The Upcoming Story of Seasons Title Gets a Flood of New Information
The long standing farming simulation series recently announced it’s latest entry, Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. You may be thinking that Story of Seasons is just another Harvest Moon clone, but in fact it’s actually much more–it is Harvest Moon.
In case you missed it, here is a little background on the series. For 17 years from 1996-2013, Natsume localized the English version of the Bokujo Monogatari series in North America. In 2014, developer Marvelous Inc. announced that the latest English localizations would be published by XSeed Games under the name Story of Seasons. While Marvelous Inc. switched publishers to XSeed Games, Natsume still owned the rights to the Harvest Moon name and continues to publish games under the series title. So, the developer that made all your favorite Harvest Moon games are now making Story of Seasons games, and the latest Harvest Moon titles are being made by a new developer, Nastume themselves. The new Harvest Moon titles are… well, not quite as good as the ones you grew up with.
Now that we have that cleared away, let’s take a look at the newest entry in the Story of Seasons franchise. While the Story of Seasons remake of Harvest Moon: Friend of Mineral Town released last year, Pioneers of Olive Town is the first new entry in the series since 2016’s Trio of Towns.
In Pioneers of Olive Town players will be tasked with clearing the forest and building their own farm from scratch. In traditional farming sims, the protagonist is usually gifted an old farm from a relative, with different games having various amounts of customization available. In Pioneers of Olive Town, you get to build your farm from scratch–and it’s the largest farm in the series at that.
Screenshots from the game shows off a lot of new animals and items you might not recognize from the classics. Some notable additions being bulls, llamas, and sprinklers. There is also a new species of spirits called Coropon, who once you befriend, will give you crops and materials to produce on your farm.
Classic features such as fishing, and cooking, as well as new activities like beekeeping, mushroom growing, and nature photography to submit to the local museum.
Users who purchase Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town via the Nintendo eShop will receive the “Neil’s Jacket Style” outfit downloadable content as a bonus. (Neil originally appeared in Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning.)
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is due out for Nintendo Switch on March 23 in North America and Europe.