Harvest Moon is a game about farming and dating

Was starting to feel a little bad about the non-More Friends of Mineral Town conversation happening in the MFoMT LP, so I made a place here WHOO.

A brief snippit about Harvest Moon snatched from Wiki's cradle.

"Harvest Moon (牧場物語 Bokujō Monogatari?, lit. "The Farm Story") is a farm simulation role-playing video game series created by Yasuhiro Wada and produced by Victor Interactive Software (acquired by Marvelous Entertainment in 2003). English translation and distribution of the game is done by Natsume for North America and Rising Star Games for Europe. The main objective of the game is to rebuild a run-down old farm and turn it into a successful one. Over a period of time the player tends to crops and livestock, befriends nearby townsfolk, and eventually in some series get married and start a family. The first game was Harvest Moon, released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996."

YAAAAAY.
It's a series that has managed to gain lots of popularity for reasons that I am unable to explain. You grow crops, you sell crops. You buy animals, you sell the animal produce. I suppose as of late, a huge selling point of Harvest Moon would be the dating aspect; in each game after Harvest Moon 3 for the GBC (not counting the original Harvest Moon for the SNES), there has been the ability to woo and eventually marry and have kids with someone else in the game. For the most part, the game has stuck to common archetypes, but every so often you'll get a doozy.

This thread is a spoiler-warzone! There WILL be spoilers.
But I ask that you put all spoilers under spoiler tags. And this does not mean "make a page full of nothing but spoiler tags" because that's no fun. Keep it to a minimum, but they are permitted.

Also worth noting that Harvest Moon ended up getting a spin-off RPG/Farming Sim/Dating Sim series called Rune Factory that eventually grew independent of the Harvest Moon label. The series are both still very much similar, but at the same time they have become veeeery different. Worth checking out if you like dungeon crawling more than compulsory crop hoarding.

The main site to get help for Harvest Moon games is Fogu.com.
It also has a very helpful forum to ask questions in, no sign up required.

gonna be honest though, i have got some baaaaaad blood with the person in charge of that site/forum. Bad, bad blood. If you choose to post there, be incredibly careful with who you talk to. Tha's all I'ma say.

FRIEND CODES

Bec: 2406 - 5247 - 0485
MulMizu: 4656 - 5771 - 3159
Kaimeanogo: 4398 - 8782 - 6907
Nekochi: 0989-2874-2379
CandyCoatedCute: 3007 8621 8204

Fuck yeah Harvest Moon.

Which I am probably not qualified to say, because I only own Harvest Moon DS, and as I said in the other thread, managed to play it for 2 years of in-game time (and probably real time, now that I think about it) without so much as meeting a single girl. I am best player. I'm intrigued by A New Beginning, though; I'd like a good 3DS HM game but avoided Two Towns because of the crashing issues.

Do we talk about Rune Factory here too, or are they different enough to get a separate thread? well that question sure looks stupid now.

YAAAAAY, Harvest Moon. Oh god, I have so much fanart.

Rune Factory sounds like fair game. Same basic concept, just with RPG elements. Made and translated by the same people (Marvelous and Natsume).

Harvest Moon and its affiliates are totally fair game. GO FOR IT I KNOW EVERYTHING I AM A FARMING MASTER.

A New Beginning is surprisingly really good. I was expecting something either like Grand Bazaar that was terrible or Tale of Two Towns that started off strong but ended up getting really weak. As long as you know from the get-go to obsessively hoard everything, it's not that bad.
Oh. If you wanna post your codes here or whatever so you can set up trading sessions, that's totally cool, too. BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT TO.

In regards to who I am going for in this most recent game...
It is seriously a toss-up between Allen and Sanjay.
Allen is very much a jerkface. And from what I have seen, his jerkface-ness does not go away really. Lessens, but does not go away. I don't know anything about Sanjay, but he's so pretty.

I really need a 3DS .___.

EDIT: Speaking of Rune Factory, I still have my very first file. Normally I overwrite my saves a dozen times over for whatever reason. But not this one. No. Why, you ask? Shut up, I know you didn't ask. Because I married Mei. And I'll never be able to do that again, because I only knew one other person with the game, and now I don't know that person. When that file get corrupted I'm going to cry.

