Harvest Moon is a game about farming and dating

Technically there is a zebra - you have to lure him back to the circus. With spinach. I was similarly bummed out that I didn't get to keep the lion on my farm. AP is by far my favorite Harvest Moon game, so I encourage you to give it another try. Though I understand about the zebra. :)

Ok, bought myself A New Beginning with one of my gift cards - is there anything I need to start hoarding?

Oh! So, eventual zebra. But no zebra-riding, or lion-riding, which still seems like a terrible flaw to me.

Everything. That includes the honeycombs, rocks, weeds, everything.

...For real?

Well there's a few things you don't have to keep like the bugs, fish, and a few other miscellaneous stuff but definitely keep the weeds, bottles, honeycombs, branches, and rocks.

When you get all the circus animals, you can use your Whistle to summon them any time you want to ride them to specific places! So you could go to the top of the mountain in the middle of a hurricane and whistle and then a hippopotamus will come out of nowhere and escort you to the swamp.
It's pretty rad, yo.

I got a 3DS and ANB for christmas, but the lag has effectively killed my enthusiasm for playing it. The framerate is noticeably sluggish in the town and on my farm, but it's fine in the mountain areas and indoors. I've been playing with the 3D off and it's still pretty bad. *sigh* Oh well, guess I'll just wait for RF4.

Ee. I hadn't heard about any lag. Are you on one of the latest generation 3DS machines, or an older one?

And I gotta say, the more I hear about RF4, the more I am ready to shank someone to get my hands on an English translation of that game.

Huh, I've never had a problem with ANB lagging.

I noticed ANB lagging when I was playing it one night, but I figured it was because I'd downloaded the game to my 3DS instead of having it on a cartridge, so it was taking more effort to make it work.

And yes, you have to hoard everything. Everything. Everything that is not a fish or bug needs to be stuffed into your pockets immediately.
I mean, even fish to an extent, since there are some later villagers that love fish.

I'm on a new one, but I don't think it matters. I didn't notice it at first but you really can see a difference if you go from your house to your farm. It's almost as bad as Animal Parade's lag, and I couldn't play that one either because it annoyed me too much.

I have such an intense love for Harvest Moon games that even when there is lag I just sit through it. Then again, lag doesn't normally bother me, unless it's so bad that it messes with the graphics or makes the game nearly unplayable (had that problem with KotOR on Steam).

I haven't experienced any lag either.

I don't think I've ever had any lag.

I remember experiencing some lag in Boy and Girl at certain locations, and definitely in some games prior, but its usually pretty few and far between for me.

I learned why my lag was happening. I installed Style Savvy, which is a little over 10k blocks. So if you're experiencing lag, you might have a lot of stuff on your 3DS. :D

My first was Harvest Moon 3 for the GBC! I'd read a review for the second one in a back issue of Nintendo Power and was like "oh my god you can play as a GIRL I didn't know you could be a GIRL in VIDEO GAMES and you can have ANIMALS and it doesn't look VIOLENT so mom will let me get it I must get to the mall as soon as possible"

But I couldn't find the second one (ended up obtaining it later on) but they did have the third one so I was like UGH I guess I'll take a stab at it BUT WAIT IT IS EVEN BETTER because you could see movies and visit a big island with extra cool things and starting as a girl was better because you could play with more animals and not have to worry about leveling up your tools and you started with a cow

I loved that cow

I loved fishing

that glorious sight of a big fish you can sell for 750 g there was nothing else like it screw crops I have my animals and my snowboarding and my fishing and once you got a boat you could visit a mermaid and

I mean you couldn't get married as a girl or else the game would end which sucked. But cows >>>> romance so it was all good.

When all my games were stolen it was a dark day and I never really went back to the series until Wonderful Life and you could get married properly even if you had to be a dude to do it and Celia was like love at first sight and you could whistle to summon your pets. :3

I didn't know you were supposed to show your kid to people, but I made sure to talk to him every day and show him all my animals and farm equipment on a regular basis. And then he turned out like me in real life.

I wanted to get DS Cute because I'd heard you could marry other girls in it, so naturally I was devastated when I found out that they'd taken that out for the american release. I think that's when I decided that I wanted to learn Japanese.

