Farming Simulator 19 Review

Farming Simulator 19

Release: January 1, 1970
Publisher: Giants Software
Developer: Focus Home Entertainment
Genre: Simulation, XBox One Reviews
PEGI: E
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Here at GamesReviews.com we love our Farming Simulator titles, and no one is doing it better than the great people at Giants Software and Focus Home Entertainment who have knocked it out of the park yet again with Farming Simulator 19, the biggest and most immersive farming simulation experience yet.

The first thing fans will notice is a beautiful reboot to the games look, which on Xbox One X – which we reviewed this title on – looks absolutely phenomenal. The various views you can marvel at while walking around the games maps is truly breathtaking, and can often take away from tasks at hand. The reboot to the look of the game help with the overall immersion into the farming life, and the development team has taken the franchise to the next level with this change.

But how good a game looks is only beneficial to the overall experience if the game itself plays well, and thankfully Farming Simulator 19 picks up where Farming Simulator 17 left off, with fantastic handling, a wide arrange of tractors, and farming mechanics that just make sense for the average person.

Whether plowing, cultivating, planting, fertilizing, or harvesting, Farming Simulator 19 does an excellent job 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 an Xbox One controller, 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.

And the fun and changes in Farming Simulator 19 don’t stop there. There are more vehicles and trailers in Farming Simulator 19 than there have ever been in the past, including new fan favourite brands like John Deere. That’s right, you can now load up your sheds with the green of JD; if green isn’t your colour, perhaps the red of CASE, or the yellow of New Holland. If it’s a fairly popular farming brand, there is a good chance you’ll find it in Farming Simulator 19. And if you want to colour code your farm, you can do that too.

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.

Besides new tractor in Farming Simulator 19, there are plenty of other new features in the game as well, most notably the ability to ride on horseback around your farm – although that doesn’t work as well as I would have like – which might be why you aren’t given a traditional pickup truck when you begin your farm. Here is a bit from the development team on what to expect in Farming Simulator 19,

With over 300 vehicles and tools to use from all the leading brands,including John Deere, Case IH, New Holland, Challenger, Fendt, Massey Ferguson, Valtra, Krone, Deutz-Fahr, and many more, it’s up to you how to specialise as you develop and expand your farm from one of three unique starting situations. Begin with no property but plenty of money to build the farm of your dreams, or go for a more hardcore playstyle of a small starting farm with limited resources – the choice is yours, along with which crops to grow, which animals to tend to, and which missions to attempt.

On of the better new features is the ability to play Farming Simulator 19 online with friends, which is how we played the majority of our review. Thanks to the development team, we had a few codes to try out this farming simulation experience, and took to the multiplayer mode to really build a farming dynasty. With the help of another writer, we began our journey online and realized that the online experience is as good – if not better – than the single player experience. Here is a bit from the team on this:

New crops and rideable horses massively expand your options from previous editions of the game, along with improved multiplayer that allows for up to 16 players (6 on console) to cooperate on or compete over the same map, each with their own tracts of land and equipment to use. Finally, enjoy an ever-expanding Farming Simulator experience by downloading community created mods on Consoles and PC/Mac!

Playing with friends, in our opinion, is the paramount way to enjoy Farming Simulator 19, and it’s a mode that shouldn’t be overlooked. But ultimately, farming simulation games won’t be for everyone, as there is still a fair amount of boring, repetitive chores that come with the experience. I’m OK with that, but not everyone will be. Waiting for crops to grow – even when the game is on 120x speed – can be a bit of a drag, and when you only have one or two fields, you might find yourself sitting around from time to time.

That experience comes with the territory of playing a farming simulation title, and if you are expecting faster paced action, you will be sorely disappointed. For the farming fan, I highly recommend Farming Simulator 19. If you are on the fence, I’d suggest finding cheaper options like Farming Simulator 17 – or even Farming Simulator 15 which is available on Xbox Game Pass – and taking the game for a spin. If you enjoy that experience, Farming Simulator 19 will be right up your alley.

Overall, Farming Simulator 19 is a fantastic experience that I will definitely sink over one hundred hours into. My siblings and I are already talking about creating a large family farm online together over the Christmas holidays, and that new feature alone is enough to make me want to invest in this franchise yet again. Add rideable horses and new tractors from John Deere, and I think there is a fantastic experience here that shouldn’t be overlooked!

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