Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is a 2019 Enhanced Remake of the Story of Seasons Farm Life Sim title Harvest Moon: Friends Of Mineral Town (which itself was a remake of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature). It came out in October 17, 2019 in Asian regions, July 10, 2020 in Europe, and July 14, 2020 in North America. It was originally exclusive to the Nintendo Switch until receiving a Steam release in July 2020, making it the first Story of Seasons to be released on PC.
The game takes features from both Friends of Mineral Town and its Distaff Counterpart More Friends of Mineral Town. You have a choice of playing as classic Mineral Town protagonists Pete (male) or Claire (female), with the additional option of two original main characters that are more in line with the modern Story of Seasons art-style. The game is done in a Super-Deformed style similarly to the sprites of the Game Boy Advance game, but the character portraits themselves have been redesigned to fit contemporary Story of Seasons art.
Story Of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town feature many deviations from its original game, including new love interests and more animals to rear. The following game is Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Much of the cast has been given this to go with the series' Art Evolution since Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility:
- Rick is no longer a homely, nerdy looking character anymore. He is a Long-Haired Pretty Boy.
- Cliff looks less noticeably homeless and rugged.
- Kappa has been slimmed down and given a more humanoid design.
- Grey lost his hat and short hair, and was given a much more simplified, generic Bishōnen look.
- Huang the traveling merchant appears to be more younger this time around comparable to the other bachelors.
- Adaptational Curves:
- Harris has gone from very skinny to fat.
- Official art depicts Lillia as slightly larger than she originally was.
- Gotz has traded in his muscles for body fat.
- Adaptational Ugliness: While not exactly ugly, Carter's redesign is less youthful and attractive.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- Karen's hair is no longer brown with blonde bangs. It's completely brown like in Harvest Moon DS.
- Cliff is missing his blond highlights and is exclusively a brunet.
- Carter has dark brown hair instead of dark blond hair.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Unlike the original game, all the romance options are bisexual—or player-sexual.
- And Your Reward Is Parenthood: Get married, and you'll eventually have a child. If you get married to someone of the same gender as you, the Harvest Goddess magically blesses you with a baby. Since this happens more quickly than waiting for a pregnancy event does, it's technically more beneficial to be in a same-gender relationship.
- Anti-Frustration Features: One notch on the belt of 100% Completion is the Goddess Collection, which involves offering 108note of the game's 120 cooked dishes to the Harvest Goddess as gifts. The Harvest Goddess does not dislike or hate any of the game's cooked dishes, presumably so that players who want to marry the Goddess won't have to keep decreasing her affection points in order to complete the game.
- Art Evolution: The characters have changed from their last appearances in Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands and Harvest Moon: My Little Shop a decade prior. The art design is less stylized and the general style has changed.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Much like the GBA game, there’s plenty of these around.
- Some of these are the usual suspects (10 million steps, ship every item), but the biggest things are as follows: take one billion steps, ship every single item you can in the game (including a few that aren’t tracked), ship another billion of any single item, and yet another billion fish, though this doesn’t need to be of a single name, which is convenient because the game simply groups all fish into three categories based on size. Accomplishing even 1% of a single step of this is a feat in and of itself. And your reward for this? Praise from the Harvest Goddess and +3000 affection.
- All the “special” candidates land here, minus the surprisingly easy Huang. The Harvest Goddess and the Kappa have identical requirements of completing the shipping, dishing, and cooking logs, as well as being in year five or later and responding to the Harvest Goddess asking who you have your eye on with her or the Kappa. The last option is mutually exclusive (or can be neither), locking you out of at least one of the two. The Gourmet is theoretically simpler, only requiring that you cook all recipes for his bonus conditions, but requires at least 31 giftsnote , which is a problem because he can only be given one gift per year.
- The seasonal suns suffer from this, due to an unfortunate omission of the greenhouse, thus removing their sole use. On the bright side, Huang pays out the ass for them, so they aren’t useless after you’ve made them for the log.
- Lastly, the rings and Truth Jewels themselves don’t end up here, but a complete set do. Two rings have bad requirements: 10 million steps (for context, 1 million requires roughly 65 hours of strictly walking), and being married for ten years. The last Truth Jewel you encounter, on the other hand, is found in the mountain cottage...which is given by your spouse when you hit your 50th marriage anniversary. The rings do nothing beyond boosting your farmer score (which itself does nothing), and a complete set of Truth Jewels shows the numbers on your stamina and fatigue, when the former is shown by default now, and the latter is completely inconsequential by that point.
- But Thou Must!: At the start of the game, the mayor asks if you want to give farming a try. If you say no, you go back home and the game ends. You'll have to redo the intro and say yes to actually play the game.
- The Cameo: Van and Lou (formerly called Ruby) from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life are both in this game, like they were in Friends of Mineral Town. This time there's no need to connect a game to get them to visit, just gift the Harvest Goddess enough.
- Cool Big Sis: Prerelease bios refer to Karen as having the personality of an "older sister".
- Divergent Character Evolution: According to interviews, the game contains self-divergent evolution by doing away with several artifacts from Harvest Moon 64:
- Gray's original design stems from him being a farmer. He now has a more casual design, with gloves included, to both fit his occupation change of blacksmith and the fact he recently moved from the city. His hair is also blond because he isn't Ran's brother anymore.
