It can be important to cover broken games. It’s a warning to others, after all. However, sometimes issues with a game are so prevalent that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to go through such a task. That’s what happened to me with Orange Season on the Switch, a port of an originally early access farming game for PCs that was too broken for me to continue to play.
Orange Season begins as many of these farming games do. We find ourselves in a new town with a whole, huge farm to ourselves. There is a community that is excited to meet us and accept us as one of their own. There are quests to accomplish. You can also befriend people as you get to know them. I was a little concerned at this point, purely because the text is so small in the Switch version of the game. It’s difficult to read what people are saying to you, which I worried could get in the way when undertaking quests. The journal is pretty comprehensive when it comes to keeping up with these though, so I hoped maybe things would be okay.
While that seemed fine, actually accomplishing my first mission in Orange Season highlighted a major problem with the Switch game. The boundaries are incredibly messed up. I’d repeatedly get stuck on scenery when walking through areas clearly designated as places where it should be fine to walk and nothing was in my way. While a little finangling and lost time usually freed me, that wasn’t the case with another issue.
Sometimes, you can just… go through fences, walls, and buildings. Upon my discovery that most of the homes are locked or maybe even purely decorative, I also found to my horror that I’d just… start walking up and in them? Multiple times, instead of being able to walk through both open and closed doors after pressing the interact button, I’d go through them. It was troubling!
Even more so when this would lead to my being absolutely trapped. As in I’d get stuck in these spaces and find no way out. This happened in one farm near a silo, when I grabbed some fruit scattered on the ground and slipped through a fence. I needed to restart the game, losing progress, to get out. It happened when I went to a storefront and slipped through it and into a yard. (Fortunately, the door actually worked there and I was able to free myself and not restart.) It happened when I walked across an actual bridge to the top of a building in the “city” portion, but then somehow ended up caught in the trees and edge of the actual building and needed to restart again to get free.
The layout of the town in Orange Season is pretty bad too! It looks pretty and all! I appreciate the spritework and design that went into it. However, it is impossible to find anyone and anything due to the execution. The map system involves just seeing hubs and where they connect. Icons below it, when the UI is working, note who should be roaming around the area. But there are no more detailed expressions of spots or insights showing exactly where people are. There are games where this can work, such as Fae Farm, but that game also makes it a bit easier to track individuals. That doesn’t happen here. And since the spaces are so large, you can spend a full day roaming around and not reach every part of town.
I’m also a bit disappointed in the degree of random items scattered around Orange Season on the Switch. There are multiple reasons for this! Partially, it is because the fruits and flowers end up making farming feeling a bit worthless. There are tons of them everywhere littering the ground. But also, I think these are bugged too? I noticed when I left the area by the beach, then returned that suddenly all the coconuts were back again. Which maybe isn’t a bad thing, since controls for actually farming are so finicky and a crash can lock off another source of income?
Yes, that’s what finally broke me. Orange Season ended up completely impeding my progress in one area on the Switch. As you go through the farming game, you can eventually add animals to your ranch. I went with chickens first. Except after getting one, I experienced an issue that involved the game crashing whenever I’d try to head into the chicken coop. Given how necessary that is to the farming experience, I felt like I was done.
Could Orange Season get patches that make it playable on the Switch? I hope so. It’s why I’m not doing a proper review and assigning a score to it just yet. Innerfire Studios and Soedesco made a statement on Steam promising patches and updates. If it does end up being fixed, it might end up being a worthwhile experience.
But for right now, Orange Season is not the farming game you should be grabbing on your Switch. There are too many bugs and broken bits here. I think I’d even call it unplayable if you’re someone who prefers the ranching elements of these sims. I’d say give the game a few weeks. See if the developer and publisher come through on those promises about patches. Then circle back and see.
Orange Season is available on the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Published: Nov 6, 2024 03:00 pm