that made me like Rune Factory when the first two RF left me a bit meh (partially due to my lack of English skills at that time xD). But yeah, while it was a nice game, it does feel older than the other games, but I would totally recommend it over RF5 for those who already played RF4 (which is now the reference game to start with, as you said) because, well, RF5's just a big disapoitment and should not be talked about (imho). Moonstone Island's indeed a cute lil game. For an exploration and battle game, it's pretty relaxing, and I confess I mostly play it on the easy mode when exploring mainly to focus on its casual aspect. Harvest Moon Anthos still feels like it's a bit behind other farm sim game on the "overall" aspect, but is a huge improvement from what they dared released two years ago. That episode is what we could actually call their first real farm sim game after the great schism with Marvelous and we can only hope they stay on this route, especially as they took the chance to really distinct themselves from their origins, Story of Seasons. My main complaint about that game is that, for an exploration game, you're way too easily "blocked" by the smallest 5cm step of height because it's a "mountain texture" and not a "ground/grass/sand/etc/" texture. It feels really annoying not being able to jump at all, even the smallest height, just to not make very long detours to get where you want. Fortunately, fast travel does fixt that a bit, and having a horse make overall exploration easier, but still. You can unlock more stamina pretty early on if you're lucky and/or focus on that with the korok se... I mean, with the harvest whispers, but most of them are... too well hidden. It feels like there's hundreds of them with how much you can improve your stamina and bags and I can only found so many, even when trying to cut down trees or smashing big rocks that seems in some "gamer instinct places". I'll surely look into a map to have their location after some times cause meh, I don't have time to promove deforestation to ease my game time xD. Silent Hope, yeah, there's the cows and chicken, and early game there's woolies. That's about it for the references. But then again, I'm not sure where you heard it was in the same universe as Rune Factory, it's just made by the same devs, but they themselves don't mention any link to RF in their description. Marvelous has been doing all kind of games so x'). Talking about them, while it's not really a farm sim game, I'm curious about Cuisineer coming up, and back on the main topic, the next two Rune Factories. 'tho to be fair, I'm not sure I'll try RF: Edo/ol'Japan version, never was a big fan of those settings, but it'll give us a nice idea if the devs are going in a good direction with that spin off, while we wait for the soon to be revealed RF6. Side note about Sun Haven: it was one of my nicest big surprise of this year, but yeah, managing the farms at first can be tedious. That's why I... almost completley ignored farming for the first part of the game, and the good thing is that the game is totally "ok" with it as you can progress in it no matter what you do. And once you have unlocked some skills to help you with farming, it's not so much as annoying as it was at first. Sure you still need to do a bit of farming then and there during story quests but nothing hard.

My problem with natsume is they still forcing the idea that clearly not working, like farm that one season only or the player need to unlock the seasons, sometimes take step back is good, just make simple farm game no gimmick and probably take inspiration from other farm game

Are there dinosaurs in Winds of Anthos? I saw a raptor in the trailer.

Went a bit back in time and started to play lens island. Was hyped for fae farm but not for that price tag - maybe later.

The last game, I hope it's actually a try-out of a new artstyle for the mainline games. Rune Factory 5 really didn't know what to do with the art style, and the developers weren't ready for what they hoped to do. I feel like this art style would be a more logical step to almost fully 3D when compared to RF1 to RF4. I also think that if they use an art style like this, they can have more time left to the story and other gameplay aspects, which I felt were lacking in Rune Factory 5.

For me, FaeFarm is by far and away the best game here. The controls and freedom of movement have changed farm games forever for me.

It’s so hard to find cozy games on console for multiplayer so my month hasn’t been as packed 😂

A bit of a warning about Sprout Valley that I wish I had known about before buying as I definitely wouldn't have gotten it otherwise. If you are playing handheld mode on the Switch, there's a chance the joycons will not work at all if they are still attached. You have to take them off and play with the Switch in pieces to get the game to accept input from the joycons. I don't know if it's a bug or a feature; it seems like a bug because when I looked it up it didn't seem to be affecting everyone. But I find it incredibly annoying, and wish I had known about it before buying. At least it was only $5 wasted.