You really need a 3DS.
I literally got one just for this game.

That's pretty much what I'll do. I don't really know any other games for it. But I must meet jerkface for myself.

EDIT: If only because---GASP---Natsume let one of the characters actually remain nasty? This I must see.

No matter what you guys say, I will never stop loving Allen for being a jerk because I can't help but imagine him as a sassy gay friend.
Also MFOMT is probably my favourite because I have a schedule and it's fun and organized and this is a game about farming what is wrong with me

had to make a new goddamn post jesus lord make me sick

I gave away my Rune Factory 1 and 2 to a guy because I thought it would make him like me. it didn't.
But I still have my RF3 and the one for the Wii. Whatever it was called, I forget now. I tried out Tides of Destiny, but it was so disappointing. It was a pretty game, but all of the farming became this randomized thing that you had absolutely no part of. You had to capture monsters to grow crops, to water them, and to harvest them. Even though people in town still had particular likes and dislikes and recipes called for specific things. I understand what they were trying to do in stepping away from the Harvest Moon label a little more, but they did it in the worst possible way.

I got a 3DS just for Layton games, and then I got into Zelda and now Harvest Moon! 3DSs are video game gateway drugs, man. You think you're just going to play one, but then suddenly you have to play ALL THE FRANCHISES.

Do we need a 3DS game recommendation thread on the Bridge?

i literally squealed when i noticed that his tiny fucking watch matched his outfit you don't understand how much i love fashion and clothes okay
i sincerely want to make my character get a boy cut, wear boy clothes, and then just marry allen and have his snobby ass babies, but at the same time i don't want to because I've accidentally spoiled so much of his route for myself already. :<

EDIT: ALLEN ART VOMITING BRB

this princess is yours

Just how terrible was Grand Bazaar, out of curiosity? I'm already pretty set on not buying it, but I like hearing what makes terrible games terrible.

The worst part about Harvest Moon is that hardly anyone knows about it. The one nice thing about that is when a new game comes out and you don't have it, it's easy to ignore/forget the fact. But once someone says something, anything, I have this irresistible urge to get the game. Even for the littlest features. Hell, I was excited about Animal Parade because you can make coffee. Coffee, people. I was excited over coffee (granted, I drink it like water myself).

And now I have to sleep. But I want to Harvest Moon. But sleep. Harvest... Sleep... Harvest... No, gotta sleep.

EDIT: I never played Grand Bazaar, but most of the reports I've heard aren't that good. Seems that the people who do like it like the game for it's characters (namely the bachelors and bachelorettes), not the mechanics.

It was in no way, shape, or form a game.
Like, at all. You had this loose goal to "expand the bazaar", but it was just...reaaaally bad. There is no shipping bin, you sell everything once a week. To get attention at your stall, you have to ring this OBNOXIOUS BELL.
Earn money, buy things. Ad infinium. It was the most boring thing. Also, the area that you were given to explore was tiny and no mining.

basically, it had no soul. Even the marriage candidates were really dry.

i was excited because of wizard.
and then i saw the harvest god and.
THEN I LEARNED THE KIDS TAKE ON THE TRAITS OF WHO YOU MARRY
AS IN HOW THEY LOOK
CHANGED AND I LOST MY SHIT

Anyone here have any opinion on the PS2 Harvest Moon titles? I'm considering getting them since they're available through PSN... but it's been a while since I've played them, and my HD space is getting a bit low.... which means I can really only comfortably pick one of the two.

So, given the choice between either It's A Wonderful Life: Special Edition or Save the Homeland, which one do y'all think I should pick?

The first can have a really slow pace, the second has more story but only lasts a year and no marriage. I'd got into it more, but I never played much of either. I played the A Wonderful Life, but never Special Edition.

Not only that, but TWO KIDS. TWO. AT LONG LAST. Not since the very first game could you have two offspring (I think). I was so stoked. Words can't even express my emotions.

