Farming Simulator 25 is the successor to a now long line of Farming Simulator game versions, with the closest previous one being Farming Simulator 22.
The basic premise is quite simple – you get to be a modern day farmer, drive tractors, harvesters, and use all the other equipment essential to modern agriculture. You can also try your hand at animal husbandry. The selection of animals has grown over the different game versions and now includes cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, horses and goats. Or you can choose to do some forestry, since you on top of being a farmer also have the possibility to make use of the forests. All in order to get a hopefully profitable farm going and growing.
To your help as a farmer you have a large selection of different tractors from all the big real life brands. So if you dream about driving an iconic green John Deere tractor you can. Or a red Case if you prefer that. Or pretty much any brand you can think of inbetween.
The same goes for the other machines and equipment. There’s a lot of them to go around, even if some types of machinery seem to have got a bit more love than others. This means that you at times find yourself returning to using the same piece of equipment ever so often (hello again, good old Bredal fertilizer spreader). Luckily this can be remedied over time thanks to the one important aspect where Farming Simulator games have always shined – the modability.
A not insignificant amount of the appeal with the Farming Simulator games comes from the vibrant modding community. Both whole maps as well as tractors and all other kinds of equipment can be found in the official modhub which is integrated in the game itself. The number of mods is of course not that big this early after the official release, but increases over time.
If you’re not satisfied with delivering the harvests directly for sale, there is also the possibility to invest in your own production lines which can make use of the raw materials and turn them into more lucrative products such as cheese, bread, wool clothing, or even planks and furniture.
A game function which was first brought to Farming Simulator 22 in one of the major expansion packs and which has been brought over to the new base game is a number of different construction challenges. Functioning a little like the production buildings these challenges demand certain goods, but instead of turning them into more refined products, they use the goods delivered in the continued construction of the project. For now there seem to be two construction projects on the Riverbend Springs map and one on the Hutan Pantai map.
It should be said that beyond the possibility of completing these challenges, the game does not have a concrete goal. It is pretty much up to you, the player, to set your own. Unless you just want to have a nice, relaxing time driving a harvester, planting fields and the likes. This is something Farming Simulator shares with many other games of this kind. The game is first and foremost designed to be a relaxing, casual experience, not a competition.
That said, Farming Simulator 25 do leave ample possibilities for the player to make their own goal. When starting a new game there’s three different starting setups to choose between: using an already setup starter farm with suitable equipment, getting a good amount of money and the freedom to purchase any farm you wish (or simply build your own on a suitable piece of land), or start from scratch with a more modest amount of money. The first option is great for the casual player who simply wants to do some farming, while the third option is the right choice for any player who wants the more realistic challenge to start small and grow from there.
Graphically Farming Simulator 25 has got a bit of an update from the earlier version, even if the differences aren’t huge. The in-house game engine delivers a nicely detailed experience without demanding too much of a computer to run smoothly or look good.
The user interface is in its essence based on the one in FS22 but visually overhauled. For players who are used to FS22 it may take a little while to get used to the new look. For players entering into FS25 with no knowledge of earlier versions the user interface is probably okay, if maybe a little daunting at times due to it containing a lot more information than is visible at a first glance. The map page is in reality several maps showing different information and the same goes for some of the other pages. But once you get used to finding your way, it works quite well.
The character personalization is pretty much the same as in FS22 with only minor changes in the possible selections for hair, ethnicity and clothing where the choices has increased a bit. Enough to make your player character somewhat personal, but no more than that. No body build adjustments or the likes. The resulting character is also not exactly the highest quality of character visualisations around, but well, it’s a farming game where the character is spending most of her time inside a tractor or harvester anyway.
The maps
There are three different maps coming with the game, representing three different parts of the world. One east Asian, one north American, and one central European.
Hutan Pantai is the east Asian inspired map. I would say Japan inspired had it not been for the fact that the place obviously has right-hand driving on the roads.
The map itself is a nice setting for the big new thing in Farming Simulator 25 – rice agriculture and water buffalos. The starter farm comes with three rice paddies in its vicinity. Of course like for all the maps there is no limitation to start to grow any other crop you want on the fields. It’s up to the player choosing how realistic in regard to the map setting they want to be in their choices.
For the sightseeing farmer Hutan Pantai not only offers good possibilities for farming, but also some stunning views. The map makers have managed to get both a city, a charming old-fashioned mountain village, a piece of freeway, and a good chunk of coastline into the mix without making it feel squeezed.
The signage around the map is more or less all in English, which I can assume is to make it more accessible to players no matter where they are from. At the same time it is ever-so-slightly jarring considering the setting. But okay, English is pretty visible in most places, so let’s not dwell too much on that.