Sea of Stars and Silent Hope have been taking up all my time. I wanted to love Mineko’s Night Market but the loading times on switch were CRAZY long and I was bored. The writing was great but it was just not for me. I don’t really like straight farming/life sims. I like a little bit of combat and I prefer to not have romantic relationships. But Sea of Stars and Silent Hope really hit that sweet spot of chill/farming/combat/crafting/gameplay loop. I had to play the Pokémon DLC. This month so I haven’t gotten to many other games but Sea of Stars has been my favorite game I’ve played this YEAR. It’s excellent. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is an amazing game. And if I’m not mistaken I’m pretty sure you can change the combat level. If you find the combat too much but you want to be able to enjoy the story you can change the difficulty level so you don’t have to stress. I love that they did that.

Rune Factory 3 was my favorite game in the series. I tried getting in with the first game and even 2, but the controls were too clunky. 3 fixed that and I found the story charming. I don’t even mind having just a male pc, the story feels so specific that it wouldn’t work if there were two character options.

The only problems with Rune Factory 3 are the simplicity of the dungeon and farming. You can complete the whole storyline in less than 1 in-game year, and farming becomes quite redundant later since crafting / forging gives you much more money. Even ingredients for stat boosters become meaningless as you level up.

I don’t think RF4 should be the first RF because the others compared to it are lacking in many aspects. I love RF3 but compared to 4 it’s too short, only 5 dungeons and the crafting anf forging are very rudimentary. 5 is okay, shorter too but at least time doesn’t run so quickly as in 3.

Harvest Moon just wasn't the same when the original devs left and made the story of seasons games.

Was really hoping i was gonna be able to go fae farm...then silent hope...then fantasy life i...heres hoping we get a release date soon.

I liked Mineko's Night Market, but it definitely has issues, especially on Switch. It is very slow to load at times, has some visual glitches and lag in places. It really needs to be optimised better. The menus are also a bit annoying to use in some areas. It's cute and charming but really needs some fixing up.

Paleo Pines lacks alot of polish and customization despite being that price... super clunky like you said. I had some camera jittering happen and tried to get it fixed or express my issue with my game camera and the dev/mod team would only respond to positive feedback 😭. It feels like alot of quality is being lost with every new farming sim coming out 😢

Harvestella is pretty decent, thing is the game is not purely on farming. Its like My Time on Portia kinda game.

You should try stardrew valley and graveyard keeper game

Ah, so you're from Quebec? I knew the accent was familiar. Hello, fellow Quebecer!

I just check Sprout Valley on the eShop and it's $17.99 USD 😭

I super regret buying Fae Farm. It was such a letdown in multiple areas. It COULD be a great game once the devs actually fix the lackluster parts but it got repetitive and boring real quick near the end of the storyline. I'm having a BLAST with Paleo Pines though and I think it looks beautiful, it's so worth the price for me!

I know he lives in Canada, but where is he actually from?

Winds of Anthos still feels lifeless...

Fae Farm was good for about 40 hours because that's as long as the story. I found Blue Oak Bridge is far better.

anyone else unable to play sprout valley in english on the switch ?

Paleo Pines felt unfinished. Quest are repetitive, you'll get bored eventually. Just finished moonstone island, it was good.

I'll waiting for Fastasy Life i the girl who steal time they got 2 new jobs Farmer and Artist. Still no release date

Im really starting to hate farming sims that have clocks that go so unbelievably fast. Looking at how fast the Winds of Anthos clock moves just buried that game for me

Rune factory 3 looks like it's still the same game but i like the quality now. Even the upscaled and texture filtered nds version will not have this quality.

0:36 natsume copying Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

I disagree with RF3 being harder/grindier than RF5, I play both on hard... And RF3S is almost 1:1 to RF3... That said, I already beat RF3S and it took me about two months playing lots on the original... Maybe I just ingrained the tropes already?

Cornucopia????

The graphics in regards to the farming took me out of rune factory 3. Im usually not a graphics snob but for some reason the look of those seeds just threw me off in a strangely huge way

I'll make it easy for y'all : Avoid them all!

I recommend you spend a lot more time in the new harvest moon , it's not like you said, 5 or 10 hours in this game is nothing.

was kinda disappointed in rune factory 3. it's suuuuuuper short compared to rune factory 4

I'm not a fan of mystery dungeon games, so hearing that about Silent Hope is disappointing.