Fire up the tractor and hoe into the latest advances in agriculture in our Farming Simulator 25 review!

Describing why simulation games work for me is like asking a sports fan why they like watching sports. Sure, there’s logical answers like the love of competition, loyalty, or even just growing up with them; but in reality, there’s something unwritten, something in your bones that makes you love something. This works the same for sports games and simulation games. Fans of both genres will line up and buy the latest game that launches. I’m not interested in those people. They know what they’re in for. I want to speak to newer players who might’ve been on the fence.

Farming Simulator 25 is the latest game to come out for PC and consoles. It’d be easy to rattle off most of the differences; new maps, new crops in the form of rice and legumes, new livestock (goats!), new farming machines, and a variety of quality of life additions. Again, I don’t think most of this will tip you over the edge if you were teetering. Instead, let me espouse why you might want to play Farming Simulator 25.

There’s a zone you might get into when playing the simulation genre, especially when it comes to big vehicles. It’s something almost childlike about using heavy machinery that works for my lizard brain. My wife is big into crafting; knitting, sewing, painting amongst other hobbies. Not me though, I dig over data and like driving big machinery. I’ve got hundreds of hours in Euro Truck Simulator 2 and various others, and I’ve more than earned my stripes in the Farming Simulator genre.

Farming Simulator 25 Review – Gameplay

The best part about the game is that you can do as much or as little as you want. If you want to raise animals, go ahead. It’s the best it’s ever been, as animals can now reproduce and there are new animals. If you want to grow crops, do it. There are plenty of options to choose from. You want oversee your farm and just let AI drive and do the work? Go nuts. Maybe you just want to do contract jobs for people, and that’s fine too. There’s no ‘right way’ to play the game, so just do whatever you like. Personally, I love lumbering. Just heading out there into trees grown on my property, taking a chainsaw and cutting one of those bad boys down, cleaning it up, and selling it off.

Find what brings you joy and do it. Mix it up, you’ve got options. As long as you’re making money then you’re doing fine. Farms run on multiple machines, so you’ll have a chance to try fiddle around and see what works for you. For me, a tractor with tree planter works well for planting, then I move over to the ol’ Harvester (or chainsaw, for kicking it old school) for cleaning them up and cutting the length, then finally using a Telehandler with a log fork to grab them and put them in a Logging Transport so they can be taken to market. It’s a lot, and there will be a learning curve as you adapt to the machines and your money-making method of choice, but that’s simulation games. Once you’re in the groove, you can just vibe out and let the worries of the day melt away. Very cathartic.

Farming Simulator 25 Review – Visuals

Honestly, I think the game looks pretty good. It taxes my PC in a way I’m not incredibly fond of, but you can tell there’s a decently juicy engine upgrade on the backend. Disasters like tornadoes and weather effects like fog rolling in across the fields in the morning all look great, but there’s still some wonky textures kicking around that can take you out of the zone. The town itself isn’t bad but feels a bit lifeless, maybe that’s the point of a small farming town.

Bet city life doesn’t look anywhere near this good.

I did love the ground deformation though, not sure if you can get stuck but as you drive over your fields you’ll cause divots and tracks in the ground. It’s a cool feature, just not sure it helps to justify the price of the game. It feels more like a little flourish than a big ticket item.
The menus look good but they’re very clunky to navigate. Possibly because there are lots of farming equipment/machinery in the game, but finding things can often be multiple menus deep, which feels cumbersome in a way I don’t like.

Farming Simulator 25 Review – Audio

The voice work is rough, but thankfully it’s pretty minimal. Only when you speak with a few NPCs will you actually hear it, and I didn’t do this enough for it to become too much of a bother. Vehicles and equipment sound good, a simulator purist might have complaints but it was good to my ear. I would have liked more ambiance.

You can practically hear the “MoooOOoOoooo” just looking at this.

I dig the new music tracks. They’re generally acoustic guitar-laden tracks that exist to both bring that country feel, but also just to break up the light ambience and machinery noises. I’d also describe it as “country lo-fi”, very cool stuff.

Farming Simulator 25 Review – What Else?

GPS steering and improvements to the AI have made relying on AI to do some tasks easier, but it’s still not perfect. Sometimes drivers will get stuck and need manual intervention. Sometimes they’ll just do a poor job and you’ll need to fix up the loose ends. It sucks that they’re not much better at their tasks, but they perform well enough most of the time. I did have issues with some AI trucks not filling up from silos, but it wasn’t too bad outside of that. I want to have a full suite of farm hands taking care of the fields, planting new crops per season and taking them to be sold. Unfortunately, the tech in this game just isn’t there yet.

Farming Simulator 25 Review – Conclusion

This is still a good game. It might be a bit hard to justify the price for the increases if you’re coming in from a previous entry, but if you’re fresh meat then this is one to either pick up now or wait for a sale (and further updates) some months down the line. Mod support is also present but because it’s a new game, it’ll take a while for some of those great mods to come into fruition. When it does though, this game will transform completely and for the better.

Here’s the rub though, and it’s one that irks me a lot. I play a good amount of simulation games, and when I look at some of the big hitters, they’ve spent time building upon the foundations and release DLC to keep the game fresh. They know that each new release of a numbered title is diluting the fan base and it gets harder to retain them. I want there to be a Farming Simulator that gets built upon year by year, with new maps and new vehicles without buying in a new game every 2-3 years. I love this series, but when you look back at all the support previous games got via mods and see it all have to be built up from scratch again, it just doesn’t feel good.

So, why should you play Farming Simulator 25?

• You want a relaxing farming game with depth and big machines that go vroom-vroom
• This is the best version they’ve made yet
• The new additions like rice are very cool, and the new map is also quite nice

But why shouldn’t you play Farming Simulator 25?

• Previous titles have amazing mods created for them
• AI is better but still kinda sucks
• $75 is a lot to spend on a biennial series

A review code was kindly provided by Five Star Games for the purpose of our Faming Simulator 25 review. For more farming goodness, check out our Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life review and join us over on the Qualbert Discord to chat about more simulation games!