Farming Simulator 25 Review: Masterpiece Or Failure?

I think the game’s name speaks for itself: this is a real simulation of farm life, in which you determine the meaning. Farming Simulator 25, as such, has no plot: in it, you are free to do whatever you want. You can fish for hours or wander the streets of deserted night megalopolises. If you wish to, be an ordinary worker, working on your crops. If you want, rise higher and start building your agribusiness from scratch.

When I wrote a review of Farming Simulator 25, I noticed that the game has certain shortcomings and gaps, which we will talk about a little later. In addition, the reviews of players on Steam were very contradictory: someone praised the game and argued that it had become better than its predecessor, Farming Simulator 22, while someone swore at the simulator because of poor optimization, freezes, FPS drops, and bugs.

I think that you can only conclude playing this game at least once. Farming Simulator 25 can either be loved or hated.

The theater starts with a coat rack and the game – with the main menu. What’s new? The interface has changed a little. Now the save slots are located vertically, not horizontally, as it was in the previous part. At the moment, there are 20 such slots. Before the game starts, you choose the starting capital (do you want to become the richest farmer in the area?), whether you have loans (I don’t wish them on anyone), the starting farm, and whether you need a starting guide (for newfags). Before getting to the map, we are offered to customize our character. Here, everything is as usual: you choose the appearance of the main character and secretly admire his thick mustache.

As soon as my character was transferred to the farm, the game began to slow down. My RTX 2060 video card was puffing and giving out 50 FPS with drops to 5 FPS. You need to wait until all the objects on the map in the game are loaded and then the number of frames will more or less stabilize. In principle, such freezes can be forgiven for Farming Simulator 25 for now, because the game was released quite recently – November 12, 2024, so optimization is still lame.

The starting American farm is very atmospheric: lots of sheds with junk, and there’s an old man you can talk to (we’ll get back to the NPC later). Overall, the map is quite cozy. There are a lot of beautiful and interesting places where you can walk. Some buildings need to be restored. The landscape is also quite interesting. It seems that the map is quite small. However, it is imperative to carefully explore it, as you can find a lot of interesting things on it. For example, a ferry crossing. But you still need to figure out how to start the ferry.

As for the new Asian map, the starting farm is not particularly remarkable: there are practically no objects. Behind the farm, there are several fields, a hill with a large forest, and a highway along the edge of the map.

To feel the whole atmosphere of the city, it is better to come there at night. A typical Asian metropolis: shops everywhere, bright neon signs. But where are the people? Such deserted streets… This is of course a minus for the game. Still, I want to find NPCs and talk to them, and not just with the grandfather on the farm.

As for the weather conditions, in Farming Simulator 25, they are very diverse. For example, hail can destroy crops. Since such mechanics were added to the game, then there will be a revelry for modders, for example, they will be able to make a mod for crop damage from high humidity and drought, or even add locusts. Tornado! There is even such a natural disaster. A tornado destroys both crops and trees, but it looks, to put it mildly, not very good. It does not affect the player, buildings, or equipment. A strange tornado :)

In Farming Simulator 22, animals such as chickens and cows stood sadly in their pens. And it was sad to contemplate empty meadows without grazing animals on them. It is clear that the modders took everything into their own hands and significantly expanded the space for grazing cattle. In Farming Simulator 25, the situation has changed: now when installing pens, we can fence off the territory on which our animals will graze. Their number will depend on the area. And most importantly! The appearance of animals now depends on their age. We can see both small calves and adult cows in our meadows.

Buffaloes have appeared, whose milk is quite expensive. But there is a nuance: these animals are gluttonous. And if you do not feed them, the buffaloes will stop giving you milk.

You can meet characters on the maps and even talk to them. They give advice, for example, on how to increase the harvest, and also offer help (plow the field, sow seeds, harvest, etc.). However, in Farming Simulator 25 NPCs are not so interesting, rather, they are made for appearances. I hope the modders will fix them and make them more interesting.

Wherever you film your review of Farming Simulator 25 – on PS5 or Xbox, you will notice the graphics everywhere. They are as plastic as in the previous parts of the game. However, the lighting from the sun in the morning haze and fog look very nice and do not steal FPS. Traces from tractor wheels on the fields look very natural: the soil is pressed down depending on its type and the weight of the transport itself.

– We have different contracts: transporting logs, cutting down dead trees, collecting straw from fields, and chiseling rocks.

– The developers have added as many as 25 new crops. Now you can grow not only wheat and corn but also something new, such as spinach, peas, and green beans. They also added rice, and this is one of the biggest innovations in the game. They added new equipment and special combines for it.

1. In the editor, select the rice field area. Click on the dots and outline the future field.
2. Go to the pump and fill the field with water.
3. Plant rice using a special machine. Rice seedlings can be purchased at the store or grown in greenhouses.
4. When the rice is ripe, harvest it. Bingo!

I didn’t find any reviews about Farming Simulator 25 on Xbox. Since we’re talking about Xbox, you might want to check it out and see what co-op games you can play on it.

Probably because the game came out quite recently. But on Steam, as usual, there’s a crowd of its own. Of course, there were Haters: “Not worth the money. The game is raw, nothing has been finalized at all, and what was there and worked in the previous parts has been broken.

They made a track that is not plowed by a plow, it does not work very logically. The tracks from loaded and empty equipment are the same. Weight does not affect its depth at all. Only the width changes.

They made a GPS navigator (or rather, it is more correct to say they stole it from the modders of the previous part) and it was done poorly…”

However, there were also positive reviews:

“This is much, much better than the 22nd farm. It is just a cut above. And optimization, graphics, and visual style.”

“The game is interesting, I think that the best farm simulator of our time. Of course, there are disadvantages, problems with drawing, optimization is crude, but overall the game is worth it!”