the short version
I got to talking about Fields of Mistria over on Mastodon today, and Marcel asked if it’s worth playing over Stardew Valley. Here’s my short answer.
the long version
I have over 200 hours in Stardew Valley. I did the bulk of my Stardew playing closer to when it came out in 2016, but I’ve started new farms here and there and continue playing it now when I’m in the mood. I’ve played both with and without mods. And I know there have been a lot of updates over the years, so there’s some newer stuff in the game that I still haven’t experienced.
Comparatively, I have about 85 hours in Fields of Mistria so far. I was hesitant to check it out in Early Access, but there is plenty of content already in the game to keep me busy, and their team has been good at shipping regular updates and sticking to a public roadmap.
I love both of these games, they both keep getting better all the time, and they both have pretty big communities of people building companion tools and updating wikis with helpful information and all that.
Of the two, Fields of Mistria is the one I reach for most often lately. The biggest, most obvious reason is that I’ve already played enough Stardew to be satisfied — yes, there’s some new stuff, but I’ve already done my time & I already know what I’m going to be getting from that game. Fields of Mistria is new and refreshing, so my drive to play one more day and discover new things is stronger.
Aside from that, there are a few reasons that I prefer Fields of Mistria:
- The characters: The characters are just more interesting to me, from the designs to the dialogue. The interactions they have with you and with other characters in the game feel richer. You can talk to characters multiple times a day, and it still took me a while to find any repeat dialogue! This is one of the strongest parts of the game, imo.
- The lore: I love finding out more about the world of Mistria — the ancient history, the recent past, and the present. I think they did a good job building a story around the game and giving you a reason for doing everything you’re doing that isn’t just the same old “outsider inherits an abandoned farm and fixes it up” schtick.
- The archaeology: Somewhat related, I love that archaeology is one of the core skills in this game. There’s not much to it, but it fits well with the vibe and the story.
- The quests: There are quests! Most of them are simple little requests to deliver an item to somebody, but there are also bigger quests that actually move the story forward, and I think that’s neat. Obviously this is not groundbreaking, but I enjoy having a bunch of incremental milestones to work toward other than make farm better.
- The art: This is completely a personal preference, but I like the pixel art in Fields of Mistria more than Stardew Valley. I usually end up using a lot of mods to change how things look in Stardew, but I think Fields of Mistria is very nice to look at already.
- The character customization: You can change how your character looks whenever you want. I would have to double-check, but I’m pretty sure you can also change your character’s name and pronouns whenever you want. It is very easy to get new hairstyles and clothing items and accessories and stuff. The hair is animated! You can wear a cape!
- The QoL: Look, nothing is perfect, but I do think there are things in this game that just feel easier and better to do. You walk faster, you can jump over things, you can see where characters are on the map, you can buy things from shops whenever you want, crafting benches can pull items from any of your chests so you don’t really have to worry about where you put things, etc.
In turn, there are some things that I would say are harder than in Stardew: it takes longer to start automating your farm, unlocking lower levels of the mines requires items that can be difficult to get, there’s more RNG involved to complete the museum, and those quests sometimes require a lot of resources that you may have wanted to save for something else. But none of these difficulties have felt annoying or unnecessary to me — just a way to space things out so I always have something to do.
Stardew Valley is still a very nice, comforting game to me. I reach for it when I want something familiar, or when I just want to do some plain old farming without worrying about everything else happening in the game because I’ve already played it. (Or when I want to play something on my laptop, because Fields of Mistria isn’t available on Mac yet.)
I think, also, Stardew is for the minmaxers and spreadsheet sickos. Fields of Mistria might be more your speed if you want something that’s slightly more casual on the farming side of things and slightly more interesting on the story side of things.