This is a game that scratches a certain itch for me and there are so many aspects of this game that are equally my favorite. For starters, I currently have 49 barn animals and I haven't maxed out yet. There's one grain that can be re-harvested and once the jungle is unlocked, you can harvest it all year round so until you've maxed out stats for your animals, you can reap better quality animal droppings by feeding your animals said grain.

Another aspect I love (and also hate) is the amount of romanceable characters. You can pick and choose who you'd like to date, and you can continue dating the different characters after you get married (or opt not to). Relationships decay like most farming sims; however, at this point in time, relationships continue to decay even after maxing out hearts. There is an accessory that can be unlocked late game to prevent decay, which is great but out of three accessory slots, one would always be taken unless relationships aren't important to you of course.

There's a lot of mixed reviews on the cave system, but it's definitely one of my favorites. There are games (aka puzzles) inside the caves and some pitch black areas that you'll need to navigate, but I had a BLAST exploring and finishing the caves. I grew up on puzzle games so it was relatively easy for me to accomplish, but it can definitely be challenging for someone who isn't a fan of puzzles.

One last aspect I'd like to include in this review is the variety in items. There are a TON of different crops, trees, decor, clothing, and accessories to choose from. For the other clans, you can partake in trading via reciprocity (goods exchanged for goods instead of currency) which makes it affordable to retrieve items to cook or decorate with.

Some things that are less enjoyable for me would be the automation systems, water wheel and irrigation (both you'll eventually unlock). There are some items that can be multi-purpose and if the setting is the wrong option for water wheel (changes once per day), it'll spit out whatever the setting is for. An example is oats. You can either use the mill for oat flour or the press for oat milk. Oat flour is useless right now, because there aren't recipes that call for oat flour specifically, but there are recipes that call for the grain by itself. I use oat milk for cheese, because most recipes call for any cheese and it's easier to get the best quality for oat cheese, than it is to get the best quality for goat cheese. I believe there is only one recipe right now that calls for goat cheese so I would personally save my high quality goat cheese for that one.

Speaking of cooking, when you are about to prepare food, make sure you click each item inside the recipe to verify it uses the items you want. Otherwise the game will decide which items to use. There isn't enough room in the fridge for every item you'll need to cook with so I suggest stocking a chest with additional items.

On to the irrigation system. You have to pump it daily for it to water your crops, which is annoying. If you want to move the system, you have to do it basically piece by piece. If you pick up the extenders, it'll remove the trenches that are connected to it so that does save time, but I've wasted whole days removing the irrigation system and placing it somewhere else since only 9 trenches can be connected to the extenders.

I would suggest having an idea of which animals you'd like to farm the most. If you want to unlock rare and legendary versions of any animals, you'll need a few barns. There's an animal that shows up in Year 2 which will make you the most amount of money, but If money isn't important to you, I'd suggest starting with a couple boars for fur and then eventually yarn, at least 2-4 ibex for horns (males) and milk (females), and then a few ostriches for feathers (males) and eggs (females). You can ride them around too! I never planned on having 49 barn animals but here I am with 6 barns, breeding all the animals to max stats.

I currently have 3 breeding pens, and I would suggest breeding one pair of animals a day. You'll wake up a few days later and if the baby isn't the color, gender, and/or stats that you want, restart the day until it is. I once had two breeding pens going at the same time and it was tough to roll for two babies because I wanted specific colors and genders. With the next update, we'll be able to breed different species to get certain animals that we can't otherwise find in the wild, which will be really cool!

If you made it this far, I congratulate you and I hope I have convinced you to try out this game :)