In the Farming Simulator series from Giants Software developers, it’s fascinating to see how the game has become a matter for a very small group of players with a community of millions of enthusiasts around the world. Perhaps that is why it is slightly surprising that we had to wait three long years for the next full-fledged sequel, during which the community also improved the penultimate Farming Simulator 19 with a number of modifications and turned it into an ultimate farming game, especially on a PC. The arrival of the news is therefore also burdened by critical remarks on the account of available mechanisms, which are considered to be fully modeled nineteen they may lag behind. But let’s not forget that the developers offer the game at a fair price and, taking into account some news in a short time, will undoubtedly take over the scepter. Although, of course, it will not be without reservations and other necessary intervention of enthusiastic fans.
New fish in the tank
If you are a regular player of the series, it would be appropriate to expect significant changes. As has already been said, the next part comes after three years, during which the consoles have moved to a new generation and further technological progress does not even make sense to name. But the developers don’t seem to want to interfere too much in working things, and at first glance, Farming Simulator 22 seems like a slightly nicer sequel, in which everything will be the way you remember. If, on the other hand, you are a complete newcomer, I don’t have good news for you – the people at Giants Software seem to expect that people only return to their game, even though the developers’ statements after the release of the record sales celebrated the opposite. In other words, don’t expect anyone to cuddle too much with you in this game and explain what and how to do. In the face of the possibilities that Farming Simulator 22 offers, this is a bit of a scary idea, but since I have been a rather unpopular phenomenon, I can confirm that in 10-15 hours of playing you will have most of the mechanisms at your fingertips and you will find a system by which the game can succeed.
Starting the game is conditioned by choosing one of the three entry options, which will quite fundamentally affect the way you will actually play the game in the coming hours and days. If you choose the option for newcomers, you will find several boxes, basic equipment and not too much money to further build your own empire. Therefore, you must first spend a few years playing the capital and doing what is naturally possible so that you do not end up broke and have nowhere to move. The middle option is much more attractive, but also very treacherous, because while you get a lot of capital, you have no equipment or land. Nevertheless, you can determine more flexibly what you want to do and make playing more enjoyable from the very beginning, for example by throwing all your attention towards potatoes or, for example, forestry, if your heart pulls you in that direction. The last option is for those who want to experience a small agricultural survival – a start without money and technology – which means fulfilling tasks for other farmers and ceremonial dancing around each new tractor, which you buy on your crushed field at one small field. While this may sound like an unnecessary exaggeration, Farming Simulator 22 can reliably evoke such feelings and are the reason why hooked players will keep coming back to it.
A trip to the world
As for places where you can start building your farm, the developers have added two new features to the old and constantly improved Erlengrat map – the French Haut-Beyleron and the American Elmcreek. The differences are obvious at first glance and at least geographically they give you the feeling that you are on different continents. In fact, choosing a map doesn’t have that effect, because you can grow whatever you want and the only thing you can fight with is terrain. On Elmcreek you will find flat plains on which even smaller and cheaper tractors will succeed, while on the Erlengrat you need machines with wide or twin wheels so that you can plow uphill and not lose power when using heavy equipment. But it’s nothing, except perhaps the overall atmosphere, which would somehow significantly enter the gameplay, and I think that even a beginner can run their farm on more rugged maps without any problems. What exactly you will do is up to you, and it must be admitted that it is more effective to choose one or two crops than to try to do absolutely everything and without the help of artificial intelligence.
Czech is not missing
You can play Farming Simulator 22 in Czech thanks to the subtitles. They are processed well, the translators did not avoid the descriptions of the individual technique, and thanks to the translation you will not get lost even in the text guide, which at least slightly expands the insufficient tutorial. It’s just tricky to play in Czech if you’re looking for instructions in English. Finding out retrospectively what each machine’s names are can be quite hell.
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Farming Simulator 22 now follows a calendar that clearly shows what you can plant, harvest or simply do beyond the usual farming in a given month and season. It is a system that brings the whole thing closer to reality and has its own charm. It also serves as a kind of guide for beginners, because it does not allow you to bypass the rules in any way if you have the feature turned on in the game settings. On the other hand, it can put you under pressure, so it’s time to consider whether or not to limit yourself in the beginning. But if you take the system for granted, you will probably get things in the winter that you could completely miss, which would be a shame. I am talking mainly about forestry, which pays a bit for the outdated physics engine and especially loading already felled trees on the semi-trailer is a purgatory, but it is still an interesting accessory where you can take a break from constant plowing, cultivation, fertilization and field harvesting. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about snow and its removal, which serves as a cosmetic mini-game, if you really have nothing to dig into. When the snow hits, the landscape really changes and gives an unexpected impression, but before you realize that it is a relatively cheap design, which also again exposes the imperfections of the physical and graphics engine. In addition, there is nothing completely satisfactory about clearing snowdrifts, especially when the snow simply disappears at the end of winter and is simply replaced by spring.
