YMMV / Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos

• Breather Level: Westley and Vivi, though the last romanceable pair to unlock, are among the easiest Love Interests to befriend once they do. Westley's favorite items are apples, which are ridiculously abundant around his town of Providence. Vivi's favorite, Cold Mushrooms, are less common, but are still a basic forageable and thus easy to come by by the point in the game the player properly unlocks them.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • Animals who have been tamed from the wild and then released back to it retain their friendship notes. This is highly abuseable with sheep—it's possible to tame wild sheep, sheer them, release them, and then re-tame them to sheer them again. While this does take in-game time and thus isn't exactly a source of infinite wool, it's definitely an easy, cheesy source of it.
  • During the introduction portion in Lenctenbury, the player needs to obtain Milk by talking to Judy. The Milk is supposed to be given to Neil, but the player can easily stash it into their shipping bin or their fridge, and then talk to Judy again to get another Milk. Since she's programmed to give you one Milk every time you talk to her when you don't have Milk in your backpack at this point of the quest, it's ridiculously simply (albeit time-consuming and tedious) to put the Milk into the shipping bin, go back to Judy for another Milk, repeat until you have a nice stock of Milk to keep in your fridge long before you can tame or buy a cow. This makes several later storyline quests that require cooked dishes with Milk or Cheese in them a lot easier, especially since making even one Cheese requires three Milk, and cows don't give produce every day.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The DLC-only Sasquatches are immensely popular with the fanbase, to the point where even those who don't buy the other DLC packs tend to still buy the pet pack. They have cute designs, their ability (increasing the health of their matching seasonal crops) is helpful for getting mutations, and they're mounts, turning the player character into an adorable Head Pet for a giant sasquatch monster.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Villager requests—though they help raise friendship and a town's ranking, villagers will constantly bombard the player with requests, and if you talk to a villager while you have an item in your inventory they're looking for, you can't get normal dialogue with them unless you either give them the item or put it away. Some players get frustrated with the extremely high volume of requests and wish they ceased or slowed down once a villager reaches max friendship/a town reaches max stars. That said, Judy's requests tend to be less hated than others—around 50% of the time, she gives out three Milk as a reward, and Milk can actually be hard to come by since cows no longer produce every day and barn space is at more of a premium.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: One World was considered a step in the right direction by many players, but was still thought of as lacking thanks to an empty world, the seed collection being considered tedious by many, and the graphics still feeling cheap. Winds of Anthos, meanwhile, has a large world with many things to find in it, makes seed collection much easier, and its graphics, though simple, are generally thought of as having a good art style.
• That One Level: The Anthos Expo festival is notoriously difficult, thanks to the fact that every stage beyond "Beginner" requires multiple two-star products to even have a chance at winning.
• Underused Game Mechanic: When you max out a romanceable NPC's friendship, you can give them either a Token of Friendship (to declare your intent to remain good friends with them) or a Token of Love (Relationship Upgrade). Each NPC can only be given one, and you can't change your choice afterward. However, an NPC given a Token of Love unlocks new music notes and new scenes with them, while giving them a Token of Friendship just changes the flower bud icon in their text box to a sunflower—it otherwise doesn't unlock anything. Furthermore, there's no detriment to going the Harem Genre route and professing your love to every single NPC in order to see all of their event scenes and to keep your options open as to who to romance. Since giving NPC's Tokens at all is optional, there's no benefit whatsoever to giving Tokens of Friendship outside from the roleplaying aspect of it.
• Win Back the Crowd: After several years of being thought of as an inferior knock-off of the Story of Seasons franchise, with many games in the series being detracted on sight, Winds of Anthos has largely been warmly accepted both by Story of Seasons fans and by those who enjoyed the Natsume games as Guilty Pleasures but still found them lacking.^note Those who enjoy the Natsume games without reservation are also pleased. The art style has highly matured since the original, Super-Deformed games, with the colorful season-themed designs of the Harvest Sprites and the female protagonist's more feminine appearance being especially well-liked. The world exploration, though noted by many as being obviously Breath of the Wild inspired, still gives the game a unique identity both when compared to the Story of Seasons franchise and farm sims in general. The animal-befriending is reminescent of farm-sim Sacred Cow Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, with a wide variety of creatures available. And for those who enjoy the "Natsume mechanics" of crop mutation, the game makes it much easier to find mutated seeds after acquiring mutated crops, and manage your fields to grow what you need. While the game still has some contested mechanics, they're considered more minor in a game that's become generally well-liked.