Farming Simulator 19 is a good game. Highly recommended for everyone :-)
2018-11-25 Written using FS19 v1.1 without any mods. Plan is to update this review once more game upgrades and mods are released.
Please read Farming Simulator 17 (FS17) Review for my background. Also you should read my FS17 game session stories so you see how have I played FS17 previously. This review you are reading now heavily focuses on "whats changed since FS17" because thats my reference point.
User Interface (UI) is much cleared and crispier than before, in the ESC map-view when you zoom out it remembers the zoom level and position so the next time you open map it will be on the same location. You can also resize the UI from the main menu options.
You can buy land, not a field but actual big chunks of land. The land might contain forest, buildings, fields, you name it. You cannot cut trees on land that you do not own. This is great feature improvement since FS17.
Fields now have field info box in lower right corner of the screen when you are walking in a field. The box shows who owns the field, what possible crop is planted, does it need plowing and what are the fertilization, growth and weed stages. This was a mod back in FS17 and very nice feature.
3D garage shop is new and much welcomed feature, you can inspect your vehicle or implement, heck even a hay bales etc in the garage before buying. You'll see all the customization of the vehicles as well.
In options you can setup auto-save time, however this will not bring up disruptive "please wait while saving" dialog, but it only activates save when you hit ESC to get into map-view or any of the other menus there. Excellent feature to have.
At night when you go to your farm house it gives you option to sleep a selected amount of hours. When you select the hours and click sleep it will time accelerate (5000x) with a outside view of your farmhouse.
Terrain is better than FS17 but is not as beautiful as in ArmA 3. I still feel that it is huge black eye for the game as vehicles are superb but the terrain and many terrain objects look like they are from two decades old game and the rain, sun in the sky, night... that is just so outdated and bad that oh boy. It is a bit better than in FS17 so there has been some improvement, but the devs really need to get their act together and overhaul the environment engine COMPLETELY.
Terrain has much more bushes and grass (not the farming kind of grass/hay) to give more detailed look. Seems like terrain objects now have much more detailed look that in FS17.
Just like the UI the whole environment looks clearer and crispier, it just feels much more... dunno how to call it, improved, modern. But then again its not much you need to improve to get better results than the crime against humanity what FS17 static skybox with on/off night/day textures and atrociously horrible rain was.
Flock of birds is excellent addition to the game, it is so awesome to work on your field and see the birds there and when you approach the fly off. Even when you are walking the birds recognize your presence and fly away, very nice.
v1.1 game engine info: However sometimes, moderately often, the flock of birds gets spawned on the field very close to your vehicle location where you can clearly see this happening which obviously kills the immersion. Hopefully they tweak this on the future patches.
Sun is in the sky and as it moves seemlessly as time passes, however as said the environment is not very good so the sun looks pretty crappy, BUT... it does its job, no problemo.
Clouds are rendered in the sky, to me coming from arma3 they look pretty crappy, however they are great improvement over the absolutely disgusting static skybox of FS17. Clouds are moving on the sky, this is especially easy to see once you time accelerate. Now we have different environmental conditions, clear sky, few clouds, thick clouds and everything between, looks very nice farm sim engine wise until devs overhaul the environment engine.
Rain looks much better now than in FS17, you hear clear rain drops sounds and even occational thunder rumble which is nice. Clouds get dark gray in the sky and you do get that raining feeling definitely, again its no arma3 but hey this is great improvement over FS17 and now the raining weather feels at least somewhat believable.
Moon rises at the sky, however cloudless sky at night with the moon causes "glow in the dark" effect which already seen many times in FS17. You cant really tell its a night when its such glow in the dark, you might think its just an clody day heh. Night should be dark, FS19 stock v1.1 they ain't. Oh and also its full moon, every night... so, yeah...
(this info was with 120x time acceleration!) Sunrise happens unfortunately in several stages, the sun object in the sky still rises smooth but the lighting has like at least three or four "ticks" which click onto place and night time (glow in the dark heh) brightens up to a day with these ticks/clicks.
Sounds from the environment have been greatly improved from FS17, now you can hear birds, insects (like those night insects chirping) etc, it sounds very nice as opposed to the previous about nothing sound environment. And as mentioned rain sounds now better with occational thunder rumble. It brings the environment alive much more than quiet one. However for example the bird and dog sounds are randomly created which causes some really odd stuff like owl sound in middle of the open terrain (no trees) or dog sound in the forest (why would a dog be doing alone in the woods heh). Also the sounds are spawned relative to camera position, often times this is high up behind a vehicle so like dog is parking in the sky, err what? hehe.
Vehicle and equipment / implements models and textures look great, as they have always been.
Vehicles now have ... how should I call it, "mass", meaning that once you hit the gas/throttle/W key the vehicle just doesn't turn on/off mode to forward speed, it almost feels like it revvs up the engine RPM as it slowly starts to accellerate, feels very good.
Steering wheels now turn slowly, I assume this can be configured in options but much like vehicle engines its not just on/off max on max off, but the wheels turn slowly for the direction you turned them and also slowly back (this was my first experience just using WASD keyboard + mouse).
Inside sound in the vehicle cab is muffled, it is much more lower volume than outside, this is nice feature to have. Saves your ears from ringing heh.
Vehicles like tractors are nicely animated inside the cab, your seat smoothly bumps up and down with suspension which gives really nice and smooth feeling ride and very much "alive or real" feeling tractor (difficult to explain).
You have the three new game modes which are nothing groundbreaking as you can achieve the same result by editing savegame files, but I guess its a nice for the newbies to just pick a quick game mode from the menu.
Buying land instead of fields is definitely a nice change and feels much more realistic to purchase properties.
Seeders and fertilizers can now be unloaded, when you use default I command for this, the usual pallets of seed/fertilizer appears in line next to the implement. Tad fishy realism wise but still a great feature to have, for example if you want to switch between fertilizer and lime etc.
At day one (or 6 at the moment of writing this) gameplay without essential mods like Courseplay is pretty tiresome, we really need some mods to bring the good old FS17 gameplay to this new game.
At the moment of writing this review there has been no DLC released because game has been out a very short time. Sure there is the hijo de puta pendeho terrain in modhub but that is free official mod from FS17 so it doesn't count, DLC is paid official content.
Existing FS17 mod sites have opened up FS19 areas (just like we did here at farming-simulator.org) so time will tell if the community stays as garbage as it was during FS17, referring to advertisement ridden, click this click that if not actual malware crap web sites with third party download sites etc, just horrible experience overall.
2018-11-20 At day one there were sites (wont name them) that are pure fake traps to lure in visitors in hopes for big advertisment click bait pay outs, it was disgusting to see such behavior. For example in one site I saw complete search hit click bait page with ZERO content but tons of keywords for google to find, shameful to put up such sites.
Be very very careful when googling community mod web sites.
I saw first mods released mere hours after the game release, in the next few days following more mods got released like the placeable fertilizer/seed/lime tanks which were great. Looking forward to see other great mods to be released, especially those 4km or larger terrains.
Overall Farming Simulator 19 is good and highly recommend to everyone!
Check back to this review after more game upgrades and mods have been released.
Nov 25th, 2018.
Snake Man, PMC.