Up on the field
But let’s get to the work itself and the machines you will try out during the game. If there is anything that can be praised on Farming Simulator 22, it is this offer, which includes not only tractors, but also combines, trucks, forklifts, pickups, and then literally an inexhaustible number of harvesting bars, plows, cultivators, tanks , sprayers, sweepers, mowers, blades, weights and God knows what else. In addition, every single piece in your potential equipment is perfectly modeled down to the smallest detail and properly animated to match the real foreshadowing. The resulting effect is also helped by new particle effects, such as spreading cut grain or droplets of sprayed fertilizer, just a pity that the difference between the level of graphics of agricultural machinery and everything else is so abysmal. Probably the most obvious of this is the animation of the cargo – it’s basically just a bending ugly texture, which, especially with potatoes, looks really horror and doesn’t look any better at grain. Also, the surrounding graphics, which are represented by houses or cars passing through here and there, do not give a fascinating impression and thus another significant problem arises on the surface. The world of Farming Simulator is completely dead and the only one who cultivates the individual fields is you.
This is surprising because agricultural competition is rampant all around, expressed by the secondary tasks that you can perform with your or borrowed equipment for a fee. No one has a combine harvester here, no one drives a tractor here, and yet the fields are growing, someone is harvesting them and continuing to work on them in accordance with the seasons. This thing annoys me most of all in farming, because it breaks down the illusion of a living world, which, on the other hand, developers are trying to strengthen with other elements. But I understand that, given the artificial intelligence, it would not be entirely happy to watch the rolling tractors on dirt roads or combine harvesters mowing grain while creating incomprehensible patterns. Yes, you too can hire an artificial intelligence worker, and it will probably help you if we talk about a regular field and a simple operation such as plowing. God forbid, but you should send a tractor with a flatbed over half the map, thinking that AI might be selling the harvest for you. Get ready for a lot of messages about how your tractor can’t go on, because something stands in its way and the practical impossibility of meaningfully using this mechanism.
Muddy empire
But this brings us to another big innovation – at least as far as the basic version of the game is concerned – production chains. When your cargo no longer reaches its destination automatically, sooner or later you will find that all the maps are littered with buildings that can somehow continue to work with your crop. Whereas before you could simply sell milk, now you can take it to a dairy and have it made of cheese, for example. If you bring sugar from the other side – after you have successfully planted and harvested beets or cane and taken them to a sugar factory – it can be made into chocolate in a dairy. The same can be said for grain, which becomes flour in a mill and bread or cake in a bakery, for which, in addition to flour, you also need eggs, milk, sugar, butter and strawberries. Everything is nicely intertwined and gives the game a deeper meaning if you plan to play one map for a long time and gradually master it. But I see the biggest shortcoming in the fact that you have to buy every single production point so that you can continue to draw processed products from it, and you can’t have them prepared for your own crops for a fee. Because of this, you will gradually own half of the map, or you will stop your own land with individual processing buildings and the magic of a collective effort to achieve something nice disappears. In addition, individual raw materials cannot be bought, so you really have to run everything to reach the desired product, which you then just sell to the market or to the store, and that’s the end of it for you.
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Multiplayer solves a lot of problems
If you want maps to come to life, jump into multiplayer. You will definitely find one of the Czech players in the list of available servers, and after overcoming the initial shyness, you will be able to join the collective effort to make playing more pleasant and believable than in single player. At the same time, you can create your own game, or use the already launched single-player world for it and not start from scratch. If you are serious about playing online, you can also rent a dedicated server and set up everything in detail according to your needs, or provide backups and other functions.
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Therefore, be prepared for the fact that in Farming Simulator 22 everything takes time and most of the time you can’t make anything explicit. If you leave all the features on, for example, you will have to remove stones from the fields, or at least push them into the soil with a roller. You will have to build greenhouses that take up a lot of space to have tomatoes, lettuce or strawberries – but a lot of money flows from them in exchange for water, which is free. You will also not need to maintain your equipment or constantly cultivate the animals if you want to keep them as in previous parts. And you’ll either love it all uncritically, or you’ll just shake your head at it, not understanding how it can be enjoyed. And wonder of the world, despite the shortcomings and sometimes obvious imperfections, you can enjoy playing Farming Simulator 22, with the potential that some of the bugs can be fixed in half a year and the community will add so many other elements that you really won’t know anymore, as soon as possible. We don’t have to argue that it wants to improve everything considerably in the future, but the game still deserves your attention and I believe that it can – perhaps despite the initial doubts – catch you and keep you going.
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