…releases tomorrow 12th November. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2300320/Farming_Simulator_25/ Might wait and see reviews first as this is selling for an eye watering UK £42. I mean it’s tempting as I passed on 19 and 21, sticking with 17 which now shows its age. Maybe one to put by for a sale.
I’ve been watching a few streams and decided to go ahead and buy it. I find them a bit of a grind sometimes, but when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a tractor driver (never wanted to be a train driver!). I used to have a big collection of Britains Farm toys. Probably going to enjoy this one, it looks really nice on the previews. I think you prefer buying directly from steam, but in case you are interested you can get a steam key a lot cheaper on key sites. I used instant gaming and it activated fine.
Well I played FS17 to death, mainly mod farms such as Oakfield or the Scottish one with the lighthouse you could walk up inside. The official FB page seems generally positive about it so hopefully there have been some real advances over 19 and 21. I too enjoy the concept of production and management and the blurb on Steam does seem to promise some QOL improvements over its predecessors.
Update: Been watching some of the EA clips on YT and got to say it's looking good and a significant update on its predecessors. So gone ahead and preordered, just got to wait for Tuesday evening. And of course WCML over Shap will still be a distraction come 21st November...
I bought '19 in a sale during COVID, I only used the mod farm set in Gloucestershire, think it was Oakfield as Vern mentioned, thoroughly enjoyed it, not bothered with latter versions as the mod farm I used in '19 didn't appear in later titles. I may take a look at '25 but only if there are British farms in real areas like the farm map I used in '19 One thing that used to annoy me though is how slow the traffic was, I mean, whenever do you see a tractor overtaking cars on main roads lol
My initial take then: It’s… so so. I never bothered with 19 or 22 but in terms of appearance it hasn’t really grown much. Was really hoping they could get it looking more like Snowrunner at this point. The default maps are a bit basic and having you start in August really hinders what you can do as regards planting. AI road traffic is just awful. Backing up a tractor with equipment attached is still laughable when it instantly jackknifes and the tractor then just slides along sideways. Economy needs a buff. Many of the contracts that you would do at the start to raise funds pay less than hiring the equipment you don’t have at that point. Operating a crane needs to be a subset or attachment to the main vehicle so you can use the joypad, as in Snowrunner, and/or display the key commands in the HUD. I mean overall still fun and will get better once the mod maps come. But it doesn’t really feel polished or fully tested and going out on a limb not worth the AAA £42 price tag, (Steam UK).
I mean in terms of gameplay it’s not bad, just that one would really expect to see more of an improvement from earlier versions. Still, I had a fun session last night harvesting a couple of fields which I now need to plough, cultivate, lime and fertilise. Then I need to understand how to set up a production chain.
I haven’t got very far at all yet, but my initial impressions are that it’s a huge improvement over the last version I played (Which is very old - 2013 I think). However it doesn’t feel that polished, I’m getting an awful lot of pop in of scenery on a high end PC. I am enjoying it though. As I said before, I like farming related stuff and I’m enjoying this. Hopefully a few patches and mods will improve things. Just glad I didn’t pay full price. Bonus for me is that there is also a Mac version. I’m yet to find out if it’ll run an my 8gb MacBook Air, but it plays Transport Fever 2 ok with a medium sized map, so fingers crossed it’ll work ok.
Yes mod maps will expand things considerably. Definitely my next task after buying some more equipment will be to try and buy up the grain mill and bakery (flex my bank loan!) so I can start my first simple production chain.