Farming Simulator 22 Review – Farming Odyssey Continues

The Swiss company Giants Software has been providing us with a digital version of farming life in the Farming Simulator series for several years now, which is perhaps surprisingly successful, with over 25 million units sold worldwide, which is a really good number for such a specific brand. . Therefore, the authors decided that they had such a strong series in their portfolio that they would start publishing it on their own, i.e. without the help of the publisher that used to be Focus Home Interactive. And this year, Farming Simulator 22, which represents a full new year that fans have had to wait three years for, becomes the first such self-published work. But was it worth the wait? And is the news even worth it? Let’s try to analyze this in more detail.

• Platform: PC (peer review), Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Google Stadium.
• Publication date: Nov 22 2021
• Producer: Giants Software
• Genre: Simulator
• Czech location: Yes (subtitles)
• Multiplayer: Yes (online)
• Game time: Depends on you
• Availability: 3+
• Price: 949 – 1,199 kr in Xzone

Difficult start

At the beginning, I will admit right away that I have some experience with games from this series, but I have never left too many hours in them (perhaps with the exception of Farming Simulator 16). Not because I didn’t like it, but because I never had time for it. Therefore, this review is written from the point of view of a fundamentally fresh player who is able to identify various changes, but with the brand itself, for the first time, has spent a fair amount of time.

The authors still haven’t included a functional tutorial.

And that’s why I’m sorry the authors still haven’t included a functional tutorial. The title will explain to you the most basic actions and mechanics on lower difficulty (three available, vary in available equipment and difficulty, but you can customize a few aspects) in a brief introduction, but you’ll soon find that you still have to come by yourself for most things. yourself when even different explanations don’t help much. Personally, I would very much welcome a more complete campaign/story mode that gradually puts various obstacles in front of you, and through it you learn the individual actions and tools that are blessed in the game. But this way a person depends on the Internet most of the time, or he can use the trial and error method, but soon finds out that he cannot afford it, because the economy of the game is still quite strict.

Oats in March, soybeans in April

However, if you manage to beat the game after many hours, you’ll find that it still offers a relaxing getaway (in the right mood) where you can manage your farm on one of the three available maps (Return of Erlengrat and two new maps). some are Elmcreek and Upper Beileron), which offer ample space and varying conditions. Most of your game will take place directly on the fields, where you will be able to sow various types of crops, which, if properly maintained (fertilizing, weeding, spreading lime), will bring you relatively pleasant financial rewards. For this type of farming, there are several novelties waiting for you, among which are not only new crops (wine, olives and sorghum). The main one is probably the seasonal cycle, which in practice means you have to follow a calendar that tells you when to sow and what to harvest. This, in turn, adds a little more sense of realism when it is appropriate to sufficiently plan your future steps and distribute your work.

The seasonal cycle offers a greater sense of realism.

This seasonal growth is directly related to the seasons, which will visually change the landscape and conditions should affect your economy. Anyway, I don’t know if it was because of my tested version, but it occurred to me that they basically don’t work. An example is winter, during which I never had significant snowdrifts and I had to clear the roads of snow, because it did not complicate my work at all. And the fact that the mentioned snow is coming down any minute does not seem pleasant either. No melting, just nothing.

Other innovations include the fact that when cultivating and plowing in the field, stones can be dug out, which not only do not look very attractive, but also get stuck and contribute to general damage / wear of the tools, so it is advisable to remove them. The thing is interesting, but rather annoying as a result, so I allowed myself to turn it off after a while. And you also have the opportunity to use your personal license plates.

Bake bread, for example

In any case, besides the fields, you can also do forestry, the aforementioned animal husbandry, and you can also build greenhouses in which you just need to add water and then grow tomatoes, strawberries or lettuce. These and other products can later be sold or stored, but you can also use them in another novelty – production chains. Thanks to them, you have the ability to turn your raw materials into other products that can be sold for a large amount of money. This means that rapeseed can be used to produce rapeseed oil, sugar and dairies make chocolate or cheese, and carpentry shops make furniture. These production chains mostly make up such imaginary end-game content, since you need to have a relatively large amount of equipment and have enough consumption of individual raw materials so that you can start working on a larger and larger scale. And this is by far the most significant and interesting novelty, giving your efforts the right direction.

