I loved this game
While I can understand why it feels like a knock off, I absolutely enjoyed this game. I liked how you could run around and find different seeds, instead of needing to sell different kinds of fruits and vegetables in large quantities to get the stores to sell more seeds. I really liked the rice Patty fields in the Asian inspired town because I could just plant my seeds and go about my business and check in to harvest.
I know the story was kind of lackluster but... The whole harvest goddess thing never really goes super in-depth from my experience in general. I could expand my disbelief to think that people forgot about the different types of crops over the generations. It's not perfect, and they could have done a little bit more but for what it is it's really good.
The love interest... Granted I haven't seen all of their events, I've only gotten Kanoa, Brandon and Sami, I don't really like how there's less events and kind of nebulous it feels whether you're dating or not once you get to the heart event. Unless they're actually is an item I'm supposed to make and give to them and I just don't know. That's a little disappointing. (I've also only played through the game once so far, I played through as the female farmer)
I like that you can tame animals and have them in your barn, I managed to tame the white unicorn instead of buying a horse. Once I saw it I was very persistent. But I also got the version of the game with the DLC included.
Overall I felt it was a lovely experience, easy to play so it might have been made with younger audiences in mind, or they could have just wanted to implement something new. Not everything stuck but I think it's solid.
I know I'm late to all of this, I prefer to get my games years after they've been a thing that way I can get them for a decent price, but since there's a community of active harvest Moon players in this subreddit I wanted to share. 😊