Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I am a huge fan of the Farm Frenzy series. I've played all of them and have enjoyed watching them improving and advance the game with each release. Melesta made some nice improvements with Farm Frenzy 3, but they also made a couple of changes that were unnecessary and harmed the overall enjoyment of the game.
For those not familiar with the Farm Frenzy series, it's a strategy plus time management game. Not all levels are pure speed. Some levels can only be completed by doing things in a certain order. The player is given a list of goals to complete within a certain amount of time. Those goals include either collecting money, produce, or manufacturing products from supplies either produced by the farm animals or bought. As the player collects more coins, they are able to upgrade their equipment. The `goal' of Farm Frenzy 3 is to help Scarlet become Farm Union President. To do that, she must help five friends from different areas of the world with their farm. This is the first version to have a story line and well, it's a weak one. It's there, but certainly will not win any prizes for originality or depth.
Instead of the map being streets that intersect and the player goes around the board, the map is divided into 5 sections representing different countries. Like with previous versions the player workers their way through each level, unlocking new equipment and upgrading supplies. Unlike earlier versions, the game play is not linear. There are only so many levels that can be played in each section before moving on to another section. Additionally, each section has animals that are unique. For example, Peru has big horn sheep that drop horns while Antarctica has walruses. Not every section will have animals that produce horns, adding to the strategy of needing to buy supplies in order to finish certain products. I like the way they designed the areas and the extra challenge created by not being able to simply raise money to buy the animal needed. Farm Frenzy 2 and Pizza Party both required buying supplies, but version 3 enhanced this feature and utilized the plane well.
Farm Frenzy has always had adorable characters and this time is no exception. The sheep are huggable cute. The animation has been improved from previous versions and the new animals are great. The penguins flipping fish are exceptionally entertaining. The developers have made some great improvements from earlier versions and those efforts are well appreciated.
The developers also created a great way to utilize the bears and predators. In the past, the players has had to capture these and then sell them for ridiculously low amounts. With the addition of the `fitting' room, those predators can now be dressed up and sold for an incredibly high amount. It makes catching and storing them worth wild, as well as making it easy to earn cash in a hurry.
I was very happy to see the developers decided to go back to shorter `recipes'. I enjoyed Pizza Party, but most of the difficulty in that game was remembering the ingredients to make the requested pizza. Farm Frenzy 3's biggest recipe requires 4 items making the game much more enjoyable. This was a great improvement by the developers.
There were some parts I didn't like. I HATE how they changed the dogs. The dogs used to keep the predators away and help cage them. Now they bulldoze the predators, removing both the dog and the predator from the board. There are a couple levels where the dogs removing the bears is the only challenging part of the level. When the player needs to raise money with the bears, the dogs prevent that from happening. These are suppose to be helpful to the player, not a hindrance. This is my number one complaint with the game.
I missed the long level. Usually there is one level that takes about 40 minutes to play. The player has to start by trapping predators to raise the money to buy animals and complete their goals. This time there isn't one. There's still the award for taking at least 30 minutes to win a level, but the longest level is approximately 15 minutes long. To win this award, the player has to simply set there for 30 minutes and do nothing. Anyway, I would have liked to have had the one long level. They were always a lot of fun.
Melesta needs to invest in beta testers that will catch things like awards that can only be won by sitting idle or typos. There's really no excuse for some of the errors that are in the game. The lack of attention to detail is evident in a lot of time management games, but some things should have been caught and corrected before being released (i.e. Funny's Arm instead of Funny's Farm). Also, it's obvious whoever did the story got kinda tired of it. Usually there's at least a we did it. Instead after getting so far the story line just disappears. It's a little thing, but shows a lack of attention to details. Lastly, the ethnic stereotyping is probably suppose to be funny, but I'm not sure those being depicted will find it so.
Overall, Farm Frenzy 3 is a great game. It is quite a bit harder than the previous versions. However, it is possible to get gold the first time through the game. It is challenging, fun, and addicting and a nice fix for strategy and time management junkies.
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