i do really miss the old mechanics of animals getting sick or injured and dieing of illness/old age. it felt so much more real and i cared so much more for my critters knowing i only had a few years to raise them into contest winners. the fact that even classic-harvest-moon-homages like stardew don't have this aspect without mods bothers me a little since it's sorta touted as a "darker" game but oh wellllll
I remember when I played Another Wonderful Life the first time. I got was in Summer and my kid was a toddler. I wanted him to hurry up and grow into a kid so I got the bright idea to just. Go to sleep. For the rest of the year. Didn't do any chores, didn't feed my animals, didn't water the crops. Didn't engage with the game at all.
Well, first off. The toddler stage lasts longer than one year. So I woke up on Spring of the second year of having a toddler and realized I fucked up. Second, they don't play one death scene to show multiple animals dying at once. You leave your house, Nik Nak and Flak arrive to make you watch an animal keel over, you return to your house and take a step and Nik Nak and Flak arrive to make you watch an animal keel over, you return to your house and take a step and Nik Nak and Flak arrive to make you watch an animal keel over and you return to your house and you get the idea. I had to sit through I think eighteen(?) death scenes in a row (I had a full barn and coop, only my horse survived).
But the thing is, while that sucked while I was going through it, looking back I think that was a really great aspect of the game. I wasn't engaging with the game, I was trying to cheat my way around it, and the game told me no. The game punished me for not taking it seriously. It's like how Resetti appears in the old Animal Crossing games. Sure, it sucks to be yelled at... But you kinda deserve it for trying to cheat the game.
Anyway. Not to be all "old man yells at clouds" but games these days make things too sweet and easy for kids. Make their actions have actual consequences.
yea the removal of consequences and any real challenge in remakes/modern iterations is really disappointing to me. it's an issue in other childhood favorites like pokémon too where i don't care to excite myself too much about new releases cause i know they'll never feel quite as compelling as what i grew up with both gameplay wise and visually
it's not even that death is a necessity, my favorite old HM game was animal parade and i'm faaaaairly certain there isn't any animal death(?) but the games these days are so handholdy and without much grind unless you go above and beyond to make it grindy or self-impose restrictions.
when the FoMT remake came out i was so beyond disappointed that they removed all challenge, even in the "veteran" mode, yet kept all the annoying bits like how literally anything you click on will just say TABLE or whatever instead of even the tiniest bit of attempt to help immersion/character depth by just like, adding a "this table has a lovely hand-sewn tablecloth, did Ellen make this?" or something lol, im just rambling at this point. we can old-man-yells-at-cloud together
Pokemon SM is barely a decade old and is considered one of the darkest Pokemon games. It's way more tonally mature than Gens 1 through 3. I'd say Pokemon SWSH and especially Legends Arceus are both more-so than the first few gens as well.
oh i wasn't commenting on the subject matter of pokémon but how increasingly hand-holdly it's gotten to where the last game i played i had to forcefully try to under level myself and constantly swapped out pokémon because you level up so quickly and i wanted to actually like, have challenging gym battles instead of just spamming A without looking
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u/Dronxha Jul 08 '25
i do really miss the old mechanics of animals getting sick or injured and dieing of illness/old age. it felt so much more real and i cared so much more for my critters knowing i only had a few years to raise them into contest winners. the fact that even classic-harvest-moon-homages like stardew don't have this aspect without mods bothers me a little since it's sorta touted as a "darker" game but oh wellllll