An honest first look

[TheBarbarian_EL]

I've been an FS player for some time. I believe my steam account at least goes back to FS13? I fell in love with the franchise with FS19. I was excited to see what Giant's freedom from a publisher would do in FS22. We are now entering the next generation of aggrosim with FS25.

My impressions prior to release with what Giant's showcased had me underwhelmed. I was seeing evidence that they are listening to the community, but also not understanding what we are requesting. Overall the pre-release trailers, screenshots, and even the content creators showing it off this past week only showed me something that was a nominal step forward from FS22. I did not let pre-release information form my opinion and I did my best to enter the actual release unbiased by what I had seen in previews.

The first hour:
In my first hour of playing I ran into few issues that concerned me. The stutter from having the cache build up when you first start a new map has been something we've seen in FS for... as long as I can remember. Something about the Giant's engine does not seem to manage this process in an optimal way. I saw few graphical anomalies, but they were present. Sometimes witnessing a full black or full white frame flicker. Overall, these were not issues that would sway my opinion as they can be fixed. Giant's can only test so many combinations of hardware after all.

Game play was overall smooth. You can feel that there is some optimization between FS22 and FS25, but again, it is nominal to the end user. The driving mechanics of the farm equipment feels better. Driving the starter John Deere 30 series feels akin to my Kubota HST tractor around my property. That I will grant them an improvement. I've not acquired a truck or car yet so I do not know if Giants has a unique driving mechanic for those or if a FWD sedan will drive like a Quadtrac still.

The largest immediate noticeable change is the color grading and lighting. They have gone with a warmer, more natural and de-saturated path here. This helps make the equipment and buildings look natural and less "plasticy". The foliage density is also obvious to us immediately. The trees look more dense as do the ready to harvest crops. The stubble even looks more dense.

The next thing that everyone is rushing to see is the ground deformation. They did a good enough job of this to satisfy our constant begging for it. However, it appears to be purely cosmetic. Considering crops are still on a growth stage system and there is no mention of ground compaction, the deformation doesn't really have a purpose beyond saying "See... we did what you asked."

The next, I have not experienced yet, but I've seen creators experience 3-4 times in a single season. Tornadoes. This screams "We were listening, but don't understand the words coming out of your mouth." The community asked for more relevant weather. Up until this release the weather was overall unimportant and cosmetic only. Rain/Snow meant you couldn't harvest without a yield penalty. That's it. I know I saw many requests for influential weather like drought or floods. I think this was primarily players not knowing what they wanted. I believe we wanted to have a system for soil conditions influenced by too little or too much rain. Perhaps conditions where the frost made the soil unworkable until the temps warmed things up again. Yes, I even believe we wanted our yields to be influenced by this. I don't believe anyone asked for a natural disaster to be added that can do major unpredictable damage. I'm not against the introduction of natural disasters, but now this new thing makes the rest of the weather irrelevant. Only one crop requires any form of irrigation regardless of the weather. Why have weather if it does nothing? I do believe that being able to disable the damage of tornadoes was a wise choice, but it would be nice to just disable them outright. They server no purpose, and likely tank performance while active.

I think my greatest disappointment is that FS25's base game is not inclusive of all FS22's released content. We do get to keep the vegetables released at the back end of the FS22 life. Most of the other items were machinery, which just isn't as complete in FS25. I understand that this could be entirely due to licensing so I don't think we can be too upset by the missing machinery. Licensing is a difficult thing, and must be acquired anew for each project. That said, the available equipment is limited. Mods will resolve this, as will DLC. One of the biggest items missing from the release of FS25, for me, is Precision Farming. It just isn't there. 1.5 years of FS22 playing with the "slightly more realistic" means of soil quality management and FS25 is back to the "paint the map blue 2x's" for fertilizing. I do believe Precision Farming came out as a free DLC in both FS22 and FS19. I'm sure there is a developmental reason for it not being available on release, but that doesn't make it less disappointing. When a primary feature goes "missing" in the modern game market, we tend to expect to be charged for it.

The final "review":
I am not ready to do an official review on the store page yet, but I have my thoughts to share with others that may come here looking for insightful input.

If you are like myself, and you have clocked thousands of hours across multiple releases of this franchise, you will most likely find value and enjoyment by acquiring FS25 and even the Year One pass. Like myself, you will clock the time, and it is stable enough and performing well enough that it is a nominal step up from FS22 to be worth the jump.

