As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
The Curious Urge to Milk Women, Seduce Crops, and Plant Farm Animals
Aroduc
regular
regular
Yo, Harvest Moon. I gots me the itch to get my farming on.
Ahem. The last one I played was Rune Factory, which I didn't really enjoy much because I hated the combat. Before that was Magical Melody, FoMT, 64, and SNES 'afore that.
Things I like:
Specific Goals/Time limit
64's 2.5 years and done was great. I know other people like the idyllic farming, but I call them weak. Farming is for badasses who want/need to squeeze out every last second of every day. MM's note system was an acceptable substitute. FoMT's "Sit around for 99 years to unlock the last thing" made me very very angry.
Not Being AWL
Good god, that was horrible.
Actual farming
Screw you, Save the Homeland and Innocent Life. Also, to a lesser extent, screw you, FoMT's Harvest Gnomes. I don't like knowing that I have you there to take away the best part of the game.
So what's the latest/greatest Harvest Moon that's come out since MM? Sell me on it. Or if Rune Factory 2/Frontier improved their engine/combat enough to not be tedious, sell me on that. I do not currently own a Wii, but I've been seriously considering purchasing one lately. Alternatively, I see another one is due out at the end of July for the DS. What's the scoop on that?
Also, Karen's the best girl.
This is not open to debate.
Aroduc on
0
Posts
I'm not radically far into the plot of the game, there's still a lot of villagers that I didn't gain access to, but I doubt I'll get there soon. I'm getting a DS soon, and I'll probably pick up Sunshine Islands I think it's called? I've heard only good things, and Harvest Moon is just better as a portable imo.
Clearly the best.
I see you've never played Harvest Moon DS Cute.
Since you're near guaranteed to find it cheap, you could look into Harvest Moon DS. It's a pretty good game, gives you some clear goals (I don't know about a time limit, per se), has a crew of characters that I haven't seen in the other games (but I haven't played them all, so they might be recycled) and introduces a couple 'new' things. (Farm customization, I.E. where you put your buildings, and lets you use different building materials. Has ducks as farm animals, starts you with a Dog and Cat like the GB games), but comes at a fairly hefty price.
See, the reason why HM DS is so cheap (I got mine for....$10 or $5 at Best Buy a couple years ago) is because it is incredibly buggy. There's a random chance that, when you save, the next time you load, it just won't load. I think it has to do with movement being on the screen, but I don't know for sure. That's only one of the big bugs in it, as well. (Another being that sometimes, during Winter, the game will just give you the max amount of money you can have. For....no reason.)
I don't know if the 'Girl' version fixes that (or if you'd be interested in playing that, anyway), so can't speak for it.
If you have a PSP, you could also get "Harvest Moon: Boy and Girl" which is actually, unabashedly Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (plus Girl version) ported to the PSP. They're basically a different version of FoMT, though, for better or worse.
Aside from that, it's been a rough go for HM games. Island of Happiness is out there, but I've not played it (and I think it got a sequel?) so I can't speak for it, and the PSP just got "Heroes of Leaf Valley" I believe, which is actually just Save the Homeland more or less ported. (so stay away from it.) I enjoyed Rune Factory, but have some issues with it as well, and haven't picked up RF2 or Frontier, so I can't really sell you on those, either.
Granted, I haven't looked very hard.
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
Harvest Moon DS Cute fixes all the major bugs and is widely considered to be one of the best Harvest Moon games overall.
To be honest I only played the buggy one, my sister has the girl version and loves it.
If you didn't like RF1, I'm not sure if you'd like RF2 either. I mean, it basically expands upon everything in RF1 by a lot. RF2 is a really good game and has a lot to do, but if you don't want to spend half your time in combat, then don't get it.
I haven't tried Animal Parade, mainly because I heard it didn't fix the one problem I had with ToT, which was the loading times in some areas. Gets down right ridiculous sometimes.
I'd say the best Harvest Moon is probably Back to Nature for the PS1. Harvest Moon 64 comes close, but the increased events of Back to Nature make it come out on top. Not to mention that HM64 was buggy and had terrible down time any time you paused it on your farm.
