Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, a remake of the GameCube and PS2 game, is finally out next week on multiple platforms after being revealed in a recent Nintendo Direct. I only got into Story of Seasons with the 3DS releases, so I never got a chance to play A Wonderful Life before. As with Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, this remake of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life was basically a new game for me. It has been a lovely relaxing experience on both Switch and Steam Deck over the last few weeks. I’ve also been impressed with how the PC version is on Steam Deck barring one issue. In this feature, I’m going to focus on Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life’s PC port played on Steam Deck.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC requirements
The Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC requirements are below:
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC minimum requirements
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 or 11
- Processor: Intel i5-3470 or AMD Ryzen 5 2400
- Memory: 6GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 950 or Radeon HD7870
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 5GB available space
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC recommended requirements
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 or 11
- Processor: Intel i7-6700 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600
- Memory: 8GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX580
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 5GB available space
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC graphics options
On PC, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life supports resolutions from 360 and 720p to 4K. Despite letting you select 800p, the game is still 16:9 on Steam Deck. You can toggle v-sync, adjust display mode (fullscreen, borderless, and windowed), enable anti-aliasing (off, medium, high), shadows (off, medium, high), toggle anisotropic filtering, toggle bloom, and toggle light shafts.
The game, as of this writing, seems capped at 60fps on PC. I usually test games on my Steam Deck docked through the official Docking Station on my monitor to check what frame rates are supported if there’s no in-game limiter. I couldn’t get it to run above 60fps whatever I did. If this is confirmed to be an issue with just the Steam Deck, I’ll update this.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC control options
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life supports controllers and keyboard with mouse gameplay. On the controller side, it natively shows PlayStation button prompts when I use my DualSense controller wirelessly on Steam Deck. You can rebind most of the inputs, and the keyboard input option even has additional settings for tabs of your bag.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life PC performance – frame rate and resolution
For this specific feature, I didn’t have access to the laptop I usually use, so I played only on Steam Deck. Once I get the laptop back, I’ll update this. Visually, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life on PC looks quite a bit cleaner than the Switch version. I don’t have access to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions to compare, but playing on the same monitor, the PC version is a lot better. The Switch version isn’t bad, but the difference is noticeable. Even when playing handheld on Steam Deck, you can force a higher resolution to make it even cleaner on the internal display.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life on Steam Deck – does it work from day one?
While Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town was one of the few games that didn’t work for me on Steam Deck when I tried it a while ago, I’m pleased to report that Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life works out of the box with no changes needed to Proton compatibility or anything. It also holds 60fps really well with the settings turned to high or enabled in the case of the toggles. Just keep in mind that it is power-hungry so the battery life when playing it at 60fps isn’t great. It seems to be using about 17.5W to 20W of power during gameplay with 60fps and high settings without me changing anything else.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life on Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch?
While Pioneers of Olive Town was a bit of a mess on Switch when it comes to the performance and load times, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a lot better, and I can actually recommend it without major caveats. Even the PC port runs well on Steam Deck from day one. If you’d prefer playing it on your Switch, go for that version. If you want 60fps, the Switch version is not the way to go, but the port isn’t bad like the launch day experience playing Pioneers of Olive Town.
I’m very impressed with how good Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life feels to play today. Marvelous and Xseed Games have done a lot to make it hold its own after so many life simulation games over the last few years. I’ll be revisiting this quite often over the coming weeks as a break from the other RPGs I’ve been playing for review. Hopefully my Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Steam Deck performance review helped you decide if it is worth grabbing the newest Story of Seasons release on PC or Switch.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life releases on June 27 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. Wishlist it on Steam here. Check out the official series website in the West here.