If you fall into that camp above your reliance of mods may be the deciding factor for WHEN you want to purchase FS25. Obviously, there is very little available at this time, but it is also a non-zero state. Yes, there are a few "non-Giant's" mods present, but not many. I believe I saw 2. Within the next few weeks we will start seeing the first mods coming in. If mods ONLY enhance your fun, buy it now and you'll get them when you get them. If mods are integral to your enjoyment, wait a month.

If you DO NOT have thousands of hours, or even close to it AND you own FS22 or even FS19, WAIT! This is not something that you will find full retail value out of. I'm sorry to say it, but that is just fact. This is marginally better than FS22. Such a small increment up that I've advised my "non-obsessed" friends to not buy this yet. Wait for a sale, or until things flesh out in the hot fixes, DLCs, and mods.

If you don't have any FS games and are completely new, buy the base game. If you can get to whatever hour marker you need to go "huh, I didn't realize I was playing that much"... Congrats, your a digital farmer now. It isn't the most absurd price tag, but if you're unsure... flip a coin and you'll know the answer before it hits the ground. If you are nervous that you will have buyers remorse, you will. You have two choices really, buy it and make the most out of it you can or don't buy it, and move along.

TLDR of the review:

If you've got thousands of hours: Buy it, you'll get the value.
If you rely on mods to have a good time: Wait a couple of months.
If you have low hours and play casually: Wait for a sale.
If you're new and not worried about buyers remorse: Come on in, the waters fine.
If you're new and concerned you won't enjoy it: Wait for a sale so it stings less, or move along... your anxiety will ruin it for you.

Thanks for reading!

[Joblue]

This was very insightful, many thanks

[jgvandijk]

I like your review and agree with most of it after three hours of "playing"

My starting version was FS15 and I have played several thousands of hours on all of the next versions.

After three years of intense play on FS22 I'm just going to jump into FS25 and see what will happen (I have kept an FS22 save-game as an escape).

It feels and looks better than the first period of FS22.

[cpt JackSParrow]

I like the game so far, i liked very much fs 22, but i m gonna wait for modded german maps to play as usuall.Not fan of the new maps, and never was on Zielonka neither.. Kind of missing the alpine map from previous two games. Why not Erlengrat included???

[BossmanSlim]

Originally posted by TheBarbarian_EL:

TLDR of the review:

If you've got thousands of hours: Buy it, you'll get the value.
If you rely on mods to have a good time: Wait a couple of months.
If you have low hours and play casually: Wait for a sale.
If you're new and not worried about buyers remorse: Come on in, the waters fine.
If you're new and concerned you won't enjoy it: Wait for a sale so it stings less, or move along... your anxiety will ruin it for you.

Thanks for reading!

I'd add that if you are happy with FS22 and aren't completely bored with it, then stay on FS22 until the game is on sale. I remember moving from FS19 to FS22 and waiting for a couple months for the game to get back to an enjoyable state due to missing mods. No need to buy early and then just sit on the game.

The only people I'd recommend buying it now are:
1) Those absolutely done with FS22 that want something a bit new
2) Content creators
3) Those who want to play FS and don't own FS22 or FS19

Giants is slow to patch and mods will take sometime for your favorite FS22 mods to show up in FS25.

[MikeSenzanome]

Congrats. If this was a review I'd give it a thumbs up. 👍

[dogwalker1]

Originally posted by TheBarbarian_EL:

I was seeing evidence that they are listening to the community, but also not understanding what we are requesting.

Originally posted by TheBarbarian_EL:

The next thing that everyone is rushing to see is the ground deformation. They did a good enough job of this to satisfy our constant begging for it. However, it appears to be purely cosmetic. Considering crops are still on a growth stage system and there is no mention of ground compaction, the deformation doesn't really have a purpose beyond saying "See... we did what you asked."

