YMMV / Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Yuzuki was abandoned by his parents because of his fragile health and has had little to any contact with them since, even noting that his younger brother was made head of the family. Yuzuki was basically dropped and disowned. But he has not a single bad word to say about his parents, and only mentions his sickly past being a worry when concerned that his child with the protagonist might inherit it.
  • For that matter, Umekitchi and Omiyo also never seem to have anything to say about Yuzuki having been abandoned to their care, even though presumably one of the two people who abandoned Yuzuki is their own child.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Kasumi. You see a lot of people hating her for her Does Not Like Men attitude and a lot of people praising her for her eventual Character Development out of it if pursued. There's little middle ground.
  • Iluka. Either you like her for her tsundere attitude and that she has plenty of moments and dialogue that shows she does care and shows remorse when she takes things too far, or you dislike her for her tsundere attitude and how far she tends to take things for stupid reasons. That you can't call her out on her antics (like making you fall into a pitfall because you helped her by her request) doesn't help those who dislike her.
  • Lisette. While she has plenty of fans thanks to her cute design, sweet and Adorkable personality, intelligence, and passion for her job, some see her as little more than a generic Nice Girl and lacking the eccentricities and nuances that make the other bachelorettes interesting.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Most everyone, as even the villagers stand out as being likable and interesting. So while every character has their share of fans, stand-outs include:
  • For the bachelors, Ludus is always at the top of the polls, in no small part to his looks, his personality, and his job making him incredibly helpful for a farmer. Yuzuki and Wayne usually fight for second place.
  • For the bachelorettes, Siluka is the most liked for her dreamy but still-grounded attitude, comparable to Luna Lovegood. Lisette is popular as well, due to both the reasons listed above and her career having surprising depth to it, but she’s not as universally loved.
  • For the actual villagers, Hector, Colin, and Noel are extremely popular - Hector for trying his best to be a good father to Colin despite not being great with people in general and being a bit lost; Colin for his shy personality; and Noel for her outgoing and pleasant attitude, and sweet friendship with Colin.
  • Brad is very popular, thanks in large part to his good looks, his dorky personality, and profession as a chef. It's no surprise that many fans consider it a missed opportunity that he wasn't a bachelor. His wife, Carrie, also gets this to a lesser extent.
• Even Better Sequel: Improves upon everything its predecessor (itself this trope) had, with many praising the nuanced characters, the return of the shipping bin, the protagonist's relationship with their parents and sister (and having backstory as well for the player character), the gameplay, the music, the designs, the culture of the three towns... the only complaints you really see are over relatively minor things, or in jest like the marriage candidates all being so interesting this time around people can't pick.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Fans quite took to the idea of Frank/Miranda, after the game gave them Ship Tease in the form of performing together at the Garden Grill and the implication that Miranda has a crush on him.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Letting eggs stack up too much in a coop messes up the entire building and forces you to get rid of it in Builder Mode.
• Good Bad Bugs: The second time you go up against him, Mr. D can challenge you to an expert competition and says he'll be serious then... even if you just faced him in an expert competition.
• No Export for You: The DLC was never exported to the EU—meaning that, among other things, the extra marriage candidates and having a child with Inari can't happen.
• Popular with Furries: The series has always had a bit of popularity among the Furry Fandom, but has lately been catering to them more. This game gives us Inari, a Kitsune marriage candidate for either gender, as well as Woofio the Pungeon Master in a fursuit, who can become a candidate for the female farmer with DLC.
• Quicksand Box: Moreso than previous entries, due to the significantly larger map and villager count. Even series vets may have some issues, as some methods of playing don't work as well once all three villages are opened up.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The Weakling starting "bonus." On top of having a base of two stamina hearts, the complete cap is now seven instead of ten. For anyone masochistic enough to try this, you need to complete the story to unlock it or play on a copy that already has it unlocked.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Instead of just the traditional stars for crops, they instead have four categories ranking from 0 to 100 that can be adjusted with fertilizer. Increasing these increases the star rating, but they don't stack in your inventory or storage if there's even a single digit difference in any of the stats. If you want to save anything you grow for later, it's best to avoid fertilizing it because of how much space it would otherwise take up.
  • Unlike previous games, winning a farming competition with a crop raises the amount of money you get for selling the raw crop affects only the crop you won with, rather than the entire category. Winning with a carrot, for example, won't increase the sale price of yams despite them being field crops and even grown in the same season. Considering the game doesn't tell you this change and some crops are worth more through an easily-obtained recipe that uses only that one ingredient, what you submit may end up being pointless.
• Values Dissonance: The game has a somewhat wonky attitude to traditional gender roles, which might not sit well with some players... particularly as it shoehorns in characterization for your farmer that you might not agree with:
  • Yes, your female farmer can move out on her own, establish a farm, make it a thriving business, do all of the heavy work that such a lifestyle entails, spend her free time doing heavy manual labour as a part-time job and run about the three towns long after dark... but come the love events, she suddenly becomes a Damsel in Distress and has to rely on the oh-so-manly Hinata for comfort after she gets spooked by ghost stories, or must depend on Ludus to do basic repairs on her house. Note that there is no choice about this — there's no option to make your farmer unafraid of ghost stories or to deal with repairs yourself.
  • On the flip side, a male player character generally has to assist with the bachelorette's job in some capacity and make himself useful in a practical way, or adopt a Knight in Shining Armor role. In quite a few cases, he also has to deal with the bachelorette's immature or hostile behavior without calling her out on it (unless he wants to take a hit to their relationship).
  • There are also in-universe examples among the NPCs. Komari (in Tsuyukusa) gets a hard time for her "boyish" mannerisms, despite being a well-liked, friendly and competent waitress, whereas the outright violent Caolila was very sought after by the men of Lulukoko in part because of how combative she is.
  • On a different note, the localization blog noted how the game's fruit/vegetable classification system is based on Japan's views, which are based on whether or not the food grows on trees. Because of this, some items westerners would consider fruit, like pineapples, are considered vegetables by the game. They had to deal with this via Woolseyism.
• Woolseyism:
  • XSEED's localization blog details how items like pineapples and strawberries were considered vegetables in the Japanese version (see above) and so didn't work for festivals where villagers requested fruit. The localization changed the "vegetable" and "fruit" categories to "field crop" and "tree crop"—and also re-programmed the game so that pineapples and the like would still work for fruit requests.
  • The original Japanese versions used made up words for the members of Lulukoko's gratuitous language. The localization replaced these with real life Hawaiian words to better reflect the Polynesian aesthetic.

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