After extensive play of this game I would say this game can be quite addicting and absorb your life, just like any other game. From my time so far playing (3 separate accounts, the highest of which is 67), I have found many things about the game I like...and many I do not. For anyone considering this game, I hope this will help make a determination as to whether to play it or not.After extensive play of this game I would say this game can be quite addicting and absorb your life, just like any other game. From my time so far playing (3 separate accounts, the highest of which is 67), I have found many things about the game I like...and many I do not. For anyone considering this game, I hope this will help make a determination as to whether to play it or not.
Pros-- 1) This game is overall a very fun game to play, if you just want something casual to do while you're outside of work or something to do with your side time and want a game that can last for months, this may just be your game. Aside from your basic farm and production of goods, they have regular events you can participate in and compete with others.
2) the game is very clean. Meaning, from my experience, there are very few bugs. It is a finished product. And in this day and age, that's a rarity.
3) It's a cute game about farming. If farming is your thing, this has it all, from harvesting beehives to gathering crops--it has plenty to bring you the sense that you're on a farm.
4) there is plenty of competition to participate in--they have weekly races (called 'Regattas'), as well as events for those wanting some player-vs-player activities.
5) it has a nice sense of camaraderie, with the ability to 'help' others, and have others help you, with rewards coming from doing so.
6) it has a vast number of buildings and structures you can make and has a great attention to detail. Often times, the random characters you see in game will be doing something unique or cool.
Cons -
1) The game appears to be designed for teamwork, as regatta is solely a team event...yet, the chat system they have and co-op (another name for guild) design has archaic--almost non-existent--features for a guild-based game. There are no special features in their co-op guilds that allow for permanent, fixed announcements, no private messaging, no ability to filter player messages from in-game messages. No way to save chat, no way to take in-game screenshots and share them with others in-game. While they do have a ranking and promotion system, it is very simplified and only includes 3 ranks other than leader (member, elder, co-leader). In short, their chat and guild interface design is bare bones and would fit better on a game made in the late 80s. It's very sad to see such little attention given to a game so reliant on the help of friends and guild (co-op) members.
2) While the basic interface of this game is very user friendly, there are many aspects of the interface that are poorly designed and simply frustrating. Their incessant need to put activation and cancellation type buttons right next to each other, which makes it that you can often click the other button unintentionally, can be extremely frustrating at times. Especially in the case of regattas, where you often times have to dump tasks and the dump button is right next to the accept task button. Its quite easy to accidentally click the wrong button.
Likewise, the interface design for the general store, which is a central part to this game, is also extremely cumbersome and irritating--especially when you start to acquire many crates. They have absolutely no organization to your crates and, after you've acquired a few dozen, it becomes a tedious mess scrolling through the screens of crates to find an item needed on one of your trains, planes, or otherwise.
3) The events in this game, while they are a nice change from the rest of the game, are very lackluster and lack depth. And in fact, a lot of them are the exact same type of thing. Use resources you have on a machine to get you fuel so that you can gather points for the event. A few of the events have very poorly designed control interfaces, such as the snowboard game, where I found the game notoriously having me jump when I was trying to switch lanes.
4) There was no accountability for players actions. If you were the leader of a co-op, incoming players have no record of their past ventures. And, in fact, any player could change their town name at any time and you would have no idea who this person was previously. Players could join a co-op, have their character added to the regatta roster, then leave and cause the co-op to have 1 player's score effectively wasted. This happened to our co-op on more than 1 occasion. A very poor design.
Overall, while the game is fun, until they iron out some of the extreme disadvantages to this game, including the poor interface design and lack of guild features, I can't give this game a great rating. It has everything to make a great game, but these things...And those 2 buts really put a damper on what could be a great game...… Expand
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