It may have been the first wine-based derivative of the farming genre, but now Metaplace’s My Vineyard has company — Ubisoft.

The large game developer has launched a new title called Vineyard Country, and like so many of its kind, this farm-like sim has you planting crops until the day is done; only this time, it’s not for ears of corn, but for some delightful aged wine.

The app has a wonderful wine-making mechanic that not only has strategy and a bit of personalization behind it, but fantastic, decorative, and almost city-building-like features coupled with a sea of social elements that desperately strugge against some obtrusive optimization issues.

Here is our closer look at the details:

Technically speaking, Vineyard Country doesn’t have a specific goal. What it has is, like most other farming sims, is a set of rules and features that allow players to create their own objectives. Nonetheless, if you had to pin it down to something, it would be to grow your estates into the biggest and best wine making facilities in the country (France, evidently).

Unlike the typical farming app, however, this game takes a more scaled up perspective that is almost reminiscent of a city builder or some of the many Civilization clones. Rather than owning a single farm, players literally have an entire countryside that grows bigger as the user levels up. It is from here that players till entire fields for their grape empire, construct more “Brewage Houses,” or decorate the land with any number of trees, buildings, statues, and bushes. As a matter of fact, there is such a variety of decorative items (once unlocked via level), that this entire overworld might as well be a city-builder. The only difference is that there there’s no population, happiness level, or utilities to manage.

Of course, there still are finances to worry about, but that’s where your wine comes into play. For each field they create, users can plant different types of grapes. Expectantly, the higher level the crop, the longer it takes to grow, and the more it is worth. Value of crops, however, is not measured in coin, but rather, in star rating. This is based on a number of elements including the quality of the grapes, the timeliness of your harvest (if you come back to harvest right when they are ready you get a bonus star), and the quality of soil.

Your harvests can be grown in varying sizes of fields. To this end, a curious quality-versus-quantity mechanic is born. Each field has its own level bar, which appears to be increased by fertilizing your crops. Here’s the catch: You can only fertilize every couple of hours, and while the game isn’t 100% clear on the matter, it is probably safe to assume that returning to fertilize again will continue to improve the soil. However, the bigger the field, the more it takes to level up that field, so while smaller fields will produce higher quality grapes faster, but in lower quantities, larger fields will produce significantly higher quantities, but at a more slowly growing quality.

Once you’ve moved past the crops and made your harvests, it’s time to make wine itself. This is where your Brewage House comes into play. Unfortunately, you only start with one until you level up some, but its simple enough to use. All players merely have to do is drag their stored grapes to the machines and after a period of time (which appears to be the same time as it took the grapes to grow), the wine will be ready to sell. From here, players custom name their wine, slap a label of their choosing on there and call it a day. However, it is worth noting that once you level up some and get new, and bigger brewage houses, you can buy better quality equipment which, in turn, can increase your wine value another one or two stars.

As far social elements go, Vineyard Country has a ton of possibilities. At its most basic level, players can invite friends as “family” to create a sort of leaderboard, and you can even gift your creations to each other as you desire. Additionally, your brewage houses and fields often need upkeep to deal with pests, weeds, leaks, and so on, so to handle the problems, you can hire friends to work for you.

But this feels to be merely a superfluous addition as the issues that arise don’t really seem to do anything, and your avatar itself fixes the issues when you’re on that screen. Moreover, there is a tab to make them happy by buying them wine or letting them rest, but it is unclear as to whether or not this actually affects anything. At the moment, the only difference is that they have music notes appear around them, likely meaning they are “happy.”

Beyond this, there is also some form of daily “party” feature that you can host if your friends play with you. It’s kind of cool, as your friends’ custom avatars show up on a bus, you earn some extra money and experience, and they wander about your estates for a while.

Style is also strong. Everything moves, looks good, and you can visibly see your crops growing and your brewage houses working from the overworld itself. Also, usability and longevity are excellent too. After you harvest a crop, you never have to replant it (unless it rots). The same field will just keep growing the same type of grape until you say otherwise. Moreover, as you make more grapes and wine, you begin to see your achievements, as well as your collection of wines in your chateau.

There is one glaring issue with Vineyard Country, however: optimization. The game’s visuals all look good, and are 3D, but at the same time, the game, more often than not, hangs up when you go into a field or brewage house view. This is especially bad when you hire friends (of which you can employ up to three per area), as the frame rate drops to an unbearable level. Frankly, we had to fire them all just to save our own sanity! And this is on a computer made for gaming, mind you.

Overall, Vineyard Country is a fantastically well-done game, and has a level of depth and breadth that could satisfy both farming and city-building players alike. Sadly, all the quality game play in the world isn’t going to make up for poor performance. Even on low quality settings, the game was chugging once we hired friends, and that alone was enough to want to shut the game off. Perhaps it was an isolated incident, but perhaps not. Either way, Vineyard Country is a good game, that with a little touching up, could be a great one.