REVIEW: Farming Simulator 15

I decided to grab life by the teats, erm horns, and review Farming Simulator 15! Joking aside, Farming Simulator 15 is about as bland of an experience as you can have. A bland experience with a lack of direction, no guidance and poor tutorials but if you are looking for an unforgiving and complex simulator than this game might be for you.

Single Player

The choices are rather slim for environments. You can either choose a Nordic farm which serves as the extremely basic tutorial or an American farm. On the American farm, you start off with a small amount of money, some basic tractors and a single field. You pick a mission from the board and hope you have the equipment to accomplish it. I started with a wheat harvesting mission that required an insane amount of wheat, and with only a single field it took way too long to accomplish.

I found that the starting missions seemed to require an absurd amount of material to complete. The difficulty can be altered to achieve a faster rate of progression but the starting missions seem like something only a more developed farm can quickly achieve. The ridiculous mission requirements paired with a steep learning curve make the single player experience a real drudge in the beginning.

Farming Simulator doesn’t throw a cheesy farm related storyline at you. It doesn’t throw you on a struggling farm (although you will struggle) and task you with saving it from bankruptcy. It doesn’t even include poorly made NPC’s to do fetch quests for. The entirety of the missions in Farming Simulator 15 are acquired through job boards. These boards are as basic as possible and offer little in the way of story or instruction. I would take a cheesy story with poorly made NPC’s over the dull storyless missions you are required to complete.

Wheat farming and pallet delivery missions were all I accomplished in the first 8 hours of gameplay. I couldn’t afford any new equipment after I foolishly bought the right tractor and attachments to complete pallet missions but every pallet delivery mission only rewarded me with between 5 and 10 thousand dollars. I harvested the exact same field for countless hours because I couldn’t afford a second field.

The single player experience leaves many features off the table. I was hoping for more farm management and RPG aspects along with a better progression system, instead I received a grueling and dull campaign with little in the way of instruction. I feel the Farming Simulator series would benefit from better made missions and a way to ease new players into the farm lifestyle.

Multiplayer

Once you choose a server that isn’t password protected (and the host accepts you) and finally synchronize data with all the other players, you are dropped into a world with no money and no direction. You can begin to help your fellow farmers with menial tasks and hopefully earn your keep before you are kicked from the game. In my experience, most matches I played with strangers ended in 26 mph glitch-filled demolition derbies.

You can also host a game for your fellow farming friends or open it up to strangers. You do start the game with a small amount of capital to get your online farm started. It’s the same premise as the single player campaign but now you can farm with your friends! I honestly don’t know anyone personally that would even want to farm with me but I could see it being fun if you had a group of diehard farming fans. Without a group of farming friends, it will be incredibly hard to embrace online multiplayer in Farming Simulator 15.

Multiplayer seems like a feature that could have used some innovation and more time for polish. I would have loved to see some mini games like farming the most amount of wheat in a given amount of time or pallet delivery races. Some logging games would have been fun as well. Adding some sort of competitions to the online mode would have added a level of fun that is severely lacking.

Gameplay

I thought if nothing else, at least I would enjoy the driving in Farming Simulator. To my disappointment, this was rarely the case. Most tractors felt exactly like the last and for some odd reason most tractors topped out at 26 mph. This speed was incredibly slow when traveling across the countryside. Some tractors come with a handy cruise-control feature but it was still a measly 26 mph.

After spending several minutes crossing the countryside at 26 mph for an exhilarating pallet delivery mission, I took a corner too sharply and tipped my tractor. After a couple more minutes of fidgeting with the controls, I was left with no other choice than to drive a second tractor across the land to ram my overturned tractor. After revving my engine to the speed of 26 mph, I was able to flip my overturned tractor. This little stunt took about 15 minutes to perform. This was all before I discovered the “reset vehicle” option buried in the horrible menu system.

Graphics & UI

Graphically Farming Simulator is far from splendid. It is a crude looking game with dated visuals. Textures pop on a continuous basis and draw distance is minimal. Visual hiccups seem to be a very common occurrence. The game also crashed to the dashboard once erasing 2 hours of progress I had made. The occasional sunset will attract the eyes but little else will. Tractors are about the only item with any sort of detail. Most tractors have several moving parts and are decently detailed.

Glitches plagued my experience. One significant event happened after I purchased a tractor, the correct equipment and pallet forks. I drove up to the attachments and connected them to my vehicle. As soon at it connected, the tractor was flung into the ground. I adjusted the angle of my forks in hopes it would help the situation but all I accomplished was flipping my tractor. As I sat there and bounced repeatedly on my roof I had to disconnect the equipment and try again.

As for the UI, the menus are a mess.The map is atrocious. Mission indicators aren’t labeled properly and there is no legend to decipher which mission is where. Some mission items are only labeled with a small circle and there is no way to check which mission it is. The clunky UI put a major damper on the enjoyment I got from this game.

Overall

I wanted to enjoy my time with Farming Simulator. I wanted a change of pace but Farming Simulator 15 didn’t scratch my itch for a breath of fresh gaming air. It might have been different if the barrier for entry wasn’t so high. Farming Simulator 15 is not a rewarding experience for someone new to the series. The lack of easily accessible tutorials really put a damper on the entire game. I dreaded the fact I had to spend more time with it. I just wanted it to be over and that is never a great way to spend your free time.

I would only recommend Farming Simulator 15 to someone who is familiar with the series and wants to check out the latest entry. I wouldn’t even recommend this to someone who is curious (like myself) about the game. Farming Simulator is one of the worst games I have played in a long time and that is unfortunate because I think it has a vast amount of potential with some innovation and more polish. For $50/£40, I’d definitely pass if I was on the fence about purchasing Farming Simulator 15.

Pros

+ Large selection of licensed tractors and equipment.
+ Wide range of farming activities (once you can afford it)
+ An in-depth simulator experience

Cons

– Mission structure is a mess
– Horrible UI
– Steep learning curve
– Dated visuals and continuous glitches
– Ridiculous mission goals

^Aaron Perreault (@PxDIZZLE)