Hm.
Depends on your gaming style. /deep inhale

AWL:SE is a very, very slow-paced game. Each season only has ten days, and there is only one year per chapter, but that's for a reason. It's also possibly my favorite grouping of Harvest Moon games ever. (AWL, AnWL, AWL:SE) It's incredibly realistic (by this, I mean you have to fertilize the grass to make it grow, cows only give milk for roughly 30-ish days before going dry and need to be impregnated and give birth to give milk again, etc.) and even though there aren't that many villagers, you bond with all of them. Everyone has a quirk and it's just amazing. It's full of life. And you can turn off the music on your farm if you want to. So you hear nothing but the rustling of trees in the wind...and a mooing cow but i mean that has its appeal okay. I really, REALLY love AWL.
My only issue with it is that there is lag in certain spots, which is inexcusable in a game that's on the PS3, even if it's been ported from the PS2. It could have been fixed and they chose to leave it in.

EDIT: Important to note that this, for whatever reason, bumped up Lumina's age so you can date her, but they didn't change her appearance, so it's reaaaaaally awkward.

Save the Homeland is also a good one, I guess? I like the music in it and it's got some nice characters. The downside is that you have literally one year to play the game. No, really. You play one year and if you don't complete one of the goals that are given to you by villagers (they have to like you enough to tell you about it), it's game over and you start over from the beginning. If you complete the goal, well. You start over anyway. You keep information on villagers that you've earned and you keep your animals, but that's it.
It's cool in the sense that each character has their own little story and quest that helps SAVE THE HOMELAND, but the constant starting over gets obnoxious.

You could have I think three kids in HM3, but that was only if you played the Boy Story. Girl's Story ended once you got married. which is fukkin lame i'm just saying

also one more allen thing and then i am done i promise

Hmm.. as it happens, I'm perfectly fine with slower paced games. Now that I think of it, I *think* AWL:SE was actually the one I played when I was a kid (but again, I was a kid; my memory's foggy). I do believe I'll pick it up soon.

Also, in reading comments on messageboards, I was under the impression the lag in the PS3 port was much improved from the PS2 original, which was even laggier... but honestly, in a game like Harvest Moon, lag's not going to bug me too much. You want a game that chugged on the PS2 hardware? Try Odin Sphere, an absolutely beautiful game which could at times degenerate into an absolutely beautiful slideshow during some of the bossfights. It's still slightly laggy on the PS3 port, as a matter of fact.

It's been improved, yeah. I'm just still bothered that it's there at all.
i want my farming to be smooth and silky

I'm probably going to get a 3DS and ANB for christmas, but I saw some screenshots of Allen and...uh, he's a dick. Like, grade A dick.

Pretty sure I'm obligated to punch him right in his smug face after that. He's not even a tsundere, he's just an asshole.

I like Harvest Moon. One of my first games for GBA was FoMT and I had AWL for gamecube as well. I tried Grand Bazaar a while ago, but it just didn't click with me. I really like Rune Factory as well. It fixes some of the things I'd found wanting with Harvest Moon (i.e. no combat and no plot) and I'm really looking forward to Rune Factory 4.

In RF4 you can marry monsters. And not just any monsters, but Boss Monsters. Yes, after you beat certain bosses then they turn into something resembling a human and then you can marry them! How awesome is that? And I love the design of absolutely everyone.

Also, did I mention that you're a prince/ss? And you can marry your butler! There's a female butler for the dudes.

excuse me this is a fucking five okay maybe like eight year old you have got to be shitting me rn
I mean, he isn't even a boss monster that turns into this young looking character because of reasons, he just naturally looks like he is eight years old. this bothers me.

I MUST OWN THIS GAME NOW.

People who have played Rune Factory: Should I start with 4, or are 1-3 worth experiencing? They're all pretty reasonably priced so I'm okay if the best experience is playing all of them, just curious if there's any worth skipping, or if I should just play 4.

Yeah, Kiel looks a bit on the young side. The sprite's a bit better, but not much.

He and I are staying strictly platonic friends.

Also, Kohaku and Xiaopai look uncomfortably young.

