Farming Simulator 25 review | Zing

I can’t help but admit that this is my first acquaintance with the famous series of hardcore farming simulators. After years of interested but wary peeking, I decided to finally ride my own tractor this year, thanks in part to how good the game looks and also fascinated by its extremely strong sales and response. So, if you’re looking for insightful analysis that compares this year’s edition to older ones, I humbly refer you to peer reviews. But if you’ve only been watching this series from the sidelines and are wondering how the game performed for a completely new player this year, the following paragraphs will be relevant to you.

• Platform: PC (review version), Mac, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
• Release date: 12/11/2024
• Manufacturer: Giants Software
• Genre: Simulator
• Czech localization: yes (subtitles)
• Multiplayer: Yes (online)
• Game time: It’s up to you
• Price: 1499 CZK (Alsa)

Ride the right car

The first hours of the game were a rather unpleasant surprise for me. Attracted by the trailer for a film about a couple of farmers, I was hoping for some kind of campaign, plot basis, similar to what we know, for example, from some sports or racing “simulators”. But while there is a grain of introductory plot to the game, it lasts only ten minutes with a handful of dialogues about how glad your grandfather is that you are ready to take over his farm so that it does not fall into the hands of strangers. . Additionally, this brief introduction is only available on one of the game’s three maps (besides the American map, there are also European and Asian maps with corresponding backgrounds and crops).

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavrzel / Zing.cz

The bigger problem is that it’s also the only tutorial in the game that only teaches you the basic controls, but leaves you standing on your farm with little to no idea what to do next (or how). I think there could be an optional list of instructions for new players, at least for the first few hours of the game, because being a newbie and not having anything like that, I just had no idea where to start playing or how to do it. The lack of a quality tutorial meant that I spent more than half of the first ten hours of the game studying all sorts of online tutorials to even understand how to get the right tools and start meaningfully improving the first field – this was not the case. Again, this is easy because you have to consider not only planting and harvesting, but also plowing, liming, fertilizing, removing weeds or stones, and so on. Some things can be disabled in the game settings, but then you will again lose the realism of a real simulator. The game has a text encyclopedia, but it’s more of a general conversation and dictionary than a specific guide to exactly how the game works – it says, for example, that you need to whitewash the field, but doesn’t explain how to do it. make it specific. Not much more useful are a handful of static NPC characters who offer additional advice on specific activities or crops. However, the efforts of the developers were not enough for someone completely new.

“The lack of a tutorial meant that I spent more than half of the first ten hours studying tutorials.”

Of course, these problems will sound quite funny to experienced fans of the series, but even for them it should be important that the game makes a more welcoming impression on newcomers. But once I got over that initial barrier, I very quickly realized why the game was so popular and successful. There is something very satisfying about standing in front of an uncultivated field and starting to gradually turn it into a cultivated field, furrow by furrow. At the same time, you will also fully appreciate how profitable it is to buy top-end modern equipment: from tractors to all kinds of trailers and other equipment. More powerful tractors pull larger trailers, with a wider reach and more functions, so you can, for example, plow and sow at the same time. There are more than 400 cars in the game, and they are very accurate copies of real models from famous brands, so you can ride, for example, Zetor Crystal and others. Additionally, the desire to get better cars is the perfect motivation to continue playing because you need to earn money for them by farming them successfully.

There is always enough work in the field

As you play, you earn money to buy better cars and improve your farm, as well as buy more fields where you can plant new crops that you haven’t grown before. The game features a seasonal economy where you have to decide whether to sell your crops now or store them in a bunker and sell them when their prices rise. In addition to working in the fields, the game offers other activities such as raising farm animals or industrial woodworking (including planting and cutting down trees in large quantities). The game is extremely deep, and since there is no campaign or goals, it’s up to you to decide what you try and how long you play it. If you wanted to test every activity and buy every course, you could very easily spend hundreds of hours playing the game. A useful function is to hire AI assistants who, for a small fee, can perform actions for you that you don’t really want to do. A nice new feature is GPS navigation, which forms “rails” along which your car can independently move around the field with cruise control turned on.

I already mentioned in the introduction that the game looks good. The creators use their own technology (GIANTS Engine 10) and this year, among other things, they added new weather effects, thanks to which you will feel a wonderful atmosphere when, for example, in the autumn morning a rooster crows, and you enter a field surrounded by morning fog, through which the rays of the sun are breaking through. Even more careful is the treatment of the cars themselves, which are animated and voiced in detail and correctly. I played on a console where the game only runs at 30fps, but given its slow and quiet gameplay, I didn’t mind that too much (and the controls work well). A pleasant surprise was the presence of radio and licensed music in the game, divided by genre – plowing a field to great country songs or trance hits had a pleasant juice. What, unfortunately, did not work out was the game menu, the interface of which looks boring and unattractive. The game has a good Czech localization of all texts, and if you wish, you can farm with online friends.