It’s slightly odd than the non-playing characters are not tailored for the map, but simply the same for all. Grandpa Walter feels a tad exotic where he stands outside the asian farm house.
Riverbend Springs, the American map, depicts a not closer defined part of USA. Given that it makes for growing cotton, sugar and even rice, it probably could be considered to be more south than north. The map contains a number of farms suitable for different animals and with fields of different sizes.
This is maybe the map for those who want to start on a map with a little of everything. Here it would pretty much be possible to do whatever you wish and try out any of the many crops without it feeling out of place.
Just like Hutan Pantai, Riverbend Springs has obviously been designed to showcase all that Farming Simulator 25 can do. The big river is the centerpiece and its valley the perfect place to let the morning mists show off in all its atmospheric glory. A novelty is also the two ferries crossing the river at strategical positions.
Zielonka, the starter map to represent Europe in FS25, is not as such a new map since it was first released with the last of the big expansion packs for Farming Simulator 22. It is also maybe not the obvious choice for the player who wants to try out growing rice. The inspiration for this map is Poland and the rest of central-to-eastern Europe.
Being a map originally released for this game’s predecessor, it does not have the same spectacular views and feeling of being a showcase map as the other two. When it was first released it was made to accompany the introduction of three new root vegetables in Farming Simulator 22 and this means that it may still be mostly useful as a map for those who wants to focus on vegetable farming. It’s open, relatively flat and has a general feel of those central-to-eastern European plains.
Differences from FS22
Even if much is similar and recognizable from Farming Simulator 22 for those of us who are already familiar with that version of the game, there are still a number of notable differences. I won’t list them all here, but a few of the highlights are definitely worth mentioning.
Steering Assist – a kind of GPS – is now built into the game and works quite well, even in comparison to the third-party mod that was available for earlier Farm Sim versions. The built-in version doesn’t have as many choices as the mod had, but it has everything that’s essential. In practice the steering assist is also the foundation for the AI helpers function, which means that they do seem to have become a little smarter.
The contract work screen has got quite a bit of improvement. There’s now an integrated map directly on the contracts screen, making it much easier to see where on the map the contract work is. There’s also a greater number of different contracts. Personally I like that grass contracts now has been split into parts so it’s possible to only do a bale wrapping or baling part instead of having only the whole process from cutting to delivering as a contract. Also added are the forestry contract possibilities which was first introduced in the Premium edition of FS22.
There is a new third-person view available for the walking character, which I personally think is a good addition. Not the least since it can potentially be a bit of help for players who suffer from motion sickness.
Conclusion
Is Farming Simulator worth to buy? The answer is as so often ”it depends”. If you are looking for a relaxing farming game, the Farming Simulator series is the leading choice as it has been for at least a decade now. This also means that the biggest competitor to Farming Simulator 25 is its own predecessor – Farming Simulator 22.
If you’re a newcomer to the genre and not passionate about farming but simply wants to have a farming game to relax and have fun with right now on your PC, it must be said that the older Farming Simulator 22 may be good enough for a less hefty price. In particular since the 2022 version now has a lot of mods available to enliven and deepen the experience, many of which on a PC can provide alternatives to a lot of the new things added in FS25.
On the other hand, if you’re a console player I’d recommend going for the new Farming Simulator 25 even with the higher price, since it has things like Steering Assist and smarter NPC helpers which aren’t possible to get as mods for the console versions.
If you’re a veteran when it comes to the Farming Simulation games, you are going to recognize a lot of things in this new version. It is, like for most of the version changes, more of an incremental upgrade of things than a totally new feeling.
On the plus side are clearly improved contracts, the addition of some new crops, and some improvements in the way maps work. On the minus side is that there could have been more improvement when it comes to the animal husbandry side of the game. I must admit I had hoped for some deeper gameplay being introduced for the animals.
Also, FS25 being new, there is the eternal problem for new games in a series that the modhub needs to be refilled with functional mods again. Which will take some time. And since modded maps are a big attractor for the veteran crowd, it may be justified to wait a little to jump into FS25.
There will always be a lively debate between the players who want an as realistic farming experience as possible and the more casual ones who just like to sit in their harvester and enjoy the calming feeling of watching the maize being harvested, and it is in Farming Simulator’s interest to try to find the middle road between the two. Something I think they are succeeding pretty well in with Farming Simulator 25.
The game provide a full-grown experience out of the box and seems also to provide a good, workable foundation for the modders who undoubtedly will continue to make mods which will assist in giving that more realistic feeling to the players who long for that. In the end, Farming Simulator 25 is a good upgrade of what already was a quite good relaxing game for the gamers who like to do non-competitive, casual gaming just for fun and happen to like farming stuff.
