Lets get this out of the way. I've been playing FS since 2013. Its one of my favorite game franchises. But it seems that after FS13, Giants has never really gave the games a big improvement and supposedly this was supposed to be that big improvement. The graphics are....okay. But I'll get into that later.

Pros:
- Lots of Brands! Great variety (although they insist on keeping the EU SMV warning signs so when you go to an American map it breaks my immersion)
- Purchasing land is a lot more realistic to me and more enjoyable.
- Finally, after years and years of waiting, we have a store where you can see what you're buying.
Cons:
- Hardly any real new improvements. Graphics are virtually the same as FS17 but with a few minor changes.
- Physics, they're laughable. Hit the accelerator in a John Deere 6155M and suddenly immediately you're going warp speed. Steering is still awful and gives no feedback, suspension on vehicles is stiffer than stiff. For a simulator series thats been going on for 10+ years, this is really bad considering I can boot up FS13 and get virtually the same experience.
- Horsepower? HA! That's irrelevant in FS19, doesn't matter what Harvester you get, you are stuck at the speed the game tells you to go.
- The game is optimized TERRIBLY, that reason alone is why I REALLY recommend to stick with one of the older games like FS15 or 17. Its jittery, barely runs at points if you look at more than one piece of equipment. For a game that graphically isn't much better than 17, its terribly thirsty for a really beefy system, and I can run games such as BO4 and GTA V at a solid 60FPS AT LEAST.
- Everything drives like a arcade racer.
- AI workers are still, not useless, but about as close to useless as you can get. Because as long as you keep an eye on them and fix their mistakes they make (like not finishing the edges of a field) you should be fine. But that's just a band-aid for poor design.

Unfortunately, it seems Giants is more interested in adding things like....dogs? To the game instead of fixing existing issues. There's more cons that I haven't bothered to list since I believe they've already been so well documented to the point I think it should be easy to look them up. Its a shame, look at a game like Halo CE and 9 years later in Halo Reach, you can see major graphical improvements. Every iteration of FS doesn't feel like something I'd pay $30 for again but more so a $10 update to a previous game. Lets be honest, everything new in FS19 isn't anything that couldn't have been added to FS17 or FS15, and that's becoming a big problem with this series. I still can have fun with it, but I'm very underwhelmed.

The good:
Lots of brands.
They added a store where you can see the equipment before buying it.

The bad:
The gameplay has not changed much from the original 2009 edition, less so from the 2017 version.
Many vehicles have defects in their models, many unacceptable considering they have licences (Valtra N series has both electronic and mechanical controls, since its a reused model of FS17 that was modified).
Maps have horrible defects not present in older Farming Simulators, for example, rail track crossings actually sit over the road instead of in it.

The game calls itself a simulator despite having all models of reduced weight and filtypes that most of the time weight less than half of their actual weight, for example 1000L of water weight less than 600kg.

Game does not posses gearboxes as promised, this combined with the reduced weight of vehicles makes tractors handle like Go-Carts (mods have been built in the past for this, ignored by Giants).

Zero crop simulation other than the amount of times fertilizer is applied and weed control (which happens all the time no matter what). Weather does not affect crops, there is no growing seasons so you can seed and harvest crops at the same time, eliminating any sense of order in the game. "Compaction" is incorrectly fixed by using ploughs, a tool well known to generate compaction (both by reducing the soil structure and the building of plough pans).

Horsepower of any type of harvester does not matter, you will still harvest at the same speed no matter if you combine has 200hp or 500hp and no matter the size of the header. Same with balers.
In any type of work, the only limiting factor is speed, not throughput, not pulling force. Mods simulating this have been build in the past multiple times, but Giants keeps ignoring them.

Ai workers are still not smart enough to drive on the road or do anything other than field work.
Ai drivers still miss spots, get caught on trees, stop unexpectedly, turn in the wrong direction, etcetera.

Manure or any product put on fields can't be cultivated over if the field has already been cultivated.
Dedicated no till drills still remove every residue on the soil.

Graphics;
The ambient in general looks oversaturated with light.
Far away mountains look worse than a 2005 game.
Metal textures lack roughness and many look like base colours in sunlight.
They couldn't even fix the problem of rain falling through roofs of buildings and vehicles, it basically rains inside the cab.
Wipers are just plain moving sticks, there is zero interaction of rain with windshields (a feature present in basically any car or truck simulator in the market a few years ago).
Crops look very spaced, nowhere near the density of a real crop. Same with grass.

A friend of mine who sells Ponsse machinery laughed at the way the Buffalo handles logs, IRL the machine can pick and load multiple logs in one grab with utter precision and force. In game the machine can barely grab one log, and the log tends to slide and glitch out of the machine, the claw has no force at all.
At the end forestry machinery ends up being frustrating and unrewarding to play correctly.


