With all the news coming out from Natsume on Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, I found myself almost forgetting about XSEED’s Story of Seasons. The North American publisher has been quiet for months on what exactly has been going on with the latest in the Bokujō Monogatari series. As is if some kind deity descended and finally granted one of my wishes, XSEED posted an update on their blog that can be found here.
The blog post details a lot of information on what they been up to with Story of Seasons and even goes into one of the different modes that will be in the final game called ‘Seedling Mode’. In ‘Seedling Mode’ (which was called Novice mode in the original release of the game in Japanese), people who are new to the series can play and take it a bit easier. It’s easier to unlock a lot of things since money requirements are lower and you don’t lose stamina as fast from gardening. I’m hoping with the inclusion of this mode, the more normal mode will be more reminiscent of older Harvest Moon games where things felt more earned as opposed to given to you.
The blog also mentioned that they will be trying to keep more things truer to the original game. They will be leaving the in-game currency as “G” and the townspeople’s names will be what they were in the original game as well. For example, one of the characters who was originally in Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns as Cam will be called Kamil in Story of Season since it was what he was originally called in the Japanese version of the game. Anything that keeps the game as close to the original is fine by me. Kamil, I feel anyways, suits a guy who loves and sells flowers a lot better than Cam.
It’s also mentioned in the blog that the game is 90 percent translated and that they will be entering testing soon. Personally, I’m pretty excited by this blog post. There was a lot of very reassuring things here. Since this series has been Harvest Moon with Natsume up until now, it’s really great to see XSEED understand and grasp how nervous people are about them handling Story of Season.
How about you? Are you worried/concerned/nervous about Story of Season or excited that XSEED has taken over? Let us know in the comments what you think!
