➤ Farmers everywhere in the Farming Simulator: Nintendo Switch Edition review 🎮

Farming Simulator isn't quite your typical Nintendo-style product, but as we'll see, that's a good thing. Assuming that it is possible to replicate this style by someone other than Nintendo, a simulation of this type would perhaps have been unthinkable on a console from the Kyoto house until a few years ago, but Switch has now accustomed us to deviate from the rule and welcome diversity. as a nice selling point in its lineup. And there is so much different in this game, in case you come from a session at Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2 or Zelda: the style of Giants Software is something extremely far from the typical trappings of Japanese productions, not to mention precisely of the Nintendo style. The first impact, if you do not have some experience in the now long and famous series of agricultural simulations, can be unsettling, with the large play area at your complete disposal and a long series of technical details, menus, actions in precise sequence. to carry on to try to grow your own farm.

It's easy to get lost in the fields without understanding exactly what to do, and on the one hand it could even be a good thing if the entire Farming Simulator: Switch Edition sandbox didn't seem so inanimate. In fact, we need to change perspective to understand how it works: in fact, it is a tractor-sized world, so each interacting element makes sense only in terms of what it allows you to do while driving one of the many agricultural vehicles available in the game. It is easy to see how the reproduction of the aesthetics and mechanics of the 250 vehicles present is in fact the main nucleus around which the game was built, therefore it is there that we must seek the essence of Farming Simulator, even beyond all those complex management mechanics of the company which are still present and represent a large part of the general structure. In short, a fundamental discriminant is created: if you are interested in driving tractors, threshers, harvesters and so on then you are in the right place, if you are looking for a more romantic vision of rural life you will probably have to turn to different titles. It's a matter of course for those familiar with the series, but a key distinction to point out for Switch users who have never had anything to do with this simulation.

Country boy / girl

There is therefore no story, no particular sense of progression in narrative terms. Farming Simulator is a "bare bone" simulator, one of those that have been rampant on PC for years, re-proposing every sector of human knowledge on the screen. However, this Giants is one of the most complete and in-depth productions seen on the market, and that is why it has conquered such a large slice of users, placing itself at the top of the PC sales charts for years now. The Nintendo Switch Edition is based on the 2017 edition, proposing it again without any particular changes beyond the necessary adjustments in terms of controls and interface, and thus placing itself on a parallel track that separates it from the "old" 2017 version. new game it is possible to choose one of the two settings between the North American and European campaigns, the gender of the protagonist (the 2017 edition introduced female peasant women for the first time) and then we are ready to go.

It should be noted that the game has a tutorial system detached from the game experience: these are however also present in some initial stages of the career, but to obtain all the in-depth information on every facet of agricultural work it is necessary to use the "Tutorial" section of the main menu. It is a rather valid solution because it avoids the dilution of the experience in a long introductory phase for those who already know more or less precisely what to do and at the same time allows you to deepen each phase more comprehensively, with the possibility of going back to learning precisely each mechanic through the appropriate menu. For this reason, however, it is highly recommended to use the Tutorial for all those who have never had to deal with Farming Simulator before, to mitigate the initial unsettling effect a little. For the rest, the game does not set limits or main objectives: everyone is free to follow the path they want to grow their business, between field management, animal husbandry, wood cutting or all these things together.

The rural life

Listening and explaining in detail all the mechanics of Farming Simulator would make little sense here, in fact it is about dedicating yourself to numerous aspects of farm management, with an enormous amount of different actions to carry out. Life in the fields is challenging and this game can give you a vision, albeit obviously sweetened: at all times there is something to do between plowing, sowing, harvesting and managing raw materials in various ways, choosing the products to focus on for get maximum gain. The heart of the game lies in the use of vehicles, which as previously reported are numerous and perfectly reproduced by real models. Every single aspect can be managed manually, with the possibility of investing long minutes or even hours (real, of course) on individual uses such as threshing or the transport and transformation of wood, hay, wood chips or chaff, or it is possible to simply start the business and entrust the various aspects of the work to workers who can be hired at the push of a button.

Obviously all this has an influence on the general balance sheet of the company, so we must try not to exaggerate and strategically manage the economic resources, sometimes even accepting to work on behalf of third parties until the possible purchase of additional fields to expand their business. Although every single job is in itself rather repetitive, therefore, the quantity of possible activities and the fact that they interconnect with each other in complex production paths make the game action extremely varied, as long as you don't stick to a single job for too long. Honestly, spending 30 real minutes picking potatoes can be easily boring, but the possibility of being replaced by a worker at any time and thus having the opportunity to devote oneself to something else softens the heaviness of the game a lot. Another good idea to reduce time and immediately allow a broader and more stratified management of activities is the possibility of renting any vehicle and tool and buy raw materials directly, which frees us from the expectations of having to accumulate important amounts of money to be able to carry out certain activities. Clearly, all this complicates the management of the company budget, but it is something that we must always keep in mind in Farming Simulator.

I love you o pio ox

The "reduction" of Farming Simulator 2017 in this Switch Edition has not hit too hard the graphics system (already quite simple) but certainly we are not at the level of the more advanced versions on PC. It is evident that the utmost care is once again placed in the reproduction of the vehicle models, which are also excellently represented here, but the surrounding scenery has something desolate. With minimal effects and texture quality, as well as a stable but definitely not-so-fast framerate, the Farming Simulator: Nintendo Switch Edition campaign isn't quite the ultimate expression of bucolic aesthetics, featuring fields, hills and settlements which appears very sparse and substantially lifeless (although it is a functional choice to the game mechanics, as mentioned above). In all of this, the best impression probably comes from the use in the portable version, where the width of the sandbox on the small screen of the Switch still gives a good feeling of pocket open countryside, except to encounter some problems with the interface.

The latter suffers from the classic syndrome of complex simulations adapted from PC to console: the amount of menus, windows and texts to manage does not adapt very well to a small screen, complicating viewing and reading in a way that obviously is not found when playing on the TV. In a similar way, even the controls are not exactly immediate, requiring a long practice to be learned: given the amount of actions possible for each vehicle and tool, it is necessary to resort to combinations of keys and modifiers that activate various contextual submenus, for the which you must often resort to reading the instructions on the screen (which fortunately always appear superimposed). Considering the nature of the game, Giants still did a great job of adapting all the complex aspects of the console simulation.

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Price 44,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.2

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8.7

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When it comes to such sectorial and niche stocks, a single assessment is always difficult. Farming Simulator: Nintendo Switch Edition carries with it much of the structure of the 2017 edition, or the result of a long evolution that has led the Giants title to be the best agricultural videogame on the market, as well as one of the best simulations tout court in terms of completeness. , breadth and depth of the reproduction of the real object in a videogame version. The Switch version presents some regressions on a technical level and, as often happens with conversions of titles so exquisitely linked to the use on PC, one wonders if this could be an appropriate place to devote to a simulation of this mold also given the adaptations of the interface, but certainly the portability of Switch represents a big added value.