Do you have some criticism for Stardew Valley Expanded?

[Alfon]

Hi! Seems like everyone know and love that mod. To be honest, I don't hate it. I am enjoying the fact that there is... you know... new stuff. Even more stuff. It's ok.

But I can't stop thinking that the original game is so much better than the expanded version, for many reasons.

I want to explain myself before being beaten by all of you:

1-. More is not always better. Sometimes, less is more.

That's specially true in a game like Stardew valley, where every day has a very short time limit. I lose the day just getting where I want to be, I have very little time to do anything. Making Stardew valley more busy dillutes the experience and adds a lot of stress to a game that was supposed to be relaxed.

That's something that we noticed with the tropical island in the official update, but the difference is that the island is end game content. You get there very far into the game, you had time to get bored before. But now, from the start everything feels so busy.

But it's not only about making the valley bigger, it's about adding more fishes and forage. The originals feel less important and interesting when every second you find something new.

And the fishes... when I am looking for a fish that I need for a bundle I hate to find one of those... TERRIBLY UGLY FOR SOME REASON new fishes.

2-. The new characters are less likable

We have Andy, which is a religious redneck from the south. And yes, he is a nice guy, just not the kind of characters I like to see in my fantasy game, kind of kicks me back to the real world.

Olivia and Victor are not bad people by themselves, but they break the sense of small rural town when you have the rich arrogant mom that DOESN'T ACCEPT GIFTS THAT ARE NOT GOLDEN and the rich awkward but genius kid. Who is almost as hard to satisfy with gifts. I would kick them both from their mansion and put them to work in a farm. I don't know, they don't entirely fit the theme of the game.

Sophia... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Sophia. That's the dream girlfriend for any 15 years old otaku, including the usual toxic themes: She is emotionally fragile which allows the player to exploit that weakness. They use mental health issues to make her look needed, she needs help, she needs to be cure, she needs love. She is not a woman, she is a puppy with t*ts. So usual in dating games for kids. Concerned ape managed to avoid that almost entirely... but this expansion falls entirely on those usual problems.

3-. Too much information removes the mystery

The mage used to be interesting because he didn't talk too much. He was also grey. He knew about things but didn't always act, which is the wisest (and hardest) thing to do by the way. But the expansion involves him a lot, just like Marlon. They are suddenly very nice guys, absolutely white, they explain absolutely everything even when I DON'T CARE. And there's so much Grampleton during the first year, every new character talks about Grampleton a lot. The best artisans are in Grampleton, everything good is in Grampleton. But the game is called stardew valley, why giving so much weight to a place that is not even a real part of the game?

4-. Fanservice for teenagers = Bad writting

I didn't like what they did with Sophia, I thought she was pure fanservice that broke the immersion... she even watches anime and that's japanese animation. Who makes anime in the world of Stardew Valley? The Gotoro Empire? I don't know.

Again they tried to make Krobus more likable by "puppyficating" him. "They treat me like I am a person". Wtf man. The shadow people are not monsters, they are a proud race, what is doing this guy, thinking he is a monster? Just so the player thinks "ohhh, poor little thing".

In general, I found the writting very, very juvenile. Much more than the original game. Much, much more. Ambitious but lacking in perspective, misunderstanding that writing is more than explaining stuff, good writing is also what you choose not to explain.

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Ok, I feel better now. I just think that the mod is great, really. It just dillutes the quality of the original game, which talks a lot about how incredibly GREAT the original game really is.

[Sédrio]

Yeah, I didn't really enjoy my time with the mod. Just because the mod is popular doesn't mean you'll enjoy it. When I played, I didn't care at all for the characters and pretty much everything in the mod. I stopped playing once the second year started. Compare that to my time with the base game, and I've had multiple playthroughs where I've gone Year 3 and above. Hell, I'm about to get into my fourth year on my current save and I WILL keep going.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

It feels like a really bad fanfiction to me.

There are few, if any, improvements to the game.

I don't want to have access to super magic skull cavern busting mega wine

I don't want the trashcans lined up neatly in rows so I can run past and check them without stopping.

I really don't need ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fan theories like Abigail and the Wizard canonised

As for the furry .. or is she a cosplayer? Whatever. This mod is clearly written for a certain demographic, of which, thankfully, I am not a member

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

You've said what I wanted to say, but better

[Artie]

I use a lot of mods, but these ones that expand the story and characters I never seem to quite get into it
I guess I'm not the target audience, either

[DaBa]

In terms of new content? None. It's all well integrated into the game and feels like a natural extension of it.

The additional lore is nice and it fleshes out the world better, the original game always felt like it didn't go deep enough into this thing and it always left me feeling unsatiated.

The only thing that I really didn't like was how weird they made the social link with Sophia. Then handling of depression and emotional scarring felt really childish and surface level, like the writers never really seen people in real life that struggle with those issues and how they actually act. They don't break down on you and bawl their eyes out randomly. Not to mention a person in such a disarray would never be able to run a whole business by herself, you can't have both things writers. Also the conclusion of it is so abrupt and stupid. You clean up the parents room and she immediately does a 180? Come on... I don't mind she's into anime and that kind of culture, I don't see why anybody would mind that unless they have a weird personal bias, but that's your own problem and not the mod's.

