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Age Rating:
3+ (PEGI)
What is it?
Some sort of hideously complicated farming/village sim.
Is it fun?
No!
Is it worth the money? (£24.99)
No!
Why not?
I’ll freely admit, I Do Not Get Harvest Moon. Even so, in the spirit of representing an Average Gamer, I’m writing this as someone entirely new to the franchise…
What the hell is Harvest Moon DS supposed to be? I’ve played Animal Crossing a lot so I get the concept of a relaxing game where you wander around collecting things. Harvest Moon seems to be like that, only a thousand times more complicated and without the helpful villagers to let you know what the hell is going on.
For starters, I get my new game, wander about and eventually discover that I should be tilling my field. There’s loads of debris in the form of rocks and logs. Not a problem. I soon discover how to pick them up and proceed throw them over the edge where they disappear.
WRONG!
They didn’t disappear at all. I was fly-tipping! The other townsfolk don’t like that at all. Why do I care? Well, I’m not entirely sure even after reading through sites like Fogu. Apparently the witch likes my littering. Do I want her favour? I have no freaking idea.
Another example; you can give random presents to women. Sometimes they’ll love them. Other times they’ll be hurt and offended and make snide remarks. I think affects my prospects of marrying them, which may or may not be a good thing. I hate it because there’s simply no way in-game to tell what they like and dislike. Even worse, I can’t work it out through trial and error. I have immense trouble recalling what I gave to who because everyone just blurs together into a haze of quirky villager. Write it down? Please. I already have a job.
The game is riddled with pitfalls like this. Considering the gameplay is about farming, maintaining your town and getting married, it seems a pretty big liability. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this complexity is with this choice quote from Fogu [via Yahoo! Answers]:
“Before you can get married you must upgrade your house. Your spouse is not going to want to live in the tiny house you start out with! To upgrade you will first need to unlock Channel 2 on the Sprite Station. To open the channel you must buy something from Karen’s telephone store for 10 days.
When you unlock the Tv Shopping Channel 2, watch it every day. Eventually you will see the Table for sale. The little round table will only cost you 500 G. Call the Tv Shopping operators using your telephone and order the Table.
Only after you have received the Table can you then hire Gotz to increase the size of your house for the first time! You must own the Kitchen before he will upgrade your house a second time if you own the Japanese version. The English version does not require the kitchen. “
In other words…
This game is freaking complicated (or in-depth, if you prefer). I hated it. YMMV.
Screenshots
You shouldn’t hate the game because its ‘complicated’. You need to form a daily routine, ie. water crops in the morning, look for wife at lunch and work on the farm or undertake in mini games etc in the evening.
You ought to try out the original game, it was just released on the Australian Wii Virtual Console and I assume the UK VC as well. It is one of my favourite games and is the best Harvest Moon game.
Bizzare to hate a game because it’s ‘complicated.’ I dislike simulations like HM because they’re, well, simulations! They’re boring at times, have to be in a mood to watch the grass grow–literally. But saying complicated as a reason is plain weird. Did you really play the game?
Daily routine? Like I said, I already have a job. I don’t need a virtual one on top of it. I did that – up in the morning, chop some wood/go to the mines/water plants (before I found enough of the harvest sprites). That part I got. It was the rest that completely lost me. I’d enter a room and characters would say something random. I always got the impression that I was supposed to respond but how?
It’s not that it’s complex, per se. It’s that it’s complex and the in-game support isn’t really good enough to help newbies get the point of everything that’s going on. The TV channels help with the technical stuff like farm buildings.
As it says in the Yahoo! answer above, to unlock Channel 2 you need to buy something from Karen’s store for 10 days. What? Where’s the logic there?
Then you wait until there’s a table for sale and buy that, which allows Gotz to increase the size of the house. Eh?? Why would someone need a table to build an extension?
That’s my grind with the game. Not difficulty, but lack of coherent guidance through the complexity. AC:WW does a good job of guiding you through the basics. Pokémon has all that under-the-hood gubbins but you can progress without ever knowing it’s there. HM:DS just drops you in a town full of unwritten rules and women who refuse to say what will really piss them off until I do it.
