>>718686035 (OP)
It is (was) a much-needed return to form for the cozy farming town game genre that had remained fallow for much longer than it really should have.
Really, SDV does basically nothing super special, but it became wildly popular just because it did all the things people already knew worked. Literally just give people a cozy setting, a way to grow crops that is scalable and optimizable but not overwhelming, chuck in some skill minigames, and then sprinkle on some one-dimensional characters to act as dolls for the players' dollhouses. Every other farming game between Harvest Moon and SDV fucked this up somehow.
SDV had no right to be as successful as it was, it's like the entire field of game development just had the concept of cozy farming games wiped from their memories men in black style, then this one guy comes in with a decently polished example of one and everyone loses their shit.
I married Shane btw, because I can fix him