I could keep on going, however all you need to know is this is not a simulator, and don't expect nice graphics anyways.
All of this would maybe be acceptable if this was the third or fourth iteration of the game, however its the seventh, not considering the platinium/gold editions.

Fs 15 was pretty good back in it's days, FS17 felt a bit samey but still could get away with it's flaws but as you can see on my hours played FS19 just doesn't offer enough. Sure, there are some improvements to the gameplay but in general the game is 90% the same as FS15/17. The most disappointing is the physics. This game is called simulator but it isn't a simulator for sure. Braking, accelerating, turning, fieldwork performance of the machinery...etc all feels the same and all of it extremely arcadey. Machine sounds are flat.... You got the picture. It's pretty much a re-skin of the previous games, an effortless money grab, nothing more. Surely this is the last of the series I bought unless they make some serious changes to the game, and I'm not talking about adding 2 more crops and 20 new machines (re-skins). ♥♥♥♥ that.

I came from FS17 with high expectations, but it rapidly became blatantly obvious that Farming Simulator relies upon the good will and efforts of the modding community. Even with the few mods currently available for FS19, I'm essentially playing a vanilla version of the game. No real physics, no real weather, no seasons. Only a small handful of maps available, to bolster the 2 maps that come with the game. For me, with FS17, it was a way to pass the time, thinking about life as I nurtured my crops, but there was a diverse stockpile of mods to make things slightly more realistic.

FS19 suffers because the modding community hasn't been able to transfer their FS17 mods to this latest version. And for me, that demonstrates how little Giant/Focus actually do to create a fantastic game. Farming Simulator definitely relies upon the unsung heroes, the people who don't get paid, to create content for a very basic game. It's as though the devs had a meeting and said, "Real mud? Real physics? Real seasons and weather? Nah, we don't have to do that. That's too much like hard work. Let the modders do it for us."

In truth, FS19 has the potential to become a great game (the graphics are slightly improved over FS17, and there's the option to start from scratch and buy tracts of land as you increase the size of your farm), but without the modders, it's not worth getting if you already have FS17. I stopped playing FS17 because I was hoping FS19 would be a vast improvement. It's not.

At the end of the day, this is a case of 'too little too late'.

Farming Simulator 19 offers a good bit of fun and content - but it still suffers from some fundamental design problems that are painful to see still persisting in the latest edition. These issues could certainly be overlooked a decade ago, but now after six or so versions of the game - a lot of it becomes unexcusable. For instance, how can any self-proclaimed farming simulator not have seasons this far into the franchise? Seasons are so critical to farming that I can't begin to understand why they are not in the base game at this point. Also, the core mechanic is interacting with fields, so why don't we have a more dynamic tire and soil interaction? This is basic stuff. I could go on. This simulator still largely boils down to 'painting' fields.

While some will have you think Giants Software has the market cornered - mark my words - all it will take is a small indie team with a few bucks and an open mind to topple this series. It's not that difficult of a game to get right, and it's only a matter of time. Let me explain why I say this. For those that aren't familiar with the community, what you need to know is that it has a strong 'old guard' attitude. While the community is mostly nice, long standing members (including the developers) are largely unwilling to accept or consider new ideas. This is the core problem. This series may be the best you can get right now in the farming simulation genre, but it leaves a lot to be desired (compared to, say, American Truck Simulator which feels darned near perfect for that genre).

Pros:
+It's a remarkably fun time sink.
+There is a lot of content, and mods are icing on the cake.
+The multiplayer aspect adds a lot.
+For the most part, it's all quite beautiful.

Meh:
=I'm the last person to talk about graphics, but these are a bit of a letdown. It still feels a bit dated or something (particularly the 2D soil).
=The character creator is sort of a tease. Yes, thank you for adding it in, but it is the absolute bare-minimum it could be. What would it take to simply expand on it?
=The world feels more alive (finally), but still could use more in this department.

Cons:
-The series as a whole needs to evolve at a much faster rate.
-There are details in the game that really need to be explained. I had this complaint about other installments in this series, and it still persists here. Yes, there is a good bit explained in some areas, and yet none in others. This should have been brought up with early playtesters who are fairly new to the series or farming in general.
-No seasons in the base game.
-No Steam Workshop support, and on a long enough timeline you will want mods. Many want them day one. I may be fine with no Steam Workshop if I found Giants Software mod website to be fanastic, but unfortunately I don't.
-Mouse sensitivity is horribly low even at the maximum of 200%. Who could playtest this for more than 20 minutes and not realize this?
-Why does the American map look so trashy? This is a big complaint from me, because it was clearly a deliberate design choice. Sure, I've witnessed American farmland that looks like this - but I've also seen plenty of much less rundown farmland in America. Why not make it a bit more pleasant. Very curious design that I almost take offense to.
-For being a 'simulator', there actually isn't all that much content that reflects this. For example, you can 'tab' teleport between vehicles, break signs in the town with impunity (how about a small monetary fine?), and 'paint' fields haphazardly with no penalty, among other things.

