Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and Harvest Moon: One World are two farming simulators stemming from the same original franchise. Now, these two franchises are goin head-to-head as they release in the same month.
It looks like the two games are competing with one another for fan attention, especially fueled by Marvelous ending its work with Natsume back in 2014 by rebranding as Story of Seasons. When it comes to collector's editions, both games even include animal plushes. So if players only have time for one, which is more worth their time and money?
Harvest Moon's Split into Story of Seasons
Sometimes, fans still get confused when it comes to the split Marvelous made from Natsume, the company responsible for English localization, thereby creating the Story of Seasons games. But Natsume, still owning the Harvest Moon name, decided to make its own games inspired by the originals that fans in the east and west had come to love.
It's unclear why Marvelous pulled its Bokujou Monogatari series—what the series is known as in Japanese since the beginning—away from Natsume and decided to use its own subsidiary XSEED for localization. But ultimately, both studios developing each franchise are now made of completely different teams than the original Harvest Moon games, though some consider the Story of Seasons series to be the "real" Harvest Moon games.
The Graphics of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons
For both franchises, the overall graphics quality has been the main focus of criticism. For the original Harvest Moon games, graphics were never a strong point, While now, many find A Wonderful Life's graphics charming for nostalgic reasons and many still enjoy the 16-bit pixel art of some older titles, they were regarded as being "unimpressive" by past critics.
Now, the graphics of neither Harvest Moon nor Story of Seasons have quite lived up to expectations by modern standards, but One World has fallen behind in this race. Many fans feel the Harvest Moon games developed by Natsume look no better than free mobile games. When Natsume announced One World, it claimed the game would have fresh graphics brought by a new engine, and while they're certainly an improvement from Light of Hope, animations are robotic, textures are rough, and it overall looks behind its time.
But when making the comparison to mobile graphics, some farming simulator fans have said the same about Pioneers of Olive Town, but perhaps this is more of a positive comment to the strides mobile games have made in recent years. Still, animations in PoOT are much smoother and generally more aesthetically pleasing to look at than those seen in One World.
Bachelors and Bachelorettes
Marriage candidates in farming simulators are one of the biggest elements of interest in the community. When it comes to Pioneers of Olive Town's marriage prospects, fans felt that the men were a bit underwhelming while the women's designs made it difficult to choose between them. But with the recent announcement that Story of Seasons will bring back some romanceable characters from past installments, it makes relationships in PoOT all the more interesting.
Then there's Harvest Moon: One World's take on relationships. Though some players are excited about Malika's design and Natsume is attempting to keep the options appealing, Harvest Moon has opted not to allow same-sex relationships while Story of Seasons will with its upcoming installment just as it had with Friends of Mineral Town.
Natsume isn't giving up on the Harvest Moon brand name yet, but it's likely that most farming sim fans who aren't too busy with Stardew Valley's 1.5 update will likely choose Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town over Harvest Moon: One World. However, one plus Harvest Moon may have over Story of Seasons is that it's in development for PS4 and Xbox One as well, making it more accessible to players.
Harvest Moon: One World is out on March 2, 2021 for the PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town will be released on March 23, 2021 on the Nintendo Switch.