Production chains are the most interesting news.

In addition, in order to process raw materials, you need to own production buildings, several of which can be purchased directly on the map or built on your own land. And that brings us to the build mode, through which you build not only the mentioned production points, but also other additional buildings and decorations. It must have undergone modifications since the past, but it’s still a very complicated business, painfully lacking the ability to retrospectively edit posted objects or immediately return if you buy the wrong one. From this point of view, I also do not quite understand the impossibility of removing the original objects from the map, which as a result will more likely interfere with your land.

arcade simulator

And here, too, I cannot praise artificial intelligence. In the game, you can once again hire workers that can perform actions for you, and in this part, they received some new instructions, such as moving equipment from point A to point B. However, their intelligence is basically non-existent again, which is why to me, it has probably never been possible to get a worker to the site without getting stuck. And in the field itself, they do not work very well when they turn in the grain again, or even do not finish the work right away. I wouldn’t even talk about the drivers on the road who crash into you at full speed and on a flat road and then blow you away. Anyway, this AI mess is quite manageable in multiplayer (if you host from a PC or have a dedicated server, up to 16 players/up to 6 consoles), which is still a lot of fun, because. a completely new social and gaming dimension. And crossplay support is good too.

Artificial intelligence has completely failed.

I also don’t understand why the writers aren’t finally working on the physics and driving model, which has always been the biggest baffle for me in this series. We’ve seen a slight improvement, but the controls and operation still feel a little too arcade when I miss some weight, dirt digging, and other terrain-related complexities. But we don’t see it here again, when the cars at different times look like plastic toys, which often ends in somewhat funny moments when the tractor after a collision shoots into the air, makes several boilers and then boldly leaves. In addition, you have almost no penalty after this hit, since wear here is only indicated by the degree of use and hits do not affect it.

Smoother, more detailed, prettier?

This gradually brings us to a technical state, which actually pleasantly surprised me. I tested the game on an older PC (Ryzen 3600, RX 580, 8GB VRAM and 16GB RAM) and it ran flawlessly mostly on the highest settings, I just tweaked the shadow quality and render distance. But it’s true that I only play in Full HD. A colleague I tested with had some nasty twitches at first, but it worked itself out in the end and hasn’t had any problems since. And during the game itself, I did not encounter too many errors, when I met mainly only two graphical glitches (a levitating game and a stuck texture) and one bug due to which I could not finish the order. Nothing more. Almost suspicious and I’m completely afraid that the patch of the 1st day will upset something and suddenly various imperfections will start jumping on me. However, what the day one patch can really solve is the terrible user interface where it still gets lost, the default keyboard shortcuts seem pointless and the store might offer a text search option, for example.

The game runs smoothly.

If we then focus on the visual part itself, we will also see progress in it. The cars are again slightly more detailed, the textures offer higher resolution and the animations are more complex. But in general, I must say that I probably liked Farming Simulator 19 more, which is due to the fact that Farming Simulator 22 for some reason seems to me a little more drawn. And I was hoping for a slightly more significant shift in the case of the outside world. From time to time you may encounter pedestrians or wildlife, but it still feels too static. At the same time, it would be enough if you met at least during the game other fellow farmers who would ride around their fields. Or you were fined for destroying someone else’s crop. Just something extra. On the other hand, I praise the slightly more realistic sound system when, for example, it rattles pleasantly while driving.

There are changes, but so far small

As a result, the new Farming Simulator once again brings pleasantly relaxing farming, which this time is enriched with several interesting innovations, led by seasonal growth and production chains. Unfortunately, there are still mistakes from the past that spoil all the fun, and fans are likely to say that after a three-year hiatus, they were expecting a slightly better departure.

PS: The title is available with Czech subtitles which do the job, but sometimes some terms seem a little confusing/inaccurate to me.

We test the latest PC games on the powerful LYNX Grunex 2020 computer.