Do you have to follow the main story?

[NickC]

I would like to buy this but have a question for anyone who already plays this.

Do you have to follow the main story or can you spend as much time as you want doing your own thing?

I ask this because I am a little confused as to how the game works, it says you are replaying certain days of the main characters life & from what I can gather, it would seem that every time you sleep the game advances to the next month or chapter in his life, which sounds like entire chunks of time would have gone by.

Can you, for example just spend days farming, fishing, doing basically what you want or not?

[Jackson]

Story is entirely at your pace. It introduces you to some game play elements but nothing you couldn't figure out on your own. I believe there is some content locked behind completing parts of the main quest line. I'm a chronic restarter so I haven't got to it yet. My latest start I went hard into the farming right away and only did a few quests that I knew would help me. I will say though I find the quests ( both main and side) are well integrated into the game and will usually be part of your short term goals because it just feels natural.

In the standard mode one month is one day after the tutorial is complete. You can turn on custom mode where you can change game parameters like passage of time. This will disable steam achievements though. I personally find the standard time in the day to be just right where you need to prioritize tasks because you can't do everything in a day but long enough you can see progress everyday.

As an aside. When I first got this game I was sceptical as it seemed the game didn't take itself very seriously. That was quite wrong. The marketing seems to focus on the humor but there is a pretty solid country life sim underneath that layer of humor. I've almost got a hundred hours in this game and I'm no where near done with it. Id buy it 100%. My one pro tip is to turn on silent protagonist mode. Maybe just personal preference but I found my character talking all the time was getting on my nerves. The text still comes up on the bottom of the screen so your not missing out on the clues he's giving you. Hope you enjoy!

[NickC]

Thank you so much for that, what you have said has been most helpful & so I am much more confident of buying the game now (probably get the DLC at the same time too).

Just purchased! :-) :-)