Farming Simulator 25 Review

I greatly admire the UK farming industry and the amount of work and logistics that goes into running a successful operation. Having used Jeremy Clarkson’s popular Amazon Prime show Clarkson’s Farm to educate myself, I didn’t realise how much goes into it. A combination of science and nature, alongside pure hard graft and unsocial hours, is required to turn a profit. Equally, if the tide is against you with poor seasonal weather, whether it’s too hot and dry or too wet, it can shaft your entire turnover for the financial year. I’m fascinated by the logistics of it all and now Farming Simulator 25 has arrived on Xbox Series X|S, Playstation 5 and PC, you can try your hand at managing your own farm.

It’s Been A While

We have had a three-year hiatus since the last experience in the series with Farming Simulator 22. The development team at Giant’s Software have been banging out yearly iterations since 2008, so they are no stranger to the genre. The last time I dipped into my harvesting adventure was back on Farming Simulator 2015, I recall receiving the game a week early. I decided to stream it and was met with around 4000 viewers at the time, I was gobsmacked and whilst I knew the game was niche, I didn’t realise it had such admiration and popularity.

Farming Simulator 25 has a new engine named “Giants Engine 10” and promises better weather effects and shadow rendering. There is also the introduction of some new crops, machinery and an all-new Asian-themed map in addition to the usual US and European iterations. For those who have recently experienced the 22 edition over on Xbox Game Pass may be keen to get hands-on with this fresh version with additional features.

A Huge Learning Curve

As you start you’ll have a few conversations and get on your way to starting your farming business. You’ll be able to create your character and pick how much money you want to start with and whether you fancy loaning some cash to get going. Be mindful though as borrowing money you haven’t got ultimately means you have to pay it back.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a tutorial or much in the way of guidance, so newcomers to Farming Simulator may be a bit put off by this. There is a lot of trial and error in everything you do. For instance, I had to fetch some logs and take them to a warehouse, but I was left to figure out how to go about this. I hired a truck that could load the logs onto the back but then actually loading them took a while to understand and get the hang of.

The entire experience becomes a huge lesson as you’ll need to learn what types of machinery to acquire before you hit the fields. Even once you get to grips with this, you’ll need to master the art of ploughing, laying seed and harvesting the crops at the correct times due to the seasonal changes. There is rich, deep and detailed information throughout the plethora of menus, which are a pain to navigate by the way. But the detail across the game has to be admired and getting things right is both satisfying and rewarding, I just wish there was an in-depth tutorial and more explanation on how certain areas of the game work.

AI, Multiplayer & Asian-Themed Map

Farming isn’t a one-man job a lot of the time, so sometimes you will need a helping hand. You can do this with the help of AI or if you fancy it you can set up a multiplayer server with a group of friends online. This brings a whole new layer to the game and whilst I didn’t have any friends with the game, poor me, I can see how everyone working a farm online in conjunction could be great fun. The AI however is pretty clever and will pick up jobs on your behalf whilst you can pick and choose what work you want to focus on that day.

Whilst I didn’t spend masses of hours on the Asian-themed map, there are plenty of features to dive into that were absent in previous versions of the game. Being able to farm rice, deal with buffalo and more. It gives a new avenue of the game to approach in different ways and I have to tip my hat to the dev team for at least trying something new this time around.

Visuals & Audio

Going into this review I did check out some of the thoughts on the Xbox store before diving in. The most notable comments with complaints about the game being at 30fps. Now this doesn’t bother me usually if the game does what it intends to do and looks pretty enough to play. Unfortunately, Farming Simulator 25 doesn’t seem to push forward with its visuals in comparison to previous entries. I decided to download Farming Simulator 22 to check the visuals there and you can’t tell the difference between the two games. I did spot that the new atmospheric weather conditions were more prominent though, so work has been done there.

This isn’t to say it is a bad game, far from it, but you’d like to think that it would strive forward. I expect that they would rather bring features like the new map and more farming gear to play with than focus all the attention on something that isn’t broken. As the chief simulator game reviewer on the team, you tend to expect the same level of presentation across the board with this type of game and that is what you get here. The difference here in comparison to other similar games is the amount of authentic equipment bearing all the relevant logos and branding. As for the sound, everything performs as you’d expect with no real surprises.

Final Thoughts

Whilst I did find the visuals of Farming Simulator 25 not much further ahead from what I played ten years ago, I did appreciate that the scope of the game has changed massively. Other games in the genre try and simulate farming environments but with the work of Giant’s Software, you won’t get any better than this one. The maps are vast in size and there is an unlimited amount of hours within this game with three huge areas to choose from, longevity is there. Bring with this the massive array of authentic farming equipment you can invest in, it is a paradise for farming enthusiasts.