If you’ve ever wanted to play what feels like an actual digital career, wearing the translucent skin of something resembling a video game, Farming Simulator 25: Highlands Fishing Edition is right up your alley. I cannot remember the last time I played a game that induced so much genuine confusion and frustration on my end, ultimately giving way to a strange sense of satisfaction – despite the fact that every time I felt like I was beginning to come to grips with what I set out to accomplish on my lovely little slice of verdant farmland, another hurdle was thrown at my feet. To say this sim requires extreme patience on the part of the player, as well as an unabashed love of (perhaps even obsession with) the farming lifestyle to truly glean the maximum amount of enjoyment it has to offer, would be an understatement of note.



Starting your life as a farmer is simple enough. Once you’ve selected your desired map from the handful of diverse, regionally distinct options available (both Western and Asian in appearance) and customised your player character, you’re plopped onto the map and left to your own devices – just give the inexplicably dying frame rate a few seconds to stabilise before moving around. If you’ve never touched one of these games before (like yours truly), I highly recommend enabling the starting tutorial function. This provides an admittedly barebones introduction to the basic crop cultivation/harvesting cycle and contextual machine controls, while also pointing you in several directions regarding where you’ll want to go from there.


All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Outside of the guided tour, other customisation options are also included for you to mess around with to your heart’s desire before settling in for good – including adjusting your starting amount of cash (with or without loans) and setting the standard economic difficulty level for your session. For those who can’t be bothered with these sliders (a whopping three, to be precise), modifier presets are available to suit your needs.

If you’ve never touched one of these games before (like yours truly), I highly recommend enabling the starting tutorial function.

It will absolutely take some time getting used to, but once you’ve familiarised yourself with the general flow of farm life and its associated eccentricities (like keeping an eye on the plant/harvest calendar guidelines), Farming Simulator 25 becomes an almost meditative experience. There have always been two types of “simulator” titles as far as I’m concerned: you’re either dealing with a noticeably streamlined experience or contending with a game striving for realism above all else, even at the cost of player attention span. Farming Simulator 25 tends to gravitate towards the latter without going all-out, allowing for some welcome conveniences. AI farmers, for example, can be utilised for completing certain tasks while you tend to more pressing matters. Just make sure any other equipment lying around isn’t blocking their paths, even slightly so, as these bots aren’t quite what I’d call the brightest crayons in the toolshed.


If you look closely, you can see Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt running through the field.

The worlds of Farming Simulator 25 are about what you’d expect from the realm of simulator titles - that is to say, there’s not a whole lot going on upon any further degree of inspection. The scenery looks good, and the layout feels believable, but that’s about all you can really say for these zones. You do have a handful of interactable NPCs to stave off utter loneliness, usually serving as small talk or hint dispensers in disguise (featuring voice acting that could easily be mistaken for being AI-generated).

The worlds of Farming Simulator 25 are about what you’d expect from the realm of simulator titles - that is to say, there’s not a whole lot going on upon any further degree of inspection.

So, what exactly does the latest entry in the Farming Simulator lineup do that sets it apart from those that came before? As it turns out, most of the additions and new gimmicks aren’t the kind that’ll immediately and enthusiastically slap you in the face (with a few exceptions) – instead manifesting in more subtle ways. General improvements to physics, visuals, and audio design absolutely add to the immersion factor here, and the addition of a third-person camera will certainly be appreciated by many. Of course, on the farming side, we’ve got the obvious inclusion of new crops (like rice and green beans), animals (even water buffalo), and weather types.


The bigger they are, the harder they farm.

It's never just sunshine and rainbows with these kinds of titles, though, and Farming Simulator 25’s biggest problems lie in just how little of the core gameplay systems feel intuitive to engage with (particularly if you’re new to the series). Barely anything is explained thoroughly, and the in-game help section isn’t exactly what I’d call comprehensive either. Hell, even navigating the menus and map screen feels like a chore (especially on a controller) thanks to the messy layout and seemingly haphazard arrangement of information tabs. There are so many instances where tiny quality-of-life adjustments or marginally expanded tool tips would vastly improve the overall user experience, and these issues will likely lead to many non-hardcore players quitting early on without ever bothering to get the hang of things.

Thankfully, I didn’t encounter many bugs, although most of these have likely been patched out by now. Aside from the frame rate nosedive when firing up a new game, the most egregious technical anomalies I saw involved finicky physics-related shenanigans while picking up objects, and animals clipping through various farming paraphernalia. As it turns out, when cows enjoy their food too much, they become one with the feeding trough.


We're one crazed mob of hillbillies away from turning this into a survival horror.

Farming Simulator 25: Highlands Fishing Edition is designed with a very specific audience in mind, and unless you fit the bill, you’re likely not going to stick around for very long after your purchase. For those out there who adore the subject matter, the simulator genre as a whole, or games with plenty of intricately moving parts paired with very little handholding, you’ll likely have a good time diving into this one. It may be far from perfect or exceptionally polished, and the onboarding process can feel like an absolute nightmare most of the time, but Farming Simulator 25 gets the job done without leaving too much of a catastrophic mess in its wake.

PS5 Review code provided by Giants Software