Originally posted by TheBarbarian_EL:

The next, I have not experienced yet, but I've seen creators experience 3-4 times in a single season. Tornadoes. This screams "We were listening, but don't understand the words coming out of your mouth." The community asked for more relevant weather. Up until this release the weather was overall unimportant and cosmetic only. Rain/Snow meant you couldn't harvest without a yield penalty. That's it. I know I saw many requests for influential weather like drought or floods. I think this was primarily players not knowing what they wanted. I believe we wanted to have a system for soil conditions influenced by too little or too much rain. Perhaps conditions where the frost made the soil unworkable until the temps warmed things up again. Yes, I even believe we wanted our yields to be influenced by this. I don't believe anyone asked for a natural disaster to be added that can do major unpredictable damage.

You sir, get it.
What these things point to is something I've noticed a lot of in the gaming industry over the past 10-15 yrs... Developers basically taking a pole on what features people call out for and collating the results together whether they form a cohesive whole or not. Sure, listening to the customers can be important (if you actually understand what they are asking for) but sometimes I also wish they'd just follow their own vision and make the game they want to make. As someone once put it plainly - "never mind all that, just make a good game".

[C. Black]

Personally I am really unhappy with the performance and lack of a lot of machinery, most of the machines I used in FS19, FS22 are gone and seeing only 2 Valtras in this release got me down straight away, even tho we got a lot of new more modern machines, I miss the classics, I miss containers to pack up the wood that keeps jumping across the map and me too, I miss precision farming

[philipgillespie]

I agree completely with what you said.
Precision farming was a shock omission for me.
I'm going back to FS22 until the modders have a chance to improve the game.
It's unplayable with so few options for vehicles, tools, sheds and productions.
Also, almost everything is really expensive with no cheaper options. Short of cheating in money you're extremely limited in what you can do.

There are some improvements there, just not enough.

Spend £40+ on a game and then rely on unpaid player modders to make it playable.

[Ker]

"I think I’ll get into it, but I still have several disappointments. It’s still not possible to have quick keyboard shortcuts for front/rear camera views, and there’s a complete loss of control of a tractor (especially in manual transmission) when the engine is off – no brakes at all! Not even a handbrake. I find several regressions, particularly in the textures of worked soils; the windrows look strange. I’m not a fan of the color grading either; it looks too cartoonish for my taste. We’ll see how it goes over time..."

[Mackintosh]

Same old Giants, do the bare minimum to qualify as a "new" release and then move on. It literally feels that way to me, and yet again I fall for it. I guess I have to hand it to them for at least that.

[lairdmcc]

Originally posted by TheBarbarian_EL:

I've been an FS player for some time. I believe my steam account at least goes back to FS13? I fell in love with the franchise with FS19. I was excited to see what Giant's freedom from a publisher would do in FS22. We are now entering the next generation of aggrosim with FS25.

My impressions prior to release with what Giant's showcased had me underwhelmed. I was seeing evidence that they are listening to the community, but also not understanding what we are requesting. Overall the pre-release trailers, screenshots, and even the content creators showing it off this past week only showed me something that was a nominal step forward from FS22. I did not let pre-release information form my opinion and I did my best to enter the actual release unbiased by what I had seen in previews.

The first hour:
In my first hour of playing I ran into few issues that concerned me. The stutter from having the cache build up when you first start a new map has been something we've seen in FS for... as long as I can remember. Something about the Giant's engine does not seem to manage this process in an optimal way. I saw few graphical anomalies, but they were present. Sometimes witnessing a full black or full white frame flicker. Overall, these were not issues that would sway my opinion as they can be fixed. Giant's can only test so many combinations of hardware after all.

Game play was overall smooth. You can feel that there is some optimization between FS22 and FS25, but again, it is nominal to the end user. The driving mechanics of the farm equipment feels better. Driving the starter John Deere 30 series feels akin to my Kubota HST tractor around my property. That I will grant them an improvement. I've not acquired a truck or car yet so I do not know if Giants has a unique driving mechanic for those or if a FWD sedan will drive like a Quadtrac still.

The largest immediate noticeable change is the color grading and lighting. They have gone with a warmer, more natural and de-saturated path here. This helps make the equipment and buildings look natural and less "plasticy". The foliage density is also obvious to us immediately. The trees look more dense as do the ready to harvest crops. The stubble even looks more dense.

The next thing that everyone is rushing to see is the ground deformation. They did a good enough job of this to satisfy our constant begging for it. However, it appears to be purely cosmetic. Considering crops are still on a growth stage system and there is no mention of ground compaction, the deformation doesn't really have a purpose beyond saying "See... we did what you asked."

