Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons

So who all is a Harvest Moon fan? I got into the series way back with Harvest Moon 64; I remember reading a Nintendo Power preview of it and being really excited about getting it. I've played a handful of others, but HM64 has always been my favorite.

I've played HM64, A Wonderful Life, Magical Melody, Save the Homeland, and Tree of Tranquility. A Wonderful Life I can't stand for a variety of reasons (it's certainly the least Harvest Moonish Harvest Moon game I've ever played), and Save the Homeland is strange because there's no actual farming necessary (you can play entirely just by wandering around talking to people, though it's Better Than It Sounds), but the rest are all classic Harvest Moon goodness.

And I still need to get that damn party pic in HM64.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Huh. I thought we had a thread on this already. Oh well.

I am of the opinion that the DS games are really quite underrated, with the silliness of the "touch glove" aside.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

I like the Super Nintendo game. I tried Rune Factory on DS, but it fell short of being the marriage of Harvest Moon and A Link to the Past I had (foolishly, perhaps) hoped for.

Harvest Moon be cool games, yo. I liked Friends Of Mineral town the best, for now. Never played 64 or super, or anything that didn't come out on a Nintendo system.

Always had a good time with all of them, even Wonderful Life, though that one was probably the least of them all.

Also played Rune Factory 2, which was also awesome, except for a rather lacking interaction with NP Cs. And that it takes so much longer to get to part two then it does to finish the first. Being done with all the quests, having farmed enough money to get you through the rest of the entire game and having stockpiled an entire cabinet full of iron, bronze and silver, but still having to wait for the next part to come along is not my idea of a fun time. Also, just how old is the part2 hero anyway? My most generous guess is somewhere near 7.

That's sort of my impression of Rune Factory in general. I've only played the first one, and only part of it, but it strikes me as sort of a hybrid between Harvest Moon and Zelda. Simpler dungeoncrawling than Zelda and simpler social aspect than Harvest Moon, but strangely playable anyway. Not the greatest game I've ever played, but I do plan to check out Rune Factory Frontier at some point.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The dungeoncrawling is pretty cool once you look at it as just another part of your daily life of acquiring resources, and not as a Zelda-like dungeon with big epic plot stuff happening around.

The fact that all the villagers never seemed to react on ANYTHING that happened to you or anyone around them was a more bitter pill to swallow. Some people asked me I was thinking about getting a wife in the near future. When I was married for over a season!

edited 19th Jan '11 11:37:08 AM by Kayeka

I like every Harvest Moon game I have ever played, which is Harvest Moon 64, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, and Harvest Moon: Animal Parade.

I am also playing Rune Factory Frontier right now and enjoying it.

I've played most of the games up to Island of Happiness. I keep forgetting to keep up with the series.

As for Rune Factory, eh. It doesn't really interest me. I prefer my farming simulators to be about farming, though I suppose I can kind of see the appeal.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

I haven't played any Rune Factories yet, mostly because none of them let me play as a girl. But I hear the upcoming oceans will fix that, so hooray!

I own More Friends of Mineral Town, DS Cute, Another Wonderful Life, and Animal Parade. Animal Parade would almost be my favorite if it weren't for just a few little annoyances with it. Shame, because it's almost my perfect HM game.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

^Rune Factory 2 let's you play as a girl for about two thirds of the game.

It seems you're playing as both the guy and the girl in Rune Factory Oceans for a significant portion of the game. About time someone targeted the transgender demographic. Unfortunately, it seems like you're stuck with the guy's (Azel's) body for the first bit, so you'll have to earn the right to play as the girl (Sonia) (but correct me if I'm mistaken). Though I do appreciate that Neverland gave Sonia a decent, not fanservicey outfit (not that fanservice automatically disqualifies you from being a good character, of course), with masculine-looking stocks to boot! Ah, I wonder what goes on in the mind of Rune Factory's character designer, giving the guys noticeable curves and all. Transgendered too?

edited 19th Jan '11 5:22:24 PM by Cliche

Ohhh, I will have to pick up Rune Factory Oceans whenever it gets released in the U.S.

Harvest Moon fan here. Currently playing Grand Bazaar.

The only two I've played are A Wonderful Life and Friends of Mineral Town. I am very fond of the first one I listed and it was the first in the series I've played. I like that Friends of Mineral Town is portable... Oh portability...

I would get DS Cute but the inability to go through with my "friendship ceremony" with my "best friend and certainly not my romantic and sexual partner" has made me refuse to play it. I will play the Japanese version instead. With my gay option fully in tact.

edited 19th Jan '11 8:11:02 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I've played and enjoyed the SNES version, and Friends of Mineral Town, although I didn't enjoy the latter much when I tried to replay it recently.

