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Best Harvest Moon?

T

the year 20XX

Member
Yeah, so basically I was wondering what everyone's favorite Harvest Moon game was. I just sorta decided to try some STYLISH FARM ACTION (reference made in the "Devil May Cry/Stylish Hard Action" sense, and not in the "Whatever You Would Find if you Googled That Phrase" sense) , and don't know what version to get. Are they all pretty much the same?

Now that I think about it, I don't see much Harvest Moon discussion around here. We have fanboys for pretty much every other series.
 
Friends of Mineral Town (or More Friends of Mineral Town) for the GBA.

Otherwise, Harvest Moon 64 or the PSOne port of it, which I think featured some new content and crappier load times.

Avoid the PS2 game at all costs.
 
Welcome. The GCN game(s) are also pretty good. They try to stray from the typical HM formula (as refined by FoMT or HM64 IMHO), and are pretty good, but not amazing. The PS2 version tried something different too, and failed utterly, again IMHO.
 
The one I enjoyed most was the PSOne version, the SNES one is a classic IMO, and the GC one is a piece of crap.
 
Seconding the "Friends of Mineral Town" sentiment. The only flaw is no drunk Karen, which Harvest Moon 64 has. It's sort of a toss up between the two.

And possibly that it's handheld.

Avoid Back to Nature because it is basically Friends of Mineral Town with atrocious load times causing you to not want to save every day and then it ends up fucking you in the ass.
 
hmbtn061.jpg


I've owned and thoroughly played every single Harvest Moon game (aside from HM 3 GBC) to date.

Here's my rankings:

1. Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA) - Overall most polished title with the best balance of honed gameplay and social aspects.
2. Harvest Moon (SNES) - Ridiculously captivating concept, soundtrack, gameplay, and a much much stronger sense of immersion than any of the successors. The game stands in my top 20 game experiences of all time.
3. Harvest Moon 64 (N64) - Very wide breadth of gameplay, lots of fun little niceties, particularly with the social events.
4. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PSX) - Essentially the same thing as the N64 one with various upgrades (e.g. bigger farm, more crops, a little bit of shading here and there). Also fixed the recipe system from being completely pointless in the 64 version. I still prefer the 64 version's presentation, lack of load times, and controls.
5. Harvest Moon: Sprite Station - Japanese version is buggy and English one isn't out yet, but definitely the most well-rounded and feature-rich of all the titles. Even then, you can't help but realize how tired the franchise has gotten at this point. It's almost as if they've added TOO MUCH to the core formula instead of being willing to change the formula at all.

.... 1,2, skip a few...

All the other HM games... rather than list them, I'd encourage you to start off with whichever of the five I listed you're able to.
 
Seriously addictive. I've played the SNES version GB version and Gamecube. Do NOT play gamecbue's version if you've never played the series before...it's just not a good game and doesn't represent the series like it should. Play any of the 2D versions. It's addictive but very repetitive and you'll begin to wonder why you don't just do these farm routines in real life instead :lol
 
My favourite is the N64 one. But mainly because that was the first Harvest Moon game I tried.

IMO the Ps2 version isn't all that bad... it's just small. In fact, I believe the N64 cart is several megs bigger than the PS2 CD.

As soon as the DS version comes out, that will rule the roost.
 
Haven't finished Song of Happiness yet due to the bug(which I'm sure will be fixed by the English release so no worry), I can say it's much better than the somewhat disappointing A Wonderful Life and is just as good as Friends of Mineral Town, if not better.

Especially if you think AWL being too "different" and want a HM more similar to FoMT, then surely SoH is for you, like festivals, mini games, fishing, mining, upgrading building/tools are all back, more animals, and just many more things to do. Many more girls to choose from too(more than any HM game ever). And kinda similar to Animal Crossing(which I hate) too, the graphics style(though SoH is much better), the collecting stuff thingy, etc. Anyway SoH is just more similar to the GBA/DS games, which is good.

And IMO, my favorite Harvest Moon games so far:

1. SoH and FoMT (tie)
2. BTN and HM64 (tie)
3. HM DS
4. HM SNES
5. AWL
6. HM GBC3

These are the good HM games and should be played at least once. :)
 
Shit, is FoMT really that good? O_o

I never got it. :(

mind telling me why it's so good? (specific examples, please)
 
I've loved Harvest Moon since the SNES days, but while it's my favorite for nostalgia reasons, I'd have to say the best is the N64 version or the GBA version.