The next, I have not experienced yet, but I've seen creators experience 3-4 times in a single season. Tornadoes. This screams "We were listening, but don't understand the words coming out of your mouth." The community asked for more relevant weather. Up until this release the weather was overall unimportant and cosmetic only. Rain/Snow meant you couldn't harvest without a yield penalty. That's it. I know I saw many requests for influential weather like drought or floods. I think this was primarily players not knowing what they wanted. I believe we wanted to have a system for soil conditions influenced by too little or too much rain. Perhaps conditions where the frost made the soil unworkable until the temps warmed things up again. Yes, I even believe we wanted our yields to be influenced by this. I don't believe anyone asked for a natural disaster to be added that can do major unpredictable damage. I'm not against the introduction of natural disasters, but now this new thing makes the rest of the weather irrelevant. Only one crop requires any form of irrigation regardless of the weather. Why have weather if it does nothing? I do believe that being able to disable the damage of tornadoes was a wise choice, but it would be nice to just disable them outright. They server no purpose, and likely tank performance while active.

I think my greatest disappointment is that FS25's base game is not inclusive of all FS22's released content. We do get to keep the vegetables released at the back end of the FS22 life. Most of the other items were machinery, which just isn't as complete in FS25. I understand that this could be entirely due to licensing so I don't think we can be too upset by the missing machinery. Licensing is a difficult thing, and must be acquired anew for each project. That said, the available equipment is limited. Mods will resolve this, as will DLC. One of the biggest items missing from the release of FS25, for me, is Precision Farming. It just isn't there. 1.5 years of FS22 playing with the "slightly more realistic" means of soil quality management and FS25 is back to the "paint the map blue 2x's" for fertilizing. I do believe Precision Farming came out as a free DLC in both FS22 and FS19. I'm sure there is a developmental reason for it not being available on release, but that doesn't make it less disappointing. When a primary feature goes "missing" in the modern game market, we tend to expect to be charged for it.

The final "review":
I am not ready to do an official review on the store page yet, but I have my thoughts to share with others that may come here looking for insightful input.

If you are like myself, and you have clocked thousands of hours across multiple releases of this franchise, you will most likely find value and enjoyment by acquiring FS25 and even the Year One pass. Like myself, you will clock the time, and it is stable enough and performing well enough that it is a nominal step up from FS22 to be worth the jump.

If you fall into that camp above your reliance of mods may be the deciding factor for WHEN you want to purchase FS25. Obviously, there is very little available at this time, but it is also a non-zero state. Yes, there are a few "non-Giant's" mods present, but not many. I believe I saw 2. Within the next few weeks we will start seeing the first mods coming in. If mods ONLY enhance your fun, buy it now and you'll get them when you get them. If mods are integral to your enjoyment, wait a month.

If you DO NOT have thousands of hours, or even close to it AND you own FS22 or even FS19, WAIT! This is not something that you will find full retail value out of. I'm sorry to say it, but that is just fact. This is marginally better than FS22. Such a small increment up that I've advised my "non-obsessed" friends to not buy this yet. Wait for a sale, or until things flesh out in the hot fixes, DLCs, and mods.

If you don't have any FS games and are completely new, buy the base game. If you can get to whatever hour marker you need to go "huh, I didn't realize I was playing that much"... Congrats, your a digital farmer now. It isn't the most absurd price tag, but if you're unsure... flip a coin and you'll know the answer before it hits the ground. If you are nervous that you will have buyers remorse, you will. You have two choices really, buy it and make the most out of it you can or don't buy it, and move along.

TLDR of the review:

If you've got thousands of hours: Buy it, you'll get the value.
If you rely on mods to have a good time: Wait a couple of months.
If you have low hours and play casually: Wait for a sale.
If you're new and not worried about buyers remorse: Come on in, the waters fine.
If you're new and concerned you won't enjoy it: Wait for a sale so it stings less, or move along... your anxiety will ruin it for you.

Thanks for reading!

You do get the vegetables in the base game, Parsnips, Carrots and Red Beets are in the base games. What’s missing that I can see at the moment is the shipping container. As for licensing of equipment and vehicles they only have to pay for the license and they have it, or they could be cheap like they are being right now and use a generic container with no branding on it. They choose to get as much for the game and give as little as possible that they thought they would get away with.