I got back into the handhelds with Sunshine Islands, but once I put it down I forgot what all the crop times were so I haven't picked it up in some time. Also, the losing-townsfolk-affection if you don't talk to them every day made me paranoid so I end up spending all my time running around talking to everyone and neglecting my farm and now crops go BAD if you hoard them what.

This series and I have a love-hate relationship these days and I think I might need a 3Ds because 1. Sanjay 2. ALPACAS

Alpacas are a major selling point for me on that game. I have a copy on order! Soon, soon, there will be huggable alpacas ahead of me.

I wish I had a 3DS because ALPACAS ❤

Baby Alpacas are even more adorable <3

So I played A New Beginning to almost the end of spring, and I think I've given up. I'm just... not having fun. Some HM titles, and I think the DS ones are more guilty of this than the console games, build in arbitrary roadblocks to progress that I cannot stand. In Magical Melody and Animal Parade, most of the time if you can't do X or purchase Y, it's because you haven't taken the necessary steps to unlock that yet - shipping a bunch of this, befriending that guy, what have you. So, you go about the process of unlocking it. Tale of Two Towns and A New Beginning, by contrast, say you can't do X or purchase Y Because It's Not Time Yet. We'll let you know when it's Time. And I bloody hate that. There's no reason for it - it takes control away from the player. Am I playing a game or not, here? Give me challenges to overcome, certainly, but let ME overcome them. Keep the invisible walls to a bare minimum, not build your entire game structure around them.

Sorry, rant over. I had really high hopes for ANB, so I'm taking the disappointment kind of hard.

The first Spring is super hard for that reason, but it quickly gets better after that. I wouldn't give up on it quite yet. The game gets super fun after Spring 27th.

Oh dear. Arbitrary roadblocks are a bit frustrating. That said, I think I actually prefer the "Not time yet!" approach to my usual flailing as I try to figure out how the heck to trigger the right conversation with the right person so I can get a fishing pole, since apparently no one will just let me buy one, nooooo, I need to Unlock That Pole. At least if they tell you outright that it's not time yet, you don't need to worry about having accidentally missed triggering an unlock.

^This. After the 27th the rest of the game depends on how fast you can unlock everything yourself.

Any game where the fishing pole is hard to get makes me sad as I consider it my first job as a farmer and neighbor to neglect my duties and go fishing instead. It's usually the only thing I cheat to find out when I first start playing.

Broke down and ordered A New Beginning. Vaguely disappointed at learning about the lack of rival events (I like them! And I love it when the girl of my choice has a douchebag boyfriend and I get to laugh in his face *snuggles Lumina*) but am looking forward to the character designs and the customization and such.

I would just like to say that I have stopped in Winter of my first year and I'm having a really hard time picking the game back up.

I know I've got a good HM game when I can play through that first Winter. And I don't know why, but it's just really...difficult for me to do it in this one. I think it's because I'm incredibly impatient and knowing that I'm going to have to wait until fucking Fall of the next year to unlock the ABILITY to get the bachelor I want (nevermind actually building his house/charming him enough) is making me lose interest hard.
also i really don't like the whole garden judging thing because fuck you villagers i know what looks good y'all just triflin'.

CROSSPOSTING FROM THE RAINBOW CONNECTION SUB-FORUM. (with a little editing~)

I just wanted to briefly come here to say that I just saw that someone made a mod of Harvest Moon Friend of Mineral Town where you can play as a female instead of a male.
So you can finally -- finally -- play a Harvest Moon game and marry the same sex. I am actually crying just a little bit in joy. For a long time, Natsume (the people in charge of localizing HM) have taken out all homosexual content in the games given to them, whether it be a stray line or an entire system devoted to giving women the right to marry whoever the fuck they want to marry. A lot of people have just been disappointed, but gotten over it. But to some people (aka me) this is kind of a big fucking deal.

I love Harvest Moon. I love playing Harvest Moon. I hate having to marry who the game deems is the right sex to marry (rather, what Natsume deems is the right sex). In the most recent game, they've made it so you can crossdress as the other sex, but that's not the same. It's not. So I guess, I don't know, I just felt really happy about this little edit of the original game being made.

okay i'll stop talking about this now i promise.

