When Harvest Moon meets Minecraft, what do you get? A stunning indie game called Stardew Valley. I’ve spent the last few weeks playing, and can say both good and bad things about it, which I’ll say more about in the following paragraphs.

I loaded up the game on my Xbox One, and was pleasantly surprised that it was only an 800 mb download. For comparison, Overwatch has 5 gb. The fact that there is almost no loading screens with so many different characters, settings, and dialogue options amazes me to this day.

After the game finished downloading, it loaded up with a full title of the game, then went into a menu with three options: Load, New, and Switch Profile. A corny farm tune played, which I turned down because it was very repetitive to the point of annoyance. I clicked New, and a character creation menu took over the screen, opting me to be a boy or girl, have a dog or cat, what hair I wanted, and clothing style and color. There was a few accessories such as glasses and earrings. Overall, very standard character creation stuff. After the character creation menu, a short cinematic played. It was very well done, but I wish I could of scrolled through the text instead of waiting ten extra seconds. It honestly made me not want to read the dialog, since it took so long. After the storyline, I was dropped into Stardew Valley, where mayor Lewis and carpenter Robin greeted. Once again, long dialogue ensues, but thankfully I could skip once I had finished reading. However, a high pitched typing sound played whenever text appeared, and was quite annoying and hard on the ears. Trying to turn it down resulted in the choice of no sound, or to let my ears suffer. I chose the first option.

After Lewis and Robin departed, I was eager to try out some things I had saw in various YouTubers “let's-plays,” but unfortunately I had to wait three to five days for everything to be unlocked. I started off by planting parsnips and chopping down debris around my farm. The controls were very awkward, and I couldn’t change them, which made doing farm tasks such as chopping down wood, planting seeds, and watering crops frustrating. My farm looked messy and odd, from many attempts of trying to sow and plant seeds.

Three to five days passed quickly, and I was given access to the mines. I grabbed my sword, and went down into the mines, which operate on a level basis. Underneath one of the many rocks and ores is a ladder, which would take me down to the next level. To add to the challenge, enemies spawn on each level, and get stronger as the level increases. It was then I found the struggle of inventory space. In Stardew Valley, players start with nine inventory slots, and have to buy up to three “backpacks,” which grant the player nine additional slots. My inventory quickly filled up with stone, wood, bug-guts(yes, bug guts), and other items. The cheapest backpack was 3000 gold, which in Stardew Valley terms is extremely expensive, which I felt was unreasonable, since the average beginning player makes about 200 gold per day.

After exploring the mines, I decided to visit Willy, the local fisherman. He gave me a fishing rod, and I began to (try to) fish. Fishing was almost a mini-game; the player has to keep a bar in between a fish until they catch it. The controls for me were insensitive-at times the bar would shoot up with a simple tap of the controller, and other times, mashing the buttons would only move the bar a small amount. It made playing extremely unfun for me, especially when the bar wouldn’t respond at all.

My final frontier was relationships. I decided to try to marry the caveman in the game: Linus. After giving him numerous bad gifts, I turned to Wikipedia for answers, and began to entice him. The heart system I feel is also unfairly hard. It took me nearly three months of giving “loved” gifts to actually marry him. A tip: don’t try to entice everyone, it leads to an unfortunate event that results in every villager hating you.

Stardew Valley is extremely good at some points. The concept is amazing, allowing players to do what they choose, when they want. It unfortunately fell through with unfairly hard goals, awkward controls that can’t be changed, and insensitive control responses that made the game not fun. If you’re a dedicated player who likes farming style RPGS, you will probably enjoy this game. For a person like me who enjoys action, it’s not a good fit.