Preview: Hands-on with Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life at PAX East 2023

Preview: Hands-on with Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life at PAX East 2023

The upcoming remake by does justice to the original and makes some welcomed quality of life improvements

I love the classic farming life sims, and A Wonderful Life is probably my favorite of the Harvest Moon Games, so when I got my hands on the demo at PAX East I wanted to understand what the developers brought to the game to make it up to date.

The visuals are great and the audio is spot on, the overworld feels full of life with tons of little new details, and the game demo ran terrific on the Switch (surprise!), but it was the quality of life improvements that the team added that really impressed me.

For instance, just taking out the requirement to pause the game to access some of the crucial features made for a much better experience. We’re now able to access bag compartments on the fly, we can press a triggers to get to all of our tools wuickly, and we can even see where different characters are on the map when we need to track them down. All of these things seem small, but they make for a much better, more enjoyable time overall.

It really feels like a lot of love and care that went into development on this remake — I’ve played the original game so much over the years that I just needed a little time with it on the show floor to confirm that the improvements are worthwhile and something to look forward to.

Images and video courtesy XSEED Games