Ranking Every Stardew Valley Bachelor and Bachelorette (the Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly)

If you didn’t read my last blog post, let me catch you up on what’s going down. Last time you heard from me, I talked about all of my favorite and least favorite villagers on my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. This week, we’re going to tackle another one of my favorite games: Stardew Valley.

If you ask google, “what other games are similar to Animal Crossing?”, you get Stardew Valley. Now, Stardew is very different from AC in many ways – in AC, time is synched up to the real world. If you were to log onto the (best) ACNH island, Capybara Island, it would be November right now. Stardew Valley has time set days and seasons – every season (spring, summer, fall, winter) is composed of 28, 13-minute days, with each season lasting a little over 6 hours.

Stardew Valley is a farming simulator game, with a very creative game type style – there are objectives, but you don’t necessarily need to complete them in order to have fun in the game. There are many ways to speed run and play Stardew, but the main mechanic in the game is ranking up your ‘skills’, which includes farming, foraging, fishing, mining, and combat. One of the main portions of the game is talking with and befriending the characters that live in and around Pelican Town, the tiny city the game takes place in. You can also marry a few of these characters, making them the bachelors and bachelorettes of the town. By talking to them daily, giving them gifts, and in general interacting with them, you will gain ‘hearts’ with them, and slowly befriend them. These characters are the ones I will be ranking today.

I would like to give an honorable mention before we begin – I will not be ranking any of the townsfolk from Pelican Town, anyone from Calico Desert, or anyone from Ginger Island, because we would be here for hours, they are more late-game characters, and they are not bachelors or bachelorettes for the character to ‘date’ and ‘marry’ in game. The rest of the characters might be ranked in another blog post. So HERE WE GO! Starting off with the worst of the worst, my least favorite marriage candidate in the whole game…

Haley. This stuck up, rude, demon spawn from hell is the LAST person anyone wants to marry in their Stardew save. She is rude and mean towards the character in all of her interactable scenes and dialogue up until about 8 hearts (which, for the record, is really hard to achieve without actively searching her out). Some of her favorite gifts include pink cake, diamonds, and sunflowers, all of which are very difficult to get in the very first season of the game. One of her cutscenes in the game include her needing the character to help her open a jar of pickles. That is the extent of how much she reaches out emotionally to the character. She’s lame, I hate her, everyone hates Haley. Goodbye.

After Haley, we have our buddy, the alcoholic – Shane. He’s aggressive towards the character, and will shout at you until you reach four hearts (that’s when his dialogue options become a little kinder. Only a little). Some of Shane’s favorite gifts include everything an alcoholic would love, from beer and pizza to hot peppers and pepper poppers. In one of his cutscenes, the character finds him unconscious and has to take him to the hospital to get him sober. People that choose Shane have an “I cAn fiX HiM” mentality. His only perk is that he gives the character blue chickens when you marry him. Nothing else about this man is good.

Next on the chopping block is Alex. Alex is a jock and, at one point, says that women aren’t good enough to play football. Sir. Breathe in, breathe out, it’s 2022. Try again. One of his cutscenes includes him trying to play some kind of sport with the player (I’m a theater kid, okay? I don’t know what it is) and the player fails to catch it, saying that they’ll do better next time. He makes me One of his cutscenes includes him trying to play some kind of sport with the player (I’m a theater kid, okay? I don’t know what it is) and the player fails to catch it, saying that they’ll do better next time. His two favorite items are two ‘cooked’ dishes, complete breakfast and salmon dinner. Both of these require some harder to obtain foods in order to cook, making him higher maintenance & harder to give gifts and in turn, gain hearts with.

After our jock, we’re gonna switch it up and move on to Emily. Emily is related to Haley and they live together. If you want to find Emily at home, she will probably be around the she-devil. Some of Emily’s favorite gifts are most generic crystals, as well as wool or cloth, which are very expensive to make and process. ALSO – Clint, the town’s blacksmith, has a crush on Emily, and she is COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS! So oblivious, it’s painful. Of course Clint won’t tell Emily his true feelings, so marrying Emily just feels… wrong.

Once we get past Emily, we move onto the most adventurous of the characters here – Abigail. Her father is the owner of the town store and disapproves of his daughter and her love for ‘adventure’. Abigail, in more than one cutscene, is seen getting hurt by trying to be cool and adventurous. Her favorite gifts are difficult-to-obtain foods like banana pudding or blackberry cobbler. Abigail comes off as a bratty teenager who doesn’t want to listen to her parents.

Next up is Maru. I have nothing to say about Maru. I rarely talk to her, and it’s really hard to give gifts. Her favorite things are battery packs, a few food items, and gold-iridium-radioactive bars, which are SO so hard to obtain in the game, and I wouldn’t even fathom gifting them to a character early in the game. That’s all I’ve got for Maru.

We now reach the middle of our list, Penny! Penny is plain, Penny is boring, and Penny likes to teach the two children of the town. She’s just. Penny. The end.

….Oh no folks!! Looks like I’m out of words for this week. Tune in next time to hear the top of my list of the best bachelors and bachelorettes in Stardew Valley!