I’ve never been drawn to Farming Simulator games despite my friends’ constant insistence that the cozier, slower paced design of it all is therapeutic, but with Farming Simulator 25, they got me. An oddly cinematic trailer and the promise of worldwide farming was enough to convince me to dip my toes into the world of virtual farming. And while it’s not the best thing I’ve ever played, I’m absolutely in awe of how much depth and detail is hiding in Farming Simulator 25. It’s an experience that has forever changed how I look at these games.
I admit that’s in part due to my own ignorance, but it is incredible just how much is on offer here. The Farming Simulator games each offer the opportunity for players to step into the role of a farmer – usually through inheriting a farm which they can then develop as they see fit. You’ll expand your crops, harvest and sell them and then use that money to invest in expansion. Later games would add more detailed elements that go well beyond the traditional agriculture you’d expect – including livestock and forestry.
Farming Simulator 25 differs from the other games in a few ways. For one, you can now expand your farm beyond what has been typically provided – both American and European style farms – and begin cultivating Asian style farms too. With that, rice is a new crop that can be harvested, and, with that, many other aspects of the process change too. Other improvements with 2025 are the addition of livestock such as buffalo, which has a flow on effect of allowing you to engage in animal husbandry to make buffalo mozzarella to sell. There are some simple additions here, but it is merely adding to Farming Simulator’s already wide and varied offering.
And that’s really where Farming Simulator 25 really surprised me. It feels incredibly authentic. Not fussed with creating watered down experience for players, Farming Simulator 25 does exactly what it says on the box. While I’m not a farmer myself (in case you didn’t know), every aspect of running a farm, even those that I don’t even think about, is captured pretty authentically here. Whether it be managing crops, the aforementioned animal husbandry, or planting seeds and harvesting crops at the right time. The game feels realistic and, more importantly, when you see a big batch of crops come to fruition, it’s satisfying too.
Though it can take you a while to get there. There are some light tutorials at the beginning of Farming Simulaotr 25 but after that, the game really sends you on your way to do whatever you want. You can get out of the vehicles and go speak to people, who can often run you through the basics of whatever crop or activity you need to work out, but overall the game doesn’t hold your hand too much. This is both a blessing and a curse – it does feel like Farming Simulator 25 isn’t dumming things down for a casual audience, but for people like me, who are just getting into things, the constant trial-and-error approach to some of these crops could be frustrating for players less patient than me.
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But other improvements can help to remove some of the tediousness of some of the activities on your farm. While I’d argue that the simplicity and tedium of the tasks if some of the appeal with a game like this, you can easily implement AI-drive workers to drive vehicles from one point to another, plow a field of crops ready for harvesting or even delivering cargo for you. Their routines can be set individually or just looped, which helps you to focus on other things and, if you’re good enough, maximise your efficiency.
And that’s an important aspect of the whole experience, because you can really do a lot in Farming Simulator 25. It’s kind of impressive just how much variety there is here in terms of which crops you might choose to grow or where you’ll focus a lot of your time to expand and grow profitable. It feels like a true sandbox in many ways, and I guarantee that no two players will have the same experience, farms or even progression through the game. It’s this confidence in players to build their own farms in a way that they see fit that makes it easy for me to see why Farming Simulator has become the phenomenon that it has over the last fifteen or so years.
There are other aspects, some not even new to Farming Sim 25, that help to make the game feel more expansive, though they ultimately feel a bit like shallow window dressing than anything else. When I first started playing, I was excited to see that there was almost a whole world outside of the farm to explore – though ultimately the world is rather empty and feels more like a means to an end rather than an immersive space to buy, sell and trade in. Still, the ambition is appreciated though I’d love to see this aspect honed and improved upon in future instalments.
From a presentation perspective, Farming Simulator 25 is fairly rudimentary. It looks better than previous games though not by too much. The music is similarly what you’d expect from games like these – either no music at all or ambient tracks that help sell the atmosphere. The voice work is horrendous though, and I really hope that if GIANTS commits to a campaign in newer games that there is a bit more attention paid to this aspect of the games presentation.
Newer to this game are weather effects and improvements to the way water hits and flows off of crops, which sounds like a minor improvement, but it’s all smaller details that contribute greatly to the bigger picture. If you’re lucky (or I should say, unlucky) enough to be caught up in a tornado, one of the newer weather effects, you’ll no doubt notice how good it looks as it tears through your crops and pulls in a swirling mess of cloud and debris as it rips through your map. Other moments, like when you harvest crops as the sun sets, are serene and picturesque and really helps hammer home that cosy, relaxing effect that the Farming Sim games have.
All in all, Farming Simulator 25 is an earnest improvement on the previous Farming Simulator games. And while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any stretch, it adds enough new aspects to not only justify it’s existence but bring in new players, like myself without dumming down any of the intricate aspects that make it what it is. And while the onboarding can be fairly tough, especially if you’re completely new to this, sticking with Farming Simulator 25 will (mostly) lead to only fruitful harvests.
