Farm Expert 2017

Farm Expert 2017 is a farming simulation developed by Silden that puts you in charge of crop management, machinery upkeep, and greenhouse cultivation across multiple farm plots. On paper, the pitch sounds reasonable: realistic vehicle physics, a backyard workshop for repairing equipment, and the option to expand operations beyond your starting land. In practice, the execution is where things get complicated, and not in the interesting, spreadsheet-worthy way I usually enjoy. The vehicle and machinery physics are the headline feature, and they do have a certain raw charm. Tractors feel heavy, attachments connect with some fidelity, and there is genuine satisfaction in lining up a seeder correctly and watching it work. The greenhouse mechanic adds a layer of indoor crop management that most competitors in this budget tier skip entirely, which earns the game at least one point of differentiation. If your primary goal is operating agricultural equipment in a low-stakes environment, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. The problems stack up quickly once you move past that surface appeal. The AI behavior for hired workers is unreliable, which in a farming sim is a serious structural issue because the entire late-game loop depends on delegation. When you cannot trust an automated hand to complete a basic field task without getting stuck on a fence post, the expansion fantasy collapses. The UI communicates information poorly, and the tutorial does not do nearly enough to explain the workshop repair system or the economic layer. Coming from the Farming Simulator series or even Pure Farming, the quality gap is immediately obvious. From a strategy and systems perspective, the decision depth is thin. Crop rotation, soil management, and market timing - the mechanics that keep a farming sim interesting across dozens of hours - are either absent or too simplified to generate meaningful choices. You are mostly working through a checklist rather than optimizing a production chain. For players who treat farming sims as a relaxing activity rather than a management puzzle, that might be acceptable. For anyone who wants the numbers to actually matter, it is a significant limitation. With a 46 percent positive rating across nearly 700 Steam reviews, the community verdict is clear: this is a game that did not meet expectations even at launch. There is no meaningful mod ecosystem to patch over the rough edges, which would normally be my first recommendation for a rough-around-the-edges sim. If you are new to the farming genre, start with Farming Simulator or Stardew Valley. If you are a genre veteran looking for something different, the greenhouse mechanics and workshop system offer a brief moment of novelty before the structural weaknesses become impossible to ignore. Diego, Scout Team