The first Rune Factory ate up an embarrassing amount of my time last semester, but I stopped near the end because I wanted to marry the right person before completing the last dungeon, which I could have breezed through any day, and I got sick of stalling (I already had enough money that I would have had to get really creative in order to get rid of it all even if I wanted to anyway.)

I felt like it could have used a lot more challenge. I got to that point well before the end of the first year, and even that felt like stalling. I bought the game used though, and the preexisting save on the cartridge was less than a fifth of the level I was by the same date, and had nearly two orders of magnitude less money, as well as lower social values, so maybe I was playing in an atypical way.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

So has anyone played Tree of Tranquility? I quite like it, other than the Loads and Loads of Loading, though (typically for HM) I couldn't really tell you why. The emphasis on exploring in order to find a wide variety of different items (as opposed to just sticking with your one income source of choice and grinding it in order to support your social activities, which is typically what I end up doing in other HM games) is a nice change of pace, though it's a bit frustrating to have an item on your list that you can't access yet. Anyone run into the supposedly game-crippling glitch that shows up? I play a male character so I haven't, but I've heard that you can send your game in for a replacement disc and the glitch-free one has a handful of other fixes and improvements as well. Anyone tried that?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that one. My girlfriend showed me Animal Parade, though, and to me, it seems like it's just an improved To T.

I actually have a strange attraction to A Wonderful Life. It was the first Harvest Moon game I'd played, and we (my friend, brother, and I) sat playing it for hours the first time we turned it on.

Having seen the rest of the series over the years, though, I realize just how weak and dumbed down it is compared to the other entries, but it's nostalgic hooks are struck deep in me. I'd still have to say it's my favorite Harvest Moon game.

edited 25th Jan '11 11:09:17 AM by Acrylic

Animal Parade vs. Tree of Tranquility is one of those things you just shouldn't bring up in the fandom. Me, I'm firmly on the side of Animal Parade for a number of reasons. Though opinions differ quite a bit.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

I've only played Harvest Moon DS, but the European version is horrible, and it soured me to trying any others.

Dumbo

Has anyone tried Rune Factory 3 yet? How does it stack up to the other two? I didn't care for the 2nd one, and I really enjoyed Friends of Mineral Town, so if it's a little closer to that one in terms of character interaction than I might consider picking it up.

The one thing I hate about the series is the large amount of things that are required, but impossible to figure out without a guide of some sort.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

That's probably the number one thing I don't like about the series. When playing through Tree Of Tranquility with my girlfriend's help (who uses walkthroughs extensively), there were several "Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?" moments.

From what I played of Animal Parade, though, the objectives seem to be a little clearer over what you need to do.

I haven't played any of the new games, though. So I have no idea if Heart Events and the like are easier to figure out, now. But I know that in Back to Nature it was a real pain in the ass without a guide.

And then there were the 100 Harvest Sprites in the DS game...

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

Animal Parade's heart events are all no-brainers. They're the same in terms of triggering for all characters, three of them require you to simply leave your house in the morning, and the others simply require you to talk to them before noon. The rival events are a little more obscure, but there's only two each per rival couple, and they're easy to stumble into since they only have broad timing triggers. And location-wise, they're simple, too.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

I like the Harvest Moon series. HM 64 was the first I played and, predictably enough, my favorite. I felt like the social aspect was best there, and that's really my favorite part of Harvest Moon. I liked the various little stories you got with people as you raised their affection. It was disappointing that it was possible to miss heart events, though.

FoMT had a similar problem, where you HAD to see the events to progress anyone's love life. Sort of debatable whether it's better to potentially miss a nice scene or to have to figure out the exact right time and place to be in order to progress. It was funny just how productive you could get in that game, filling up your entire field with crops and setting the sprites on it. And yet, you STILL couldn't buy the freaking extra house.

A Wonderful Life had some nice ideas but poor execution, I felt. It had some of the best bachelorette events in any Harvest Moon, and a few little things (like Daryl's experiments, which your character visibly gets progressively less enthusiastic about) were amusing. I liked the aging idea, but both the gameplay and the story sort of dried up after the first year, which meant progressing through that mostly just meant twiddling your thumbs for a while. It was way too easy to buy everything and befriend everyone.

I can't get into Tree of Tranquility, for whatever reason. I keep starting it while never seeing it through. I think it's because you have to collect a bunch of season-locked items to get the NP Cs I want.

This isn't a well-researched opinion, but I feel like the developers have taken to releasing two "meh" games instead of taking twice as long to make one good one. Island of Happiness/Sunshine Island and Tree of Tranquility/Animal Parade particularly smack of "shouldn't these pairs have just been one game?" to me, but that's mostly just based on the fact that they use the same character sets and were released in consecutive years.

Text I feel is necessary to append to every post.