$17.99Is Farming Simulator 19 worth it?
Farming Simulator 19 is worth it if…
- you find repetitive, methodical work relaxing rather than boring
- you like games where the whole loop is yours to set, with no timers or fail states
- you enjoy running a business on paper: crops, costs, land and when to sell
- you want a low-pressure game to farm, build and chat in with friends
Screenshots
The machines are the stars
This is the biggest vehicle roster the series has had, and it shows. You drive tractors, combines and tools faithfully recreated from John Deere, Case IH, New Holland, Fendt, Massey Ferguson, Valtra, Krone and more, with John Deere appearing in the series for the first time. The 3D shop lets you walk around a machine before you buy it, so you can see what you are getting. You climb into the cab, drop the implement, and work the field row by row; the interiors got particular attention, and sitting behind the wheel of a several-ton machine is part of the appeal.
Build a farm from nothing
New to this entry: you can buy land and place your own buildings, starting a farm from scratch instead of inheriting one. The hardest start gives you no land, no machines and little money, so you work as a contractor for neighbouring farmers first, taking jobs from a proper contract menu and using your own equipment on them. Buy a forest and you can cut it down for forestry, or clear it into farmland. Fields need lime and weeding between sowing and harvest, so there is real work to do beyond the big three of plough, sow, reap.
Slow work, clear head
Nothing here chases you. There are no timers on the field work and no fail state waiting for a mistake, so you set the pace yourself. A long pass up and down a field with the planter, the rows closing behind you, is exactly the kind of task that lets a busy brain idle. Between jobs you can ride your own horse across the open map, a first for the series, and just look around the American or European countryside. It is the rare game where doing the same thing for an hour is the point.
The farm as a business
Under the mud sits an economy to puzzle out. You decide what to plant: corn for silage, soybeans for profit, oats and straw on the side, or cotton, the new high-maintenance crop. You weigh buying a tractor against leasing one, decide whether the old machine survives one more harvest, and choose which fields to buy next. Livestock adds pigs, cows, sheep and chickens to the ledger. Every harvest turns into a sell decision, and the money loops back into land, buildings and bigger iron.
A farm is better with friends
You can develop your farm online with up to 16 players, and a big field is honest about needing them. One of you runs the combine, another shuttles the grain cart, someone else bales the straw while the field is still open. It is easy, low-pressure cooperation: join a farm, split the machines, and chat while the work gets done. Nobody has to be good at it. Watching a friend clip a fence with a header they paid real in-game money for is part of the fun.
Questions before you plant?
Is it good for someone new to farming sims?
Yes. You can start on the easiest setting with an established farm already running, and work up to the hardest start with no land, no machines and contract jobs for neighbours. The built-in tutorials cover the basics, though parts of the game, animal husbandry in particular, you will partly learn by trying things.
Do you have to grind the same field forever?
There is repetition, and that is honest: the loop of working fields is the game. But the variety around it is real. Crops from oats to cotton and sugarcane need different machines and timing, livestock and forestry add their own routines, and community-created mods can change or extend almost anything. How samey it feels depends a lot on how much of that you take on.
