A Wonderful Life vs Pioneers of Olive Town

[oz Helix oz]

which game is better? for me Pioneers of Olive Town graphics are better, im trying to think which of this 2 im going to buy first

[Jerry Swarovski]

PooT are new game and A wonderful life are remake. i think graphics wise they're almost the same. i mean if you play a wonderful life before then maybe PooT first. if you wait until sale then PooT first because well cheaper. these 2 game are good but in the end is your choice anyway you want to play remake or a new game

[AsianGirlLover]

Who genuinely cares about graphics anymore? What’s the point? Does a bad game suddenly become good because it’s pretty to look at?

Anyway, if you care about story, get this game. If you care about lots and lots of content and an enjoyable grind to progress your tools/farm, get Pioneers of Olive Town. If you only care about how pretty a game is, nobody can help you.

[Erin the Angry]

Play PoOT if you love gathering and putting stuff in "maker" machines a lot. Even with the update that made them stack products it sucks. Though being able to almost completely customise the entire layout of your farm is nice, You pretty much just end up slapping makers down near whatever resources you are after. However that game was MUCH more centred around your relationships with the town. The actual farming and ranching parts were a lot simpler, to the point of being boring if you ask me.

The problem with THIS game in the original was that there wasn't a lot to do OUTSIDE your farm. You'd tend to your farm, then wander around and talk to people who typically said the same 1 or 2 things every day and occasionally you'd see a cutscene event or two and there was a couple NPCs with minigames that got stale. Once you'd gone through it once there wasn't much reason to play a second run. This game is much more focused around living your own life with your family and raising your child. This was always the game I loved most out of the old school harvest moons because of how chilled out it was.

I loved both games and I've been waiting for this one for almost 2 decades and I'm satisfied with it. Though for me it's a LOT of nostalgia I will admit. Though some of the things they changed irk me a bit.

[AsianGirlLover]

Originally posted by Erin the Angry:

some of the things they changed irk me a bit.

You and I both, friend. Thank god for the modding and emulation community.

[oz Helix oz]

Originally posted by AsianGirlLover:

Who genuinely cares about graphics anymore? What’s the point? Does a bad game suddenly become good because it’s pretty to look at?

Anyway, if you care about story, get this game. If you care about lots and lots of content and an enjoyable grind to progress your tools/farm, get Pioneers of Olive Town. If you only care about how pretty a game is, nobody can help you.

so this game does not have a lot of content? is less farming and more story then?

[ShockedHearts]

Id personally recommend AWL over POOL

atleast in terms of how people received it AWL is a much more well received game. has more charm, while being very unique with its true aging through each chapter.

I dont think there are any other farm games where you grow old and have a family in the way this game (AWL) does it

[oz Helix oz]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Id personally recommend AWL over POOL

atleast in terms of how people received it AWL is a much more well received game. has more charm, while being very unique with its true aging through each chapter.

I dont think there are any other farm games where you grow old and have a family in the way this game (AWL) does it

ok i understand that, but there is a lot of stuff to do?

[AsianGirlLover]

Originally posted by oz Helix oz:

so this game does not have a lot of content? is less farming and more story then?

This game is focused on starting and raising a family… and that’s about it. Pioneers has more content in the sense of “dungeons” to explore, more town events, more areas to visit… it’s a modern farming game with everything you’d come to expect, including some home customization.

AWL is quite barren in comparison, and they took out a lot of the gritty stuff that was in the original in order to appeal to… who knows? Either way, I’m recommending you get Pioneers of Olive Town first, since this game basically removed everything that differentiates itself from Pioneers, and ultimately has less to offer.

In other words, it removed what made it special, became a cookie cutter modern farming game, but didn’t bother to add what most modern farming games have - ultimately making it a soulless recreation of what was once a unique game.

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by oz Helix oz:

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Id personally recommend AWL over POOL

atleast in terms of how people received it AWL is a much more well received game. has more charm, while being very unique with its true aging through each chapter.