The only RF games I've played are RF2 (for DS) and RF: Tides of Destiny (for PS3). Those are the only ones where you can play as a woman, though you've got to play through half the story as a dude first in RF2 and through the whole story in ToD. If you're not fussed about having to marry women, then go for any of the RF games. RF3 is apparently the most polished and the one with the most interesting characters, but it's not much of an upgrade, gameplay-wise, from RF2. I've also heard good things about the one on the Wii, RF: Frontier, but I've never tried it myself.

Things I can not handle in games: When you can date the character that genuinely looks under the age of 10.

ALSO.

RF2 has some hilarious voice acting (in one line, you can hear the voice actress trying not to laugh and another character has a voice that does not match his face at all), so it's worth playing. RF3 was amazing and added a lot of features to the series. RF is...eeehhh. From what I remember, it was okay, but I wouldn't spend money to play it. :T

So fucking disappointed that you can marry a French egg guy but not Carter in MFOMT.
When ANB comes out in Australia (IF EVER this is like Animal Crossing all over again) I'll probably marry Neil because I like tsunderes and then the default babies will look like us

I actually prefer playing male protagonists and female love interests, so not a problem. I'm not terribly interested in a Wii version because I use my 3DS much more. I shall look into RF2 and RF3 while I patiently wait for RF4 to get released in America.

i would just like to say that i am reading more of allen's lines and it slooooowly started to click why i wanted to go after him and then that final click kinda happened and now i am definitely not going anywhere near him NOPE FIFTY FOOT POLE BETWEEN US AT ALL TIMES OKAY???? OKAY.

No idea when that'll happen. I hope they announce it soon, though. It was released over the summer in Japan, but we haven't heard a thing about an overseas release yet. It's pretty much a sure thing that it'll be localized, though. It's the highest-grossing RF game to date.

Man, usually a redhead megane tsundere is right up my alley, but those screenshots make me want to punch the hipster glasses right off his stupid face.

BUT
BUT
HE'S SO SASSY

I KNOW. I took one look at him and I was like, "yep, know who I'm marryin'." And then I actually read some of his dialogue. :|

I think I'm going to give him all of the boots I fish.

bby there is a fine line between "i am sassy" and "i fucking own you i own you you are my property".

meanwhile...

You can't spell Sass without Ass!

Games not having set US release dates make me wish the 3DS wasn't region-locked. At least before I could hold onto the faint glimmer of hope that I could always import the game for $70 and learn Japanese. Now even that slim chance has been dashed!

WHY DO YOU LOOK SO SAD ABOUT THAT.
WHY WOULD THAT EVER BE A THING TO BE SAD ABOUT.

what drugs are Neil on because I want some of that

excuse
i'm just gonna bust in here because i'm really remembering how amazing the soundtrack for Save the Homeland was.
listen to this pretty jam guys

...... WHY DO I LOVE THESE DESIGNS SO MUCH? I swear I've never been into flower-butterfly creatures before but ohmygosh I wanna be that one mortal guy who pines for her. Oh and marionette is freaking spiffy-looking. I like spiffy.

I remember having an original version of this game for the SNES when I was a kid. I enjoyed it inmensely, but was sad when I ran out of time to do stuff. Still every run was pretty long, because I was pretty obsessive and liked to do stuff at night, recovering energy in the hot springs as much as I needed for whatever goal I had. Nights were infinite on that one, no?

I must've made three runs, one wooing Eve, one wooing Ann and the third a forever alone run. I couldn't play anymore because my brother sold the console. orz

Aside from that, I think I've played every HM for the GBA and the DS. Not completed all of them, since emulation sucks, but... yeah. Good times.

I keep going back to my Animal Parade save, playing for about a day or two, then leaving it again. I'm trying to get to the actual ending (the child-Harvest King thing), and that stupid King Salmon just does not want to be caught. Right now I'm in winter, so I just have to cool my heels until summer and then fish every damn night. Stupid fish.

Bitching aside, I love this series all to bits. Animal Parade is the winner - the characters and town are the most fully realized.

I couldn't play the Wii ones because of the horrible lag.