I’ve been playing more of Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), and I’m tsill having very divided feelings about it Here is part one of my official review from yesterday. Before I get into the meat of it, I want to give it the flowers it deserves. This game is meaty, and I mean MEATY. Yes, I’m playing the fully-updated version, and damn. They could have easily made this two games in stead of one with how much content there is. Frankly, I think that might have been better rather than having one chonky game. I do understand that if you played it from the start, the game would have been updated over the years. That probably made for better pacing than having it all at once. Yes, it still rolls out over time, but the timelines are much shorter than I presume they would have been when the game first released.
I love the diversity of characters in the game. Different races, genders, body types, religions, and more. Some of it is only superficial, but some of it is deeper than that. Also, there’s something to be said about treating diversity as if it were normal and the default (which it should be) rather than something weird and exotic, but at the same time, it is something that many people don’t think about.
I like that being a witch is a stand-in for other minorities. There are some hard truths that can be told while using a nonexistent creature as a stand-in for vulnureable peoples. I also like that you can date a wide variety of people, though you can only date one at a time. Plus, the dating system is, ah…I’ll get to that in a sec when I’m done giving praise.
The world is vibrant and colorful. I was a bit put off by the art direction at first, but it has grown on me. It suits the game, and I can see why the developers chose this aesthetics.
I like most of the characters, and I’m neutral on the rest. There is no one I hate in the game, not even the baddy. There is heart to this game, and I appreciate how much care the developers have put into the characters. There are a few characters I wish I could have dated who were not available to me, but that’s a minor quibble. There are eight dateable characters (and my character is a woman). Three women, four men, and one nonbinary person.
There is always something to do in the game. There’s farming, animal husbandry, dating, cooking, making clothing, making other things like glass, candles, and juices. You can also craft potions and spells, many of them, and you can follow people with a scrying spell. You can also use your crystal ball to figure out what they like (same with your animals, though the latter is more generic while the former is more specific).
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though, and things open up so much after the game officially ends. Which is at the end of the first year. I’m near the end of the second year, and I’m still getting new stuff. I was wondering how to expand the jewelry store because I was convinced it was bugged, but I just completed the quest that will soon allow me to expand.
To be fair, that’s on the devs. Every shop that is expandable tells you what you can sell to upgrade the shop. Once it’s over, you can still sell things, but it tells you there’s nothing left to buy. And there are no sillhouettes of things you can also sell. With the jewelry store, there were tons of sillhouettes remaining, and it kept saying I could upgrade the shop–even when I had five stars. This all happened in the first season, and when I finally looked it up (a few days ago), people were complaining about bugs and glitches.
Then, I dug deeper, and that’s when I found out that upgrading the jewelry store was well at the end of season two. On the one hand, that’s amazing and gives you a reason to keep playing, On the other hand, how many people quit the game before that?
Look. I’m a FromSoft fan. That means I’m well-acquainted with not seeing everything in a game on one run. However, I feel it’s different with a cozy game because they’re not meant to be so massive. Then again, I pplayed Cozy Grove (Spry Fox) for eight months and still saw new stuff at the end (and not just ebcause they added DLC). That’s a game that had changing seasons and things that were limited to any given season.
When I first bought the game, I hesitated a bit before paying thirty bucks. That’s a lot for a cozy game, but this game could have easily charged twice that based on the content within. This is more than a fair price, and I hope that it being higher than most indie games won’t deter people from buyng it.
Now. Let’s get back to my critiques. I want to focus on the romantic aspect of the game because while I appreciate a lot about it, there are a few things I just can’t get past. I like that there are several dating possibilities of many different genders. I like that they are varied in personality, passions, and lifestyles, but I don’t like the actual dating mechanics themselves.
Each character in the game has several favorite foods. You can try to figure out what they are and give each character one food item a day in hopes that you will find the right one for the right person. Supposedly, there are clues around the world what each person likes, but most of the time I did not come to the right conclusion. I don’t know if the problem was with me or with the clues, but at any rate, I gave up after several days and just used the crystal ball to tell me what each person’s favorite foods were.
It’ was even more frustrating when I was trying to find the favorite foods of my animals because the crystal ball said things like, “This animal likes fruit!” I got about a dozen animals on the same day, so trying to find all their favorite foods was a pain in the ass. I actually was writing down what each person didn’t like, and I did not want to have to do that with the animals, too.
This is an example of how this game missed the mark for me. It took a mechanic and magnified it to the point of making it unenjoyable. It was so unpleasant and stressful trying to figure out the favorite foods of everyone. I really wished I had just used the crystal ball from the start. The problem with that, though, is that you need a spell in order to use the crystal ball, which takes resources.
It’s hard to remember now, but when I started the game, I was so skint, I had to carefully consider every spell I waanted to craft. And by skint, I don’t just mean money, but resources.
Recently, I had to turn the seasons from fall to winter, and I did not have enough conch shells. See, conch shells are used in spells, and I had been using them liberally. And they are not something you can buy easily. You have to find them on the beach or buy a few of them from Shelby–by the way.
Shelby is one of my favorite characters in the game, bar none. I call him Grandpa Shelby, and I would protect him at all costs. I still give him his favorite foods even though all his hearts are full.
Anyway, I was angry about the conch situation. I needed fourteen of them, and I had none. I looked it up, and one tip was to use the summnon storm spell on the beach, which net me two or three at a time. That plus the one or two I could buy from Shelby got me up to the fourteen in three or four days. Not ideal, but much better than one or none a day.
This is one of the biggest negatives of the game–the sheer amount of stuff you have to find/buy/get/make in order to get anything done. And this is why I have no qualms about using the Fish Fingers cheat to make unlimited money. I am sitting with a comfortable 2.2 mill, and I am fine with that.
I have more to say before I give a final review, so meet me back here tomorrow.