I didn't like the GCN version. The days were way too long, farming didn't do any good(except when you made seeds and sold the banana tree seeds, but that felt like cheating). "Festivals" were dumb and unrewarding. For the days being so long, I felt like there was nothing to do. One thing I will say is becoming friends with everyone is pretty cool with all the different cut scenes, and the story is neat. I should really go back and play that to see the ending and what happens, but it's not addicting like the others. I feel like playing a day is actually a day. I guess I'm too used to the old Harvest Moon formula and felt this new breath of air wasn't that fresh.
 
I agree with the Friends of Mineral Town praise. It's the best.

A Wonderful Life for GameCube had fantastic ideas hampered down by cumbersome execution and gameplay. The repetitive tasks (watering, milking, etc.) are ridiculously slow and clunky where it never was before in the series. Plus, you have to do them twice a day, instead of once, which takes up most of your time and gets boring. If not for these issues, I would have loved the game.

And I have no faith that Song of Happiness, the second GameCube HM title, will ever come out here. So disappointing.
 
Yeah. It was the small tasks in AWL that were a pain the ass. An 2d birdview while planting/digging/picking crops would have helped tremendously.
With that said, Friends of the Mineral Town is one of the better ones.
 
My first was the original for Gameboy, which I assume is similar to the SNES ones...right? That one was a great experience but I can't go back to it after playing these two:

Harvest Moon 64- one of my fav games on the N64. Looking back I can't even truly point out what was so compelling but I was addicted!

Friends of Mineral Town - I haven't played it that much yet. I should really get back to it. I'm glad everyone is saying this one is the best because that really motivates me to finally get back to it. How come AWL is such an inferior version in comparison? Man that pisses me off. AWL I thought would be the definitive HM, it had so much potential but there just seemed that nothing was ever going on. Though I've heard it gets better after the first two years.
 
AWL tried to stray from the classic formula. Frankly, every time they do that, I regret it.

HM GB/GBC was pretty stripped down. HM3 GBC, on the other hand, was a more robust experience. But HM FoMT for the GBA outclasses it in every possible sense.
 
Mejilan said:
AWL tried to stray from the classic formula. Frankly, every time they do that, I regret it.

HM GB/GBC was pretty stripped down. HM3 GBC, on the other hand, was a more robust experience. But HM FoMT for the GBA outclasses it in every possible sense.
Click to expand...

Yeah, AWL made me forget everything that I used to like about HM.
 
Its the first one I've played so I have to say 64. I'm just through my first summer, and the whole experience is LOADS more fun than I thought. Just simple enough to dodge frustration, but enough little fun things to make it..... uh, fun.
 
Oogami said:
Haven't finished Song of Happiness yet due to the bug(which I'm sure will be fixed by the English release so no worry), I can say it's much better than the somewhat disappointing A Wonderful Life and is just as good as Friends of Mineral Town, if not better.

Especially if you think AWL being too "different" and want a HM more similar to FoMT, then surely SoH is for you, like festivals, mini games, fishing, mining, upgrading building/tools are all back, more animals, and just many more things to do. Many more girls to choose from too(more than any HM game ever). And kinda similar to Animal Crossing(which I hate) too, the graphics style(though SoH is much better), the collecting stuff thingy, etc. Anyway SoH is just more similar to the GBA/DS games, which is good.
Click to expand...
That sounds really good, thanks. What is this bug you're referring to though? I hope it's nothing too bad.
 
A Wonderful Life quite frankly sucks. It still is like Back to Nature: good intentions hampered with so much useless meandering shit that it fails at everything. Still, its a notch or two better than Back to Nature, which is by and far the worst one in the series.

BTN is pretty much an adventure game with farming on the side. Its extremely half assed. For example, it does not snow. It rains. The story is pretty shoddy, allowing you to choose through I believe nine stories. None of them are any good. My sister loves Harvest Moon (her favorite series actually) and thinks this game is utter shit. A must avoid.

The Nintendo 64 version and Friends of Mineral Town are the best. Of course, I paid $50 for the cart only version of HM64 and was worth it to be honest.
 
I ran into a copy of HM64 on my way back home after a road trip. It wasn't very expensive (Just found it at an EB) and I was quite pleased. I had, to that point, only ever been able to rent it, and really enjoyed it. I didn't get a good ending, but I really enjoyed the game, definitely.

