Hokko Life a Fun, but Flawed, Experience

I’ve been playing Hokko Life for a few weeks now, and have been enjoying it. Well, at least I’ve been enjoying it for the most part. In a time when farming and village simulation games seem to be a dime-a-dozen, you really need to make sure you have a great product, with as few issues as possible. With Hokko Life, the premise is definitely here, but there are a few things that are drawing me out of the experience. If it wasn’t for having a YouTube channel, would I keep going with this?

Hokko Life is incredibly charming, and mixes together some of the best elements of Story of Seasons and Animal Crossing. While my wife and son have brushed it off as a Animal Crossing knock off – which perhaps it is – I’ve been enjoying the whimsical world and the colourful, vibrant characters. Yes, even Oleander as grown on me, that big ol’ grump! So the basis of what I want is here. A few different areas to explore, characters to interact with, crafting, creating, harvesting…it’s all here.

But what else is here is a load of issues that ruin the experience. The camera panning through the trees when you stand behind them is awful. The constant clipping of the characters through items is off putting, and the myriad of graphical glitches makes the world feel unfinished. I understand this is a one-person team, and I understand that these things take time. Perhaps a future patch is going to clean this all up. But the game has been out on Steam Early Access for quite a long time, and you would hope that some of these issues would have been ironed out and cleaned up for when the game launched on Nintendo Switch.

If the issues get fixed, I’ll be playing long after I stop streaming it!