What is Story of Seasons?

Story of Seasons launched in Japan in February 2014 as Bokujo Monogatari: Tsunagaru Shin Tenchi and reached North America in March 2015 under its new English name, the first fruit of Marvelous publishing in the West through Xseed. The game itself was a statement of continuity: a fresh farm near Oak Tree Town, rival farmers, trading with other countries through a trading depot, and safari animals, all unmistakably the 1996 series in modern dress.

Its sequel, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, arrived in 2016 in Japan and 2017 in the West for the 3DS, and is often called the best of the modern originals. Three distinct towns, a Western town, a Japanese town, and a tropical town, each with its own crops, festivals, and marriage candidates, plus part time jobs and a family story with real warmth. It was the series twentieth anniversary era flagship, and it played like one.

The name itself does quiet work. Story of Seasons tells a new buyer exactly what the game holds, seasons and a life story, without the trademark problem. In Japan nothing changed at all: the boxes still say Bokujo Monogatari, which is why Japanese editions of these 3DS games are the cleanest way to see that the relaunch was a Western renaming, not a new series.

For collectors, the 3DS Story of Seasons pair anchors the modern shelf, and both received solid Japanese guidebook support cataloguing the trading economy and the three towns. The Western 3DS releases came late in that systems life and complete copies in good order are the ones to secure, before the Switch remakes make the originals the comparison copies everyone wants.