Also, I haven't liked any of the DS iterations so far of Harvest Moon. Hopefully they can make something good soon.
It was absolutely excellent, featuring cameos by various Robot Masters from the Mega Man series
I absolutely hated how in the SNES version you'd tire out pretty much at 10am in the game and had no way of either regenerating it or increasing your max stamina.
Rune Factory gives you two ways of healing stamina. Not sure about others.
You must not have found all the power-ups. ToT let you increase the bar to more than twice as long from your starting point.
I was able to do all my normal farm work and barely dent the thing.
In the original, couldn't you either eat berries you found or go to the hot spring? Or am I thinking of a different one?
steam | xbox live: IGNORANT HARLOT | psn: MadRoll | nintendo network: spinach
3ds: 1504-5717-8252
There are a couple of games with only 5 Power Berries, but usually the way you acquire some berries is the same (i.e. Get to the last floor of the mine, randomly dig it up on your farm, ect.).
Hmmm... I did find a few, but didn't they just get your stamina to max, and not actually make it last longer?
Not sure about that, but the hot spring though, it didn't fill you up at all, it would only get you like 25% of your stamina back.
You could jump in them repeatedly to gain back more stamina you know. And no, they gave you +10 stamina for every berry (started at 100).
Before the games had meter, you could tell how much you had left by expressions.
The first one signified 50%, next one was 25%, 10%, and 0% I believe. After the last one, all stamina is converted directly into fatigue, which eventually leads to sickness with enough points.
I will now have to play Harvest Moon for the SNES again.
The only reason I can't stand to play that game anymore is how dead the first autumn/ winter is and how fucked the framerate is in a barn with full cows. The bell tree and a good pasture fix that problem for 3/4s of the year.
HM64 is the perfect mix of simplicity and complication for me. 3/4 year planting, three animals, rewards for making friends, short mine, green house, time limit. It's the only N64 game I really need on the VC now.
BtN/FoMT are great, but the added complexity is a bit too much.
I don't hate AWL really and find it the best non traditional game. It's much better than the one with the robot or StH. I love the classic tracks and GBA connectivity, and that game has incredible sunrises and sunsets.
Most of the modern games have been bad to ok. Rune Factory is easier, less tedious HM mixed with a bit of gauntlet. Island of Happiness would be great if it had dpad controls. The last Wii one was decent.
Shit just started gettin' weird after FOMT came out, though, like the devs just went "take what we've got, multiply it by 100, and make shit unlock only after a shitton of grinding by the player". DS' control setup burned me something fierce, RF1 got me interested, but then I lost interest with FR2 what with the whole
It is currently my goal in life to become the town pimp.
It's one of those situations where the whole is greater then the sum of its parts.
Most of the fun comes from the fact that days are so short, especially at the start. There's always something else that you wish you had done and then you're juggling eighteen different things at once etc etc. It's a lot less fun (at least for me) if you try to take it easy instead of min/maxing the fuck out of everything and still knowing at your heart of hearts that you're failing somewhere.
Supposedly the latest DS one (Sunshine Islands I think?) does, hence why I asked. Nobody's played it?
Tree of Tranquility was pretty good, but I'd have liked to see a Back To Nature-quality game with Tree of Tranquility- type events.
The only ones that Natsume dropped the ball on were the original Game Boy Harvest Moon titles. They were horrible.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
One- Characters only had about one and a half lines of dialogue per friendship/affection level. I guess this has to do with their being so many damn characters in it but they could have done better.
Two- Not enough festivals and events.
I got a psp go and got the rehash of the psx harvest moon. Back to nature I think. Its pretty great. They just put out another one for psp called Hero of Leaf Valley. Pretty sure its a rehash of save the homeland from PS2 but with some stuff added. Haven't checked it out yet.
Shogun Streams Vidya
I forgot about Magical Melody when I was talking about stuff earlier. Such a good game. Lots of stuff to do and very remniscient of BTN/64 era.
Seriously, how the heck are you people enjoying those games? Pretty much every single thing I hear about them makes them sound worse, even when you're actively praising them.
How is it terrible? It has hot houses and fish farming. I found FoMT lacking after growing up on harvest moon 2 for the gameboy color.
Shogun Streams Vidya