Other character writing is okay, or passable. "Juvenile" is a great word to summarize it, but I don't mind that as long as it's not offensively so, and I don't think the character writing in SVE crosses that line between inexperienced writing and bad fanfiction. I didn't find any of it offensive but none of the characters really grabbed me either. Overall I appreciate the new characters as they make the whole valley feel more lively and less empty, ultimately they add to the game in a positive way.

Overall I'd give the mod a solid 8/10, as far as the mods go for Stardew Valley it's up there, definitely one of the more impressive ones. It's a great way to add some new things to a new playthrough while keeping it feeling very vanilla.

[BirbNotBird]

I have to agree with SVE opinions of your guys, cause both spectrums have good take. Always recommend to "play the original first before the expansion"

1. Balance changed was nuisance to me. Taking longer time to go to Adventure guild, getting sewer keys... It's pretty much eat a huge chunk of time compare to vanilla. And you have to look up the wiki for it...

2. The story is as fanfiction as anything can be. Drama which is subtle like "Pierre's cheating wife" is now straight up kaboom. A few mature events kinda do "Tell but not show" which bore me. New characters are decent-ish, but they do lack what make OG Stardew Valley interesting. I have to admit that I love Claire, because her story is one of the most fun experience. Morris is also nice with his story, except the mayor part which kinda overkill imo. I wish that a few chunks of character should be rewritten instead, or at least refine so that it should come as less of a fanservice with no afterthought.

OP did a good take on Stardew Expanded, and as a player who played it religiously after finish base game, I can say the same. Most story rewritten should make the mod turned into "Stardew Valley Rewritten" than Expanded, because the core of Stardew writing is losing somewhere.

I would give the mod 8/10 in term of gameplay and a 7/10 in term of story changed + new characters. At least it's not atrociously unbalanced and so complicated yet not complex + Grandma's magic power like Ridgeside.

[SivartStoneheart]

It seems to be the best single mod for Stardew Valley.(quests, characters, areas, fish, monsters, weapons, Joja exclusive items, etc)
After SVE it has lots of utility mods.
Character mods are very limited.
It has 2 other mods that add new areas. I got Ridgeside Village yesterday, the characters do not look horrible but looking at the mod it just feels out of the way with no real gain.

Other than utility mods there is SVE.

[apetty77]

Originally posted by Alfon:

Hi! Seems like everyone know and love that mod. To be honest, I don't hate it. I am enjoying the fact that there is... you know... new stuff. Even more stuff. It's ok.

But I can't stop thinking that the original game is so much better than the expanded version, for many reasons.

Of course it is. Expanded is not part of the official game. It's a mod add-on that was created by a different person. It has no relationship to the original game at all. It's not like it's a DLC created by ConcernedApe. And while I do enjoy most of Expanded, I will say that Sophie is 100% the *worst* part of it. She is just a bad character; I tend to agree with the assessment that she's a product of people who are a)inexperienced at writing, and b)don't actually have real experience of depression if they think she is at all a realistic portrayal of it. She's supposed to be extremely young while dealing with the trauma of losing her parents and living with chronic mental illness. But she's somehow simultaneously so fragile that she can't keep from having an emotional breakdown at the drop of a hat, and yet fully capable of running a vineyard operation COMPLETELY by herself?

Yeah, no, the writers responsible for her straight up don't know what they're doing. I don't care if that's harsh, it's true nonetheless.

Her love of cosplay and anime *is* jarring because it's so out of place against the vanilla culture and community of Stardew Valley and the writers made no effort to actually integrate those traits to make it more seamless. But that's a fairly minor thing. The real problem is that the writers don't know how to *do* an authentic portrayal of a young person struggling to singlehandedly keep the family business afloat while also dealing with major chronic health issues. I keep reading that she's obvious fanservice for a very specific demographic. But when I hear that I just...she's checklist of Mary Sue tropes AND her ONLY interest is in anime and cosplay. Who is she written for and what is the inspiration, exactly? Because she might fit into a very specific _type_, but holy crap is she just a _badly_ written example of it.

That out of the way...

Originally posted by Alfon:

That's specially true in a game like Stardew valley, where every day has a very short time limit. I lose the day just getting where I want to be, I have very little time to do anything. Making Stardew valley more busy dillutes the experience and adds a lot of stress to a game that was supposed to be relaxed.

I mean, you don't *have* to min-max. There is not a single thing about SVE or any other expansion mod that dilutes the experience or makes it stressful. That is exclusively what you, the player, brings to the game. If you do *not* play it with a mind toward playing as efficiently as possible, of min-maxing your day and trying to work toward some kind of speedrun timeline on goal completion, then nothing changes. The game is completely designed for you to play as quickly or slowly as you choose.