If you haven't played any of the Farming Simulator titles and are interested - go for it. WIth that being said, I am not hopeful that this series is going to ever innovate beyond what we essentially already have in front of us.

Milktoast. Playing since 13 and this is the worst yet. I am a mapmaker and have 1000's of hours on 17.

This game was born on PC and now the inevitable shift has happened. That shift is when a PC game gets big, supported by community mods that make it what it is, the dev's switch focus to console where the money is at. This has unfortunately happened to FS. I am bored beyond belief. The new graphics are lackluster and cater to console performance. The draw distance is pathetic. Many objects do not render until you're about 50m away and there's no option to change this even with a high end PC. On release the economy was broken along with the outrageous cost to buy land. Some fixes have come but still finding it very uninteresting. I can't explain the graphics but they just look washed out. The equipment is bright with clean lines and no real definition looking out of place on the bland backdrop. Like everything is toy and made of plastic. All I can say is that to me it certainly looks different than 17, but not better at all.

The default maps are catered to the Euro farmers. Small, clustered, bendy, obstructed curvy layouts with tiny fields. There is an uninspiring amount of equipment for purchase. Nothing new and exciting as far as I can tell. Was excited to see Mahindra but the only vehicle there is, is a stupid UTV. Mahindra makes tractors but there aren't any in the DLC.....

Once the modding community fixes this lame duck I'm sure it will be fun, but for now I find it hard to talk myself into playing it. To each his own, this was a huge disappointment for me,

I have been a loyal Farming Simulator fan for years now, but as much as I want to recommend the latest iteration, I just cannot. This is basically Farming Simulator 17, with a few more features, and a lot more bugs. My workers seem to all be crackheads, because they refuse to farm an entire field, even though I specifically cleared out all trees. My trailers seem to be prone to tipping even with dual wheels.

The features that I want to see are things that make the game funner. I realize a trailer that can autoload logs isn't realistic, but this isn't real life. The tediousness and bugieness seem to be increasing with each release, and it has just become too much.

If patches come in to fix this game and actually improve it, then I will come back to update this review. Until then I really hope that Giants is working on fixing things.

Step up your game giants. No seasons, no soil management, No gearbox, tractors handle like toys. At least they added weeds and lime this edition props to you giants but this still isnt as in-depth as what we had way back in 2015 with the soil mod. Dont even get me started on the maps. What gives giants? Do you know what American agriculture looks like? Ill give you a hint. Big fields not crowded little areas to farm with sime windey roads scattered everywhere. I have been playing since farming sim 11 and honestly the gameplay is marginally different! Giants you need to start looking at what the modding community is doing and implement some major gamplay enhancements not just the same thing each year with some different graphics.

Take it from someone who has been around farming growing up that this is not a good representation of farming.

Farming Simulator 19: Disappointment Edition - That should be the title of this game. It feels like downgraded version of FS 17, and downgraded in the worst way: the best content is missing, new features are useless, and the worst and most annoing things from FS17 are... still there.
Mirrors? Still useless. Handling? Still very very bad. Graphics? Just like FS17, but the system requiremnts are higher (+ Enormous FPS drops). Vehicles and tools? FS17 had more. AI? Very bad/stupid, maybe even worse than in 17. Gearbox? Nope. And many, many more.
So, again, the only thing that can save this game for me is modding community, because developer is too lazy.

Ok, time for a conclusion:
DONT BUY THIS GAME! Its a waste of money. Buy Farming Simulator 17 instead, or wait till FS19 is on sale. Big sale. Like 60-80%.

Having bought and enjoyed FS13, 15 and 17 I expected the same initial enjoyment of 19. Sadly I have been massively disappointed. Despite a big graphics overhaul, and many other features added, the overall game feels bland, lacking and massively unfinished. Many small issues than previous titles.

The worst offenders are the vehicle sounds and visual aspects of the game. The sounds are nowhere near a real life agricultural vehicle. (Working on a RL farm I can clearly hear the difference) The visual aspect is also massively disappointing, as if they built a lovely new graphics engine for the game but left it to an idiot to set the final settings and values.

Sadly the few good points of the game get lost in all the things wrong with this game. The management seem to be even more out of touch with the product and community they are making the game for than ever before.

Time will tell if they improve the game or whether they hope people are just daft enough to continue buying it.