I dont think there are any other farm games where you grow old and have a family in the way this game (AWL) does it

ok i understand that, but there is a lot of stuff to do?

yes and no.

lots to accomplish but its not like stardew in the sense that you have a TON of options everyday. you have a handful of things you can do and manage for profit, for getting gifts, for finding unique items and cutscenes etc.

you are in a tiny valley, and you have to make the most out of what you have

[Erin the Angry]

You kinda have to have a specific taste in games to enjoy something like this anyway. When I was a kid in the 90's my first game in this genre was harvest moon: friends of mineral town on game boy advance. I spent my entire summer vacation from school locked to it playing it on my game boy player on my gamecube when that came around. I didn't end up playing the SNES, N64 or playstation games.

I find they all kinda went downhill after that. Many years later I found out why. Turns out Natsume and Marvelous if I remember the names correctly, had different visions on where to take the series. I loved the farming sim, the relationships and family building. They went off the rails with all sorts of different stuff like saving the world through collecting things to unlock things you could do already in previous games, or just downright absurd tasks you'd never think to do without a guide. Some of the characters and art styles were really weird too... (magical melody gives off a really bad vibe as all of the characters look underage, even yours, for example) and back in the day we had stupid levels of censorship.

Ever since then I was hoping to find things become more lax as those censorship laws relaxed but now it's too late and things curved back the other way in society these days.

Now nothing can make people sad or have a chance to offend someone over something obscure and normal people just don't think about. Now your animals can't die, which means you don't have to care for them as much or you'll only suffer a bit of time having bad quality products, now you can't have females look attractive or men look manly as that's some sort of taboo now. Most of them look like featureless dolls.

Now the bar is even just a cafe because reasons. I'm hoping one day someone will make one of these games that's like if the old games didn't have those chains they had binding them, and also not pandering to all this weird stuff nowadays. I want one where it's more like actual life, and you are provided with the tools and resources to fix your and other people's problems.

Like in stardew valley for example, only thing that originally bothered me about that one was the townsfolk mostly seemed downright hostile to you at the start. I realise the goal was to break the ice, warm them up to you and see that they have their own stories and troubles and you can help them. I macked stardew to completion on several files so not like I DON'T like that game or anything.

Anyway I have a ton of fond memories of these games as I am an old fart and this one is still really good and at least with this one I don't have to buy 2 versions of it to play as a guy or a girl and both sexes have the same experience. (Another wonderful life had a lot more features over the original guy version for example.)

[Sundriver89342]

as someone thats never played HM AWL on gamecube, tell me, what did they change from the og in this remake

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by Sundriver89342:

as someone thats never played HM AWL on gamecube, tell me, what did they change from the og in this remake

a lot. but overall its the same experience but with a lot more QOL features to make it a lot less annoying to play.

farming is enjoyable, animals are less stressful to maintain and things are given a tad bit more clarity on HOW to do them.

I would say the only thing that hasnt improved from the OG is the digsite. otherwise this is huge improvement from OG (as someone who has played og that is)

[Sundriver89342]

oh so this is just a better QOL version of the og
nice! also i picked the farm girl cause shes adorable, in fact the red dress girl and the girl in the mansion,( names elude me im so sorry) are my favs, id play it again just for the marry routes

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by Sundriver89342:

oh so this is just a better QOL version of the og
nice! also i picked the farm girl cause shes adorable, in fact the red dress girl and the girl in the mansion,( names elude me im so sorry) are my favs, id play it again just for the marry routes

I married my boi matthew myself, but yes molly and lumina are great lol

also this game has character customization requests and stuff as well. so generally more than og. I dont think i could ever play the og again after this lol

[Erin the Angry]

Nah. I really couldn't go back to OG now that this is here either. I wonder if this time around they might add other outfits for the NPCs. I also hope they greatly expand the clothing for the player character too. I remember playing both the guy and girl OG games and it sucked that only the girl version had extra outfits to collect. Now that this game has been refreshed maybe they plan to add more to it in the coming months.