A little bit of history:

First, same-sex marriage was only ever even partially introduced in DS Cute, and even then it wasn't the same kind of relationship as with a husband; you could choose to live with your "Best Friend" instead of getting married. Which isn't terribly progressive in and of itself, but then Natsume edited it out of the US release. Why?

The thought it would bump up the rating. Apparently a mechanic that was never even explicitly more than platonic would have just been too damn gay for the CHILDREN, oh noes! I have no idea whether the ESRB actually would've (in which case, fuck them, seriously) or if they were just using it as an excuse to dodge the issue, but either way it's completely obnoxious and makes me angry. Arrgh.

Not to veer this off-topic, but I think the biggest issue is that it hasn't been tested a hell of a lot since most games with "gay content" that make it Stateside tend to touch on other explicit sexual situations and the ESRB has the shield of just being able to put "Sexual Content" on the box and be done with it.

No, exactly, I agree. There hasn't really been a purely E-rated game that just happens to have non-sexual homosexual relationships in it (but if I'm wrong I'd love to be corrected!) and I think most who make e-rated games are afraid to test the waters because getting a T could kill their family-friendly game.

See, this makes me really wonder what went on with the translation of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny when it was sent over to the US. Because the way the priest--a marvelous person who's clearly a respected, upstanding member of the community--is portrayed makes me...uncomfortable. Mostly because he'll say something adorable, about liking flowers or enjoying someone's company or wanting to hang out a bit, and the protagonist will be portrayed reacting as if this is Shocking and Icky and Weird. (God, how I hate it when the protagonist I'm playing has bizarre, offensive reactions to inoffensive things.) Which makes me wonder if in the Japanese original the priest actually is saying something more shocking, or if it's just assumed that I'll identify better with a protagonist who's so wildly homophobic that he goes into cringing reaction shots at the thought of being hugged by a man who wears pink.

And it's all the more frustrating because in most other respects, RF:ToD is hands-down my favorite entry in the Rune Factory spinoff, which I generally prefer to the original Harvest Moon anyway.

I'm more freaked out that the priest keeps flirting with me. Age difference!

I love how Harvest Moon warps your brain to the point where you're more freaked out by the age difference than the fact you're being flirted with by a priest.

Gah, I really should get back into HM. Probably the only reason I regret getting rid of my DS.

See, I didn't even read that as serious flirting, especially since he talks about how he'd totally date the nurse if not for, y'know, implied celibacy and all. I usually just read it as affectionate friendliness.

(...and it may be showing my age, but I always end up wanting to romance the "old" characters in Rune Factory, and they won't let me. I so desperately wanted to date that elf blacksmith single mom in Rune Factory: Frontier, but nooooo, apparently I'm supposed to find the spoiled rich girl or the creepy stalker girl who keeps demanding I do stuff for her more my thing.)

Not all religions with priests have vows of celibacy! I actually didn't realize his did, until he started talking about how he's so into that one girl but of course can't date her.

I always wanted to date Carter. I want him to whisper stories into my ear as I fall asleep~

oh the nightmares

I've never played any Harvest Moon games before, but I'm interested in trying them (if I can get away with stealing my partner's DS for a while, heh). Anyhoo, Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness (DS) is on sale at an Australian online retailer and I was wondering if anyone here has played it and/or would recommend it to a first-time player? If so, I might sneakily ask for hint that I want it for my birthday

IMO, I don't think it's a smooth transition into to the HM world, haha~ If only because a bunch of new features are introduced that are incredibly convoluted. Sunshine points? Hunger meter? what?! If you're starting off, I'd go for one of the earlier DS games (HMDS/HMDSCute) or maybe even one of the GBA games. C:

My problem with starting off with HMDS was that it was obviously meant to cater to fans of Mineral Town and make them squee over seeing their favorite characters again. I didn't really understand who anyone was or who these people selling me stuff over the phone are until I read the FoMT let's plays here and then I enjoyed the game a lot more. Other than that I'd say it's a good jumping-on point. It's also more fun with a guide so you know what gifts to give the bachelor/ette of your choice, how the fuck you get the fishing pole, etc.

Also the first printing had some serious bugs that prevented you from getting the Harvest Goddess or Witch Princess as marriage candidates, so watch out for that,