Farming Simulator 22

Farming Simulator 22 knows exactly who it is and who it isn't. It's the most complete entry the long-running series has shipped, and it's perfectly aware it isn't built for everyone. Whether the final verdict reads high or low comes down entirely to whether you're the person it was made for.

A niche with a fiercely loyal core

At launch in 2021, it pulled off something that caught a lot of people off guard: its concurrent player count briefly surpassed Battlefield 2042, a triple-A shooter released the same week. A farming game eclipsing a blockbuster shooter says everything about the large, devoted audience hiding behind this supposedly niche genre. Looking back now, it holds a 92 percent positive rating on Steam across more than sixty-eight thousand reviews, with a critical average of 78 — an evergreen title with strong support from its core players.

But its excellence has a hard edge. Critics agree it's the best the series has produced, and not one of them calls it a reinvention. Its advantage lies in how specific its subject is, not in any breakthrough in design — almost nothing else competes for the same players, which lets it sell millions without taking a single risk.

That's why it has a high floor and a self-imposed ceiling: you'll never get a bad farming sim here, but don't expect it to surprise you either. For a series this many entries deep, that steadiness is both its greatest strength and the wall it can't climb. The chasm between a 78 from critics and a 5.5 from players comes from the same source — a week with the game highlights its completeness and novelty, while hundreds of hours reveal a core loop that has barely changed. Neither camp is wrong; they're just standing at different distances from the same field.

Who should buy, who should walk

The buyer profile is clear. You want slow-paced management, you enjoy operating real machinery and laying out supply chains by hand, and you treat the game as a way to decompress. If that's you, Farming Simulator 22 offers the series' most complete, most durable build, plus a near‑infinite mod layer to sink hundreds of hours into.

It's just as clear who should walk away. If you need explicit goals to pull you forward, crave narrative or combat thrills, or can't stand repetitive labor, then everything from the thin opening tutorial to the emptiness of the open-ended mid-game will steadily push you away. There's no shame in being that player; this simply isn't the game for you, and no amount of mechanical depth will change that.

That's the fault line between this and games like Stardew Valley. Stardew keeps you in town with pixel storytelling and human bonds, building meaning out of people; Farming Simulator 22 offers no warmth at all — only large-scale machine work and an industrial production economy that nobody else has managed to replicate. One game hands you a community to belong to, the other hands you a business to master, and the right answer depends entirely on what you came looking for. Decide which one you actually want, and you'll know whether this 6.5 reads as high or low for you.