Farming Simulator 20 Review
Farming Simulator 20
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Giants Software
Genre:
PEGI: E
Comments:
The Farming Simulator genre has been around for a long while, and it should be noted right off the top – not everybody is going to enjoy farming simulation games. If you don’t have an appreciation for farming, or have an affinity for these types of games, you likely aren’t going to instantly love this. If you do love these things, Farming Simulator 20 is a good (not great) title on the Nintendo Switch.
Whether plowing, cultivating, planting, fertilizing, or harvesting, Farming Simulator 20 only does an ok job of teaching you the ins and outs of the farming life. There is a fairly deep learning curve to these experiences, and tons of buttons and combinations to be mapped to controllers. Take for example a combine, which will require players to attach a header, unfold the tractor, unfold the head, turn the harvester on, lower the harvester head, and ultimately put out the pipe to dump the produce into a nearby wagon. This is only the specific actions. There are also buttons for lights, beacons, the radio, cruise control, and so much more.
The above paragraph was meant to look confusing because ultimately it’s what you could experience in any given farming simulation experience. But the development team here did a good job of not only mapping these controls to the Nintendo Switch, but also taught you how to access them all, and with relative ease. Before you know it, all these button combinations will be purely muscle memory.
The issue with Farming Simulator 20, however, is that so much of what the game is, outside of the controls, is never explained. So it’s really up to you to understand markets, crops destinations, tools required for certain crops, and more. That being said, the confusing nature of the game means there is a ton of content to explore!
The mixture of crop types is also as good as ever before, allowing you to really get deep and dirty into the games many crops, how they behave differently, grow differently, and at times, need to be harvested differently. Remember the older farming games where you had a handful of crops to grow, but they all behaved the same? That’s gone now, as the variety here is better than it has ever been in the past.
The graphics on Nintendo Switch are not great, especially when you compare to Xbox One, PS4 or PC. That being said, having this experience in your hands and on the go is a huge advantage, and should be a selling feature for fans of the series. While I’ll continue to work through my Farming Simulator 19 farm on Xbox One, I’ll begin a second farm for when I’m away from the house in Farming Simulator 20. Form an accessibility stand point, Farming Simulator 20 is perfect!
Outside of sub-par graphics, everything you’d expect from a Farming Simulator title is present here, so the development team really hasn’t stripped much from the experience. Overall, it’s a worthwhile dive for hardcore fans, but a hard pass for those uncertain about the experience.
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Article By Adam Roffel
Adam Roffel has only been writing about video games for a short time, but has honed his skills completing a Master's Degree. He loves Nintendo, and almost anything they have released...even Tomodachi Life.
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