I bought Doraemon: Story of Seasons as a way to practice Japanese since the game has furigana and a simple style. For that purpose, it works. But as a game, I was quickly disappointed.

There is almost no real sense of progression. You can upgrade tools and stamina, but the upgrades feel meaningless. For example, I improved the watering can expecting a big difference, but the new mechanic (holding the button to water multiple tiles) takes about the same time as just clicking tile by tile, and it doesn’t reduce stamina use at all.

Most of the playtime is consumed by repetitive chores: watering fields, running back and forth across the map, waiting on slow upgrades. The routine feels stretched out and monotonous, and instead of a rewarding loop it just becomes tiring.

I didn’t play for long, but already it felt dull, with no excitement that I was building something or moving forward. The art and atmosphere are nice, and I appreciate the Japanese text with furigana, but as a farming sim it left me bored very fast.

Verdict: Visually charming, good for language study, but gameplay is shallow and monotonous. I don’t want to give it another chance.