Harvest Moon Series

[Halbarad]

One of the oddest series of games to come down the pike since the original game's introduction on the SNES in 1997, the Harvest Moon series is rather unique - a series of farming/dating sims. In this topic I'll take a game-by-game look at each game to be released on console in the series (leaving aside the handhelds, as I haven't played all of those).

And so, first in the list is the original Harvest Moon. Released on the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo in 1997, it was one of the last games to be released on the then-waning platform, it became something of a cult hit. The premise in this - and all the other Harvest Moon games to date, with one exception - is simple: You've inherited a run-down farm from your grandfather, and you have a limited amount of time in which to get it into acceptable shape - in Harvest Moon, you have two and a half years.

The farm, when you arrive, is in bad shape - old tree stumps, rocks, weeds, and boulders litter the field, and it's your job to turn that land into usable land for farming. The methods for cleanup are fairly simple - an axe to chop up stumps and turn them into lumber, later used for building fences or improving your house; boulders and rocks can be hit with a mallet until they break up completely; weeds can either be mown down with a sickle or simply pulled out of the ground and thrown away. The newly cleared land can then be tilled with a hoe, and seeds (varying by season) are sown in the tilled ground and watered until they produce sellable crops.

In addition, your farm also comes equipped with a chicken coop and cow barn. Livestock can be purchased from a dealer in town, and their goods (milk and eggs) can also be sold for a profit. Animals can either be kept inside your barns or in fenced-off areas outside, although inclement weather can cause them to become sick or even be killed - having chickens blown away in a hurricane is far from an uncommon occurrence. If you keep your animals indoors, you'll need to grow grass for fodder and cut it regularly.

The game follows a fairly predictable pattern. Each year in game consists of four thirty-day seasons - Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. In Harvest Moon, crops can only be grown in Spring and Summer - turnips and potatoes in Spring, and tomatoes and corn in the Summer. Fall is usually spent chopping lumber and fishing on the nearby mountainside, while Winter is the slowest of seasons - not even grass will grow, although there is still lumber to be cut and dating to be done - which brings us to the other major aspect of the game.

The secondary facet of the game - arguably the first, depending on your perspective - is the dating aspect. There are five girls in the nearby village, and one of the goals of the game is to choose one of them and marry within the two and a half year time limit. Dating is relatively simple; give the girl in question a gift that she likes and speak to her frequently. All of the girls have basic personalities (from Nina, the somewhat prissy flower shop girl to Eve, the down-to-earth barmaid) and while the character development is far from staggering, it's at least reasonable for a game of its age. In addition to the girls, there are other characters in town - the mayor, the various shop owners, the pastor of the small local church - who you can interact with and befriend over the course of the game. By remaining 'friendly' towards your wife after your marriage, you can also have a child, depending on your level of intimacy.

From these relatively basic elements is constructed a remarkably addictive game. While the individual components are simple enough - grow crops, collect items from the mountain, give items to the girl of your choice - they combine into something much more complex. Part of the challenge of the game is in time management - most of the townsfolk follow particular schedules, with shops closed on certain days of the week and festivals a couple of times a season to disrupt the regular order of things (and break up the monotony a bit). Getting to SEE your girl of choice can be tricky in itself, as some of them are only capable of being met between certain hours of the day, and if you're taking gifts you'll have to ferry those back and forth from either your farm or the mountainside to the girl in question while she's available.

There are a few bugs in the game. Time for each day officially stops at midnight, so if you're so inclined you can work as much as you want in a single day, using the nearby hot spring on the mountain to regain your stamina. It's not at all uncommon to clear the entire field (a VERY large expanse) of obstacles on the second day of the game, simply working at the time stop and rejuvenating in the hot spring until the work is completed. It also makes crop care much simpler to manage up until you get married, as you can run errands or harvest items from the mountainside until the shipper arrives, then water your fields after dark.

Even with that in mind, the real challenge of Harvest Moon is in finding a balance between work and play. How much time do you spend working in your fields and making more money, and how much do you spend dating or playing around on the mountain with fishing or talking to the townspeople at festivals or on regular days? Achieving success in both can take some planning, but doing so is rather fun.

All in all, the original Harvest Moon is a great game. Rather unpolished and simple in comparison to some of the later games in the series, but still worth taking a look at.

[Dracos]

For its era and in context of it entering new gaming ground pretty much, it was darn successful. =)

Dracos

[Halbarad]

Review the Second, or Yes, I'm Not Finished Blathering Yet.

The second in the line of Harvest Moon games was released on the Nintendo 64 - the imaginatively named Harvest Moon 64. While most of the gameplay elements remain the same as the original Harvest Moon - inheriting your grandfather's farm, clearing land, raising livestock, dating, upgrading the house - many new features were also added. The graphics were updated to a 3D isometric perspective, which could be rotated by the player while on the farm. In addition, some of the basic gameplay of the game changed - tools now upgreaded automatically depending on usage, and the watering pattern of the watering can - the most-used tool by far - was altered to be more useful in maintaining crops.

However, the most major change to the gameplay was the addition of a rucksack. In the original Harvest Moon, the farmer was limited to carrying one item at a time, positioned on top of his head where you could see it easily. This made harvesting from outside of the farm difficult - each individual item would have to be located, picked, and then carried all the way back to the shipping bin or its intended recipient (for a gift). This makes mountainside harvesting and fishing MUCH simpler, as you can carry as many as eight items at a time - one outside, and eight in the rucksack. Harvesting early in the game is also made easier by this - an entire field can be put into the rucksack before running back to deposit the items in the shipping bin, which expands the amount of land you can actually farm - in the original, it's limited by how much you can water and harvest in a single day.

As well, one of the upgrades now available for the house - previously just size upgrades for the barns and the house itself - is a greenhouse. Normally, crops in Harvest Moon are limited by season; only certain crops can be grown in spring or summer. However, with a greenhouse you can grow any crop at any time of the year, regardless of season.

The crops are another big plus in HM 64. Previously limited to turnips and potatoes in spring and corn and tomatoes in summer, the list of available crops has increased dramatically.