Coral Island on PS5: It's above average with some minor flaws

It's a farming simulator which are generally games that I enjoy for casual playing here and there. I wouldn't say that I ever loved any of these kinds of games but since this one was free I gave it a shot anyway.

After playing it for about 5 hours I can say that the game is just fine but has a few very irritating aspects about it that I really didn't enjoy and also is extremely similar to all the other farm-sim games but I suppose we can't really complain about that because honestly, what sort of innovation can really be made in farming sims?

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What is there really to be said about this? You start out with a shack and a field filled with stones and trees and debris and you set out to turn it into a farm of your own choosing.

There is something soothing about a game like this and I don't actually mind doing them even though this one kind of plays like one of those mobile games where they are trying to trick you into spending real world money by having certain things take a really long time.

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You go out there and use your pickaxe on rocks, your scythe on plants, your axe on trees, and your hoe to make usable land. That's simple enough isn't it? Here is one aspect of the game that I really liked and it is true with many other games like this: your tools cannot break and thank goodness for that. I would have quit the game a long time before I did if that was possible.

I spent a lot of time just breaking up stones and whatever else because I didn't really have any direction until I was given some simple objectives and it is nice that they do this. Plant some seeds and then water them. Then you get give another objective to grow the plants and harvest them. This isn't rocket-science. You can definitely figure it out.

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After 90 minutes of play or so and being sent on quests all over the place to meet people and be introduced to parts of the island's economy you are going to probably end up feeling like I did an that is that this map is actually quite large and running around to the various areas is actually quite time consuming and not very interesting.

I ended up stopping playing a couple of times because of this because it is just so damn boring to be told that once again, I need to spend 5 minutes of real-world time running over to the general store so that something like them giving me another pack of seeds can happen. I don't want to do that and I don't understand why the make you do it. As it turns out, later on in gameplay you will unlock fast-travel but I was unwilling to wait that long.

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I was kind of looking forward to one day having my farm look all organized and having multiple areas of it so that there actually would be something for me to fill up the virtual days with but I never made it that far because I just kind of got bored. Perhaps all the time I spent on Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley already had made most of the aspects of this title get kind of lost on me.

This doesn't mean it is a bad game it can just be a bit frustrating to once again be forced to walk all over creation when nothing happens in between where you start and where you are going. If there is one thing that I really don't like in gaming it, is when the game makes me do "busywork."

If you are a more patient game than I am though, this game has a lot of fun aspects about it for the seriously casual gamer. None of this is difficult and I would imagine some of it is later, but in the half a dozen hours or so that I spent playing it was all very straight-forward and pretty amusing as well. The graphics and art style are cute and the controls are easy to use.

The only problem I had with the game was them forcing you to walk around the island in order to progress and I get that they are trying to force you to familiarize yourself with the island but some of these things that you MUST do are a rather dumb and uneventful long walk to the other side of the island. Also, there is no minimap and there were several times that I ended up going the wrong direction and then discovering I just added multiple minutes to my already pointless journey.

The farming is fun, and this statement is something that maybe doesn't make sense to anyone who has never played a game like this and probably infuriates actual farmers.

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Like almost all games that are similar to this one there is no one path to victory and it is sandbox, meaning that you can play it any way that you want to. You don't actually have to do any of the little quests that are offered to you.

I think that especially if you haven't played a lot of farm sim games that this could be fun and I do find myself returning to it every now and then but normally get frustrated as soon as they tell me that I have to run somewhere.

If you have a PS-Plus Extra account or Premium account, it is included in your monthly membership anyway, so why not just go ahead and give it a try?