I have FOMT on my Christmas List, and if I don't get it I'll be grabbing it from the Wal-Mart bargain bin. AWL just didn't come together well, and I'm looking forward to SoH and DS, although I think I would pick the former if it manages to be released.
 
beerbelly said:
Seriously addictive. I've played the SNES version GB version and Gamecube. Do NOT play gamecbue's version if you've never played the series before...it's just not a good game and doesn't represent the series like it should. Play any of the 2D versions. It's addictive but very repetitive and you'll begin to wonder why you don't just do these farm routines in real life instead :lol
Click to expand...

I agree, i never played the series before and i just bought the GC-version of the game. And while i play it alot, it feels alot like, WORK.
 
Gchaime said:
I agree, i never played the series before and i just bought the GC-version of the game. And while i play it alot, it feels alot like, WORK.
Click to expand...

You don't need to list the reasons why AWL doesn't work, but I'll try:

-Watering, cow-pushing, and milking is more error prone than ever by the bad camera angles and controls.
-It's nearly impossible to get the farm up and running in a common sense manner off the bat without gearing to take advantage of one of the many exploits.
-The characters all seem so soulless and assholish that I didn't want to befriend any of them. Unlike most other versions, where it was a hard choice to pick who to marry because they were all so cool, I was stuck with the pressure to marry one of three equally uninteresting women in under a year or LOSE.
-The graphics.
-The art.
-The lack of a cohesive calendar to tell you when the events are going on.
-The lack of a town square to check on when you know an event is going to happen (leaving you to scramble around town until midnight, assuredly failing to find the thing and wasting a perfectly good day).
-Even if you find them, the social events lack good writing or character. They're completely uninteresting.
-The annoying prick dustball guy who keeps stealing your shit and wasting precious time with pointless cutscenes.


My favorite exploit was the ability to take a couple fruit and get a bunch of what would otherwise cost you 10k-30k tree seeds. Pretty soon you could have a complete fucking perennial orchard making nothing but profit. It was ridiculous how that was seemingly the only way to get rich in a timely fashion.
 
Another thing i don't like is that growing crops just doesn't feel like it's worth the effort. I mean you spend all season watering the damn plants and after a season of hard work you can sell them with a profit of 5 monetary units. Meanwhile you can sell anyfish that takes about 2 minutes to catch sell for atleast 20 monetary units.
 
Gchaime said:
Another thing i don't like is that growing crops just doesn't feel like it's worth the effort. I mean you spend all season watering the damn plants and after a season of hard work you can sell them with a profit of 5 monetary units. Meanwhile you can sell anyfish that takes about 2 minutes to catch sell for atleast 20 monetary units.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Farming just isn't worth it at all.
 
Sprite Station is my personal fav, but I am looking forward to the girl version in Dec. The add-ins that come with the other gender release seem to be more fun for me.

I believe I hit the same bug that Oogami had :( Damn wild rabbit caused me to start completely over halfway through my game. Both SS and SoH are crazy full of bugs, although SS have seemed to smooth out as the game progressed. I still have reoccuring problems with two of the festivals.

The new version of SoH gets released next month. From reading various sites (famitsu, 2chan, etc) it appears to be the Japanese translation of the NA localization. Japan gets our version of the game before we get it next year :lol

My votes:

#1 - Sprite Station
#2 - FoMT
#3 - SoH
#4 - BTN

Another thing i don't like is that growing crops just doesn't feel like it's worth the effort.
Click to expand...

That's changed a bit in Sprite Station. Now you can level up your crops for big bucks. Making money off of plants is much more profitable than animals now and you can grow things year round if you purchase the basement greenhouses.
 
I've played a few, and my favourite is definitely the N64 one. Very cool game.

BTW, sorry to be the stupid n00b in the thread, but can someone clear up all the names and everything? What's Song of Happiness? Is that the second GameCube HM game? And is that the female version or an all-new sequel? Ditto Sprite Station, what's that? What system is it for?
 
Fowler said:
I've played a few, and my favourite is definitely the N64 one. Very cool game.

BTW, sorry to be the stupid n00b in the thread, but can someone clear up all the names and everything? What's Song of Happiness? Is that the second GameCube HM game? And is that the female version or an all-new sequel? Ditto Sprite Station, what's that? What system is it for?
Click to expand...

Song of Happiness is the third HM Game Cube title. Sprite Station I take it is the DS version that came out in March.
 
Thanks to this thread, I picked up FOMT for 15 bucks today :) I was personally disappointed with AWL myself, so I hope this lives up to the SNES one.
 
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