[HyzerSoze]

I agree with most of what you said and also was also quite surprised to not have precision farming in the base game. The only disagreement I would have is the fundamental glossing over of the absolute litany of issues we are having. It is only fair to mention the bad with the good if giving a proper review. I am personally quite disappointed and only play because I am an actual addict and 22 felt played out after a few thousand hours exploring every map and mechanic. lol

[superfly1842]

Yup. Spot on. I've told several people to not buy it as well. The only reason I have it is that I was given free code. I already knew the game was trash when I watched the unveiling videos and it was confirmed when the giants partners streamed early access. I think that saved a ton of ppl money from buying it. I wish giants released their sales numbers as I bet this is underselling even fs19 in the same amount if time.

Really sad to watch a confused development team run in circles. So much missed opportunities for improvement. So much laziness.

[TheBarbarian_EL]

@lairdmcc
Thank you for adding your thoughts. I did mention in my original post that we kept the vegetables. Their is significantly more than the shipping container missing from the game, but I'm in agreement with the idea that everything that was available at the end of FS22 should have been base game available in FS25. I would even argue that the maps from Giants should have all been available. FS25 feels so minimalist that it is almost like they wanted to punish us for continuing to support them.

@FarmerRob
I apologize if I glossed over the issues. I was writing from my personal experience only. An experience which has not changed much since the release. The only issues I've personally encountered are the flickering foliage, black frame flicker, and the ability to lose a carried item through the world when carrying by hand. I know others have experienced more issues, but I cannot provide an opinion on bugs I've not experienced.

@superfly1842
I only purchased this release of the franchise because of my long time love for it. I know what happens in any form of software development once a new version is released. FS22 had grown stale. Even the modders lost interest in it. The release videos from Giant's themselves were disappointing because they were obvious vertical slices in controlled environments and heavy post processing to "sell the game". The content I saw early from creators was more in line with my own experience. I disagree that the game is trash. I feel that we are too quick to call a release something so strongly when there are far worse releases that showcase how bad it can be. It is by no means a good release. It is a par release at best, and as I said barely adds anything new to the FS22 release and takes away much more.

As for the mention of your desire to see Giant's release sales data. this has been done already. This was covered by Games Press and shows that the first week realized half a million more sales than its predecessor.
Click here for the article about release sales information.[www.gamespress.com]

I will be interested more so in the lasting power of this release. If Giant's does not step up and release some rapid fire hot fixes soon, they could lose this gain and see an overall decline in sales. I myself will absolutely not be acquiring a license for a server anymore. I did so in prior years. Not enough of my circle of friends are going to buy in to justify the cost and Giant's refuses to release dedicated servers that do not require special licensing. I imagine they will lose a significant number of self-hosted licensing for servers this go around.

I absolutely agree with you that FS25 feels as thought Giant's was lazy. I don't blame the developers for this. Developers are the people who do the work, not make the plan. Someone in an executive or middle management position made these decisions. The decisions made were poor. We know Giants is out of touch with its audience by the fact that we almost never see any community engagement. I'll admit I'm spoiled by Coffee Stain and our time with Jace and now Snut. Those are the community engagement levels all development studios should aspire for.

I am still incredibly disappointed with how insignificant this release is. I encourage everyone to research the laundry list of reported issues. I also ask everyone who is having an issue to use the feedback tool as we know they do not review Steam Discussions or even their own forums reliably. Giant's Bug Reporting[feedback.giants-software.com]

[joridiculous]

Ground Deformation; try it is mainly "decorative", but you will feel some driving over it on the fields. But where you *really* notice it is on the farm, at least Europe Map, where the ground next to the farm house and chicken coop, it will deform good and noticeable more with the bigger the vehicle, and you really jump all over the deep tracks driving over them. Not on foot though.

I believe we wanted to have a system for soil conditions influenced by too little or too much rain. Perhaps conditions where the frost made the soil unworkable until the temps warmed things up again. Yes, I even believe we wanted our yields to be influenced by this.

This is what Seasons,, the Mod did. Rain didn't give you a penalty in yield, you simple couldn't harvest, and frost made the ground "unworkable", and killed crops In an instant (that one was a real bummer! losing full fields the second clock turned to "winter")