- Karen's Girliness Upgrade suits her more toned down Cool Big Sis personality more than her punkier 64 design.
- Both Karen and Cliff lack blond bangs. Their blond bangs were because they were the grandchildren of the blonde Eve from Harvest Moon, which isn't mentioned in the Mineral Town games.
- Popuri's original design was intended for a girl who works with flowers, not chickens, so she was given a more sturdy looking dress with a shorter skirt.
- Sasha's original design fit when she was a soft, depressed woman but is unusually sweet for her Gossipy Hen personality in Back to Nature. Her redesign makes her more angular looking.
- Harris was a postal worker in 64 and was changed to be a police officer. His new look now gives him a badge and a vest to look like a more modern officer. Also giving him a mustache that is a similar style to his father Thomas.
- The Harvest Goddess received a new design because her old design was reused for Dessie in newer Story of Seasons games.
- Elly wears an apron because she was originally a baker. Back to Nature changed her to a nurse but kept the same design. Her new redesign features crosses to emphasise that she's a nurse.
- Kai's short sleeved and urban-looking redesign better fits him being a traveler who only comes to town during summer.
- Dork in a Sweater: Jeff wears a purple cardigan to accentuate his awkward Nervous Wreck personality.
- Everyone Is Bi: The player can marry any available love interest, regardless of what gender the marriage candidates are or what gender they are playing as. Same-sex marriage is referred to as a 'Best Friend Ceremony' in Japan, like in the Japanese version of Harvest Moon DS. This is much more explicit in the western release—XSEED said outright they were going to call it marriage—and some Heart Events where you're dating a character even specify your gender. For example, Ran's orange heart event has her refer to you as her girlfriend if you're playing as a female farmer.
- Gay Option: Players can marry characters of any gender they want—and in the US, without the system between same gender characters being called "best friendship". XSEED explicitly said on their blog post about the translation
that not only were they going to call it marriage, but every character that could be romanced would have their relationship hearts visible from the start, rather than same gender characters only being visible after confessions and dating like in the Japanese release. - Girliness Upgrade:
- Karen has been given this. Her hard-edged, punk aesthetic is missing and has been replaced with a more feminine one. She traded in her jacket and white shirt for a simple loose sweater over an undershirt, plus she now wears make-up. Karen's expressions are also more delicate.
- Ran has traded in her tomboyish looking overralls for a more feminine blouse and capris. Her original clothes were an artifact from when she worked on a ranch in Harvest Moon 64, but they were still fitting for her character due to her tomboyish nature.
- Hide Your Lesbians:
- In the Asian versions, you can become "best friends" with same-gender characters. It's a marriage in all-but name.
- Thoroughly averted in the English translation. "Best friendships" are explicitly romantic relationships for both genders.
- Non-Mammalian Hair: Kappa has a mop of green hair, despite not being mammalian.
- Permanently Missable Content:
- Cliff averts this in this version of the game. If you don't offer him the winery job, he'll leave as he did in the original game...but he comes back a year later to stay permanently. This is in sharp contrast to the original, where if he left town he was gone for good.
- Either the Harvest Goddess or the Kappa is permanently missable as a candidate. One of the prerequisites for marrying either is that, when the Goddess asks you if you "have your eye on someone," you must answer that you like the Harvest Goddess or Kappa. Since she only asks you this question once, one (or both) of them will be locked away from you forever.
- If you keep saying no to taking the foal, Mugi will stop offering it, meaning you'll never have a horse.
- Same with the vase Huang offers (though he offers it many more times than Mugi does with the foal); if you don't get the vase, you can't marry him.
- With the foal, if you don’t bond with it enough to satisfy Mugi (four hearts, which is far more than acceptable given the timeframe), he takes it back after it grows into an adult and you don't get another one.
- Production Foreshadowing: Lou from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life returns as a visitor from Forgotten Valley—names that were used in the remake Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, indicating early on that she'd be renamed along with several others and that there might be a remake. However, her spouse's name is Tum, which was corrected to Tei, and the ins she runs is called the Mitemi Innnote , which is changed to the Lei-Over Inn.
- Running Gag: The meta-gag of Mr Tiddles in XSEED Games shows up again, with Mei mentioning that she wanted to submit him in the Fluffy Festival.
- Shout-Out: One of the TV Shows you can watch is about a hero facing off a dark lord that has arranged a marriage towards a princess. The confrontation is a variation of the infamous Castlevania: Symphony of the Night dialogue. For instance: "What is a princess?? A marriagable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, HAVE AT YOU!"
- Truer to the Text: XSEED's translation is truer to the Japanese version than Natsume's. This includes returning characters to their original Japanese names.
- Wonder Child: Happens if you're in a same gender relationship. The Harvest Goddess comes to your house 90 days after you've married and asks you a favor—to raise a child for her. (She also asks which gender of child you want—boy, girl, or randomized.) Once you agree, the baby shows up in the middle of your bed, and you're left to explain to your spouse how it got there.
- You Don't Look Like You:
- Carter has been redesigned from the ground-up and doesn't resemble the same character. He wears completely different clothes, has a hat on, has a different hairstyle, and has dark brown hair instead of dirty blond hair.
- The Harvest Goddess isn't in the classic design she uses in most games. Her signature double buns have been let loose and she's wearing different clothes.
