To be honest, the characters in this game don't make me want to get to know them much. I do appreciate that most are "real" people with the exception of a few stereotypes, however I feel like, especially when you are strangers with someone, you don't start talking about the endless dark, icky allergies, or how an open field makes you feel shell-shocked, you know? Particularly in the case of the eligible characters, I haven't had much of a drive to woo them since there's been very little in the way of attraction. In fact, they seem to be putting up a wall against me, like the game is trying to say "break this down with love and turnips!" and I'm like... why? One guy's a jerk, the doctor won't stop talking about doctory-things (except that one comment he made about rubbing sunscreen on Maru's back!!!- weird!) and let's not even go into Sebastian. I feel like the sort of comments they make would've made more sense once you became friends and had some deep conversation or something. Maybe the dialogue just skips the niceties, but the first day when I met all the bachelors, I was literally like "nope... nope... nope..." and for the villagers was like "...this town is depressing." xD
Wow, it's completely opposite if you play as a male. What is it that makes you find them depressing? Seems like a pretty happy little town to me.
There are more depressed guys than girls, I feel. What, you don't want the doctor rubbing lotion on you?? C'mooon. Just look at his mustache!
I found as male character wanting a female, the females to be very... dunno. I am now going after penny, but only because she seems smart or something, but I don't liked any character, specially because unless you see heart events, they feel very "flat", for example I know nothing about Maru, the few times I crossed with her it was a "good morning" only thing, I think this is one of the weakest parts of the game when compared to Rune Factory for example (I like Rune Factory 3, and the contrast is extremely obvious, the characters there feel extremely alive, even if everyone is a bit weird).
I've been thinking about making a forum post discussing this. For me the farming and community parts of the game are equally important, but the lack of dialogue and special scenes is starting to be discouraging. Now I don't want to be a downer by saying "waaaah this game isn't perfeeeect" so I'm going to throw out a few suggestions for characterization/world building for you guys to comment on. 1.) Have some of the young lads show introduce us to the train. Alex, Sam and Sebastian are living the small-town life and getting free stuff and an adrenaline rush sounds like something bored young adults would do. This could give us insight into their likes/dislikes ("Aw man. I was really hoping to get a new [thing]." "Think Maru could use something like this, Sebastian?") or hopes. The same goes for other areas in the game. The bat cave or mushroom-growing operation that Demetrius sets up really needs some follow-through by him-- he was so passionate about it and then it dead-ended. The quarry, minecart system and greenhouse likewise would interest Robin, Clint and Abigail. 2.) It's lonely on the farm. No-one comes to visit. I could grow a whole field of flowers or a really ecologically-complex garden and neither Harley, Emily or Demetrius care. I don't know anything about the game's programming, but maybe special visit events could be linked with the numbers of certain farm products shipped. For example if you ship 20 cranberries, eggplants, pumpkins and sunflowers Emily "gets a day off" to enthuse about your diverse vegetable selection. Maybe on a sunny day if you're a friend with Penny she brings the children over for a field trip. If you're friends with Dimitrius (assuming he checks up on his bat cave/mushroom operation some day) and Penny he can geek out to the kids about the science experiment in your cave. 3.) More build-up to festivals. This ties into the "Option: Alternative Economy" thread that was recently posted where characters would post requests for large amounts of farm produce. I think this idea is excellently suited for the preparations the community goes through for festivals. Festivals seem to suddenly appear and disappear despite characters talking about how much time the spend preparing for them. Gus talks about how he cooks up a storm all week for the Egg Festival and Luau. Maybe in your second year he could send you a letter asking for a bunch of gold star-rated crops. These could be treated as a Community Center bundle with a time-limit. For the Egg Festival we could help Emily dye the eggs either by showing up at her house to dye them, or by providing her a bundle of dye ingredients. 3.5) Festivals also have the same dialogue year-to-year, which I hope changes in the future. There are some cool ways to vary it up-- take that fall fair for example. Leah could set up a booth to her artworks, just like Robin and Clint. In year 3 or 4 Lewis could ask our opinion on a way to increase interest in the fair and present some 4-H inspired contests like cooking, animal, flowers. That would get the town talking, maybe spark rivalry between some of the characters until it resolves in the big day of the contest. ---- In short, ConcernedApe needs time to work out bugs before more content like this gets added. I really, really hope more dialogue gets added because right now, it feels sparse. But I believe that complaining about that sparseness isn't constructive, so if you guys could give feedback or suggestions maybe we'll see some improvements! What sort of scene would improve our understanding of a villager? How could we work in their likes, dislikes and values into making them seem more person-able?
