There is so much Farm Heroes Saga gameplay that you could likely play as much as you want without reaching the end, but sometimes one game isn’t enough. When you become addicted to collecting those cute little cropsies, you may just want to take your new farm fantasy deeper and get more farming in your life. You’re not the only one, and there are many games out there that have been developed for people just like you, who want to pretend to be a farmer without actually doing any of the hard work. Here are our top 3 picks.
1. Farming Simulator 2013
If you’r looking for ultimate realism, Farming Simulator is the way to go. There are no happy Farm Heroes cropsies, just real dirt and elbow grease. The graphics are pretty top-notch and the simulation emulates every aspect of farming, from buying tractors to plowing fields and managing your funds. It’s a way to see if you’ve got what it takes to be a real farmer, and you can play it on nearly every modern system (sorry, Nintendo fans, none for you).
2. Harvest Moon
Harvest Moon is the cream of the crop of farming games. The series dates back to the SNES days, and there are enough iterations to last you an entire lifetime (or more) of happy gaming. This author’s personal favorite is the Game Boy Advance version, “Friends of Mineral Town.” You won’t get the realism that you do in Farming Simulator, but you do get a deep role-playing game in which you can do anything imaginable in a 32-bit town. You’ll buy season-appropriate crops and tend and harvest them, in a much more realistic way than Farm Heroes. You’ll raise cows, sheep, and chickens, and you’ll take care of your horse and house pet. And there’s so much else to do — courting a fine lass of your choice, mining for minerals, praying at church, participating in festivals, cooking, upgrading your house, buying new houses, recruiting harvest sprites, and so on and so forth. You can live an alternate life here. A simple life. A better life.
3. Rune Factory
The Rune Factor series is a spin-off from Harvest Moon, and they’re largely the same except for two major differences: more Japanese, and monster fighting. Harvest Moon is already pretty apparently Japanese in nature with its wide-eyed girls, but the characters in Rune Factory are even more wide-eyed and dramatic in that special Japanese fantasy way. And the dungeon-crawling aspect involves weapons and fighting monsters, and you level up your character along the way. The graphics happen to be much prettier than Harvest Moon, so if you’re looking for an amped up Harvest Moon with even more to do and more action, go for Rune Factory.