Xseed Games and Marvelous released Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town early last year on Nintendo Switch as the newest entry in the series. Since its debut, it was ported to PC via Steam which fixed a lot of the game’s technical issues. Read my Switch review of it here and PC review here. After how Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town made it to PS4 and Xbox One, I was expecting the same for Pioneers of Olive Town. Sadly, Xbox owners miss out on it as Pioneers of Olive Town has only been announced and released on PS4 following its Switch and PC versions. For my Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 review, I will over how the game looks and feels on PS5, whether it is worth getting on PS4, and how it compares to the other versions.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 contents
For a late port, you’d expect Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town on PS4 to include everything from prior versions. Sadly, the Western version is only the base game sold for $39.99 with the expansion pass contents available through an additional purchase. In Japan, the PS4 release includes the DLC in the base release. This was likely done to keep the asking price down to $39.99 for PS4, but it is still worth noting. Barring the DLC which is sold separately, the PS4 version includes everything the other versions have when it comes to the game contents.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 frame rate and performance
I played Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town on my PS5 set to 4K. It runs and looks great on my 1440p monitor as expected. Given the performance issues and long load times on Switch, it is good to have another version of Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town that runs and looks good. The 60fps target for the PS4 version is held well in my testing on PS5. I had no issues with performance and load times are very good as well even when played off an external hard drive.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 vs Nintendo Switch
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town was pretty bad in some ways on Nintendo Switch on a technical level. Issues like draw distance, load times, and performance in more busier areas are still problematic on Switch today. Thankfully, the PS4 version has none of these issues and it runs great on PS5 for me. Given how Marvelous keeps debuting its Story of Seasons and Rune Factory games on Switch, it needs to work on optimizing them better from the start.
While I enjoy playing them on Switch for portable play and will continue to do so with each release, it is getting harder to recommend for docked play when the games are almost always coming to PC and other consoles months later. If you only play docked on Switch and have a PS4 or PS5, the PS4 version is a lot better in every way. If you want to play on the go, you don’t really have another option right now.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 vs PC
The PC version of Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is better than PS4 thanks to support for much higher frame rates if you have a compatible display. Barring that, both versions are great ways to experience Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. I haven’t been able to get Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town to run on Steam Deck so far across multiple proton versions, so the Switch version is my only option to play this on the go. If you don’t care about portability, the PC or PS4 versions are much better experiences that I can easily recommend if you’re after a new mainline Story of Seasons game.
The PC port itself is very good and you can even tweak it to work for ultrawide displays well. If you have access to both PlayStation and PC platforms, the PC version will be the one to get for the best fidelity and performance unless you want a physical edition which is obviously not available on PC.
Should you buy Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town on PS4?
If you skipped Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town on Switch and PC, the PS4 version is a great experience. It still has the same core gameplay issues that the original game had, but performance is a lot better on PS4 compared to Switch. With Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town being excellent on all platforms, it is disappointing that Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town had such a rough launch on Switch. Even with updates, it still has issues on Nintendo’s hybrid console. Thankfully the PC and PS4 versions launch in a much more polished state with almost no technical issues.
Hopefully this Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town PS4 review helped you decide whether Marvelous’ newest mainline entry in the Story of Seasons series is worth getting on PS4 through its new port. I still hope it does come to Xbox in the future like the prior remake. Until then, you now have another platform with Story of Seasons available, and I hope to see Marvelous keep expanding the franchise going forward through ports and re-releases. It is unfortunate that the Western release doesn’t include all DLC from the start to make it a complete physical release.