Hmm, perhaps it’s just a better simulation of rural life than I was expecting ;)
i love the game as you play on it gets complacated i can admit but it is super fun as it is full of suprise me and my sister have to take turns im alrady in year 2 and im only 10 i starde play it again about 2 days ago
I LOVE this game how can you not like it
ok it does get annoying sometimes
but if you have a routine it will work out
and you get channel 2 by buying things from karens store cos channel 2 is a shopping channel
OMG!Harvest Moon is the best game ever making it complicated onmly makes it more of a chalange= more FUN!!!!1111
WELL I AM MARRIED ANG ABOUT TO HAVE A CHILD WITH MUFFY
I LOVE THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t get it either! The reviews are fantastic and the idea really appealling, but I can’t do anything! I can gather stone and wood, have a hen house and four hens and grow crops but that’s it! I can’t get the villagers to say anything other than the same lines to me, even when I speak to them every day and I don’t know how to access any mini games. I’m a reasonably intelligent person, with some experiece of games that are described as similar to this but I can’t seem to make any progress. Any tips would be appreciated, as I am determined to figure it out!
ROFL
Thanks Kay. Glad I’m not the only one.
As far as I can tell, you can give the stuff you find to the girls and if they like them, they’ll like you more which may help with the dialogue. I did a bunch of mining and gave jewellery to people but didn’t get a whole lot farther.
Finding the right harvest sprites unlocks the casino games. A bit of googling will help that.
I could never understand the appeal of these kind of games, like you say, I enough routine things to do in real-life without having to go and do chores in a game over and over.
I’m sure some people must like it, but it’s certainly not one for me.
how can you not like this game? its awesome. i love the series.Sure its complicated but you need to play the other series t really figure it out. for example to play the newer versions of pokemon to really get it you need to play the older versions
omg how could you hate this game its fun and you will never guess whats going to happen the next day. FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN!!!!!!
omg you guys are so stupid harvest moon is the best game ever.
OMG this is like the best game ever you guys are soooo stupid i love playing and i’m already in year 11 and i have a teenager and a wife i married celia and she is soo awsome and so is the game!!!!!!
What the hell? Yeah some people like harvest moon but it doesn’t mean you have to post comments telling people that they HAVE to love it.
Tori, grow up.
Yes, i like the game, but harvest moon is basically like marmite – you either find it mildly entertaining enough to keep going or you hate it completely. Also, people who can’t get anywhere – just go to fogu where some loosers have posted like a million ways to play.
Yes its complicated – but who cares? Just do what you want to do!
Jeeeeeeeze
this game is very polarizing. i LOVE this game. I love how it is routine and peaceful. Yet there are those who hate it.
I think that something that those who don’t understand the game or why people like it should keep in mind is this, the game is in essence about the process of life. You watch things grow, make friends, marry, and have a child (sometimes even die like in AWL).
The reason everything is complicated is because everything is interconnected. As in life, no one is an island. Therefore, success is not just in making money and maintaining your farm, but it is also had in maintaining friendships and a new generation (ie. child).
But it is also a preference. I really like games like this. The games I played the most on my DS were HarvestMoon DS, Lost in Blue, and Animal Farm and some sim games like the Urbz. ^_^ It’s all about the little things (achievements) that make all that work worth it.
THIS GAME ROX! I gave bith to a child with Celia!
I kind of like this game, but as repeated by someone else, there's like a mood
you have to be in to play it. Its fun, but not always. It does get annoying sometimes
but thats because the challenge is quite hard to deal with. Things get pretty
random at times, but I find it to my liking. Never know what's gunna happen next?
Yeah, I can live with it.
And seriously you guys, if you don't get the game, just look it up
in the god damn manual they give the game to you with. Or just friggin
Google it, or post some questions on Yahoo Answers … Someone had to figure all
the stuff out on their own, which was the whole point of the game.
So, just take your pick.
The game is fun to me!~~ Maybe I don't get something okay? Heck it took my five day real time just to think oh I have to search up the info if I want to know! Okay then that part of it is covered. Judging from what you're saying by you walk in and people interact with you. Those are random events. I find that they add some spice to the game! Some of them are love events. You need them to marry the woman you want to marry! Rival events tell you if the person you love is going to get taken away by another person who loves the same person as you. the last rival event. If you see it then the two people in the event will get married and you will not be able to marry them. I love this game and I won't allow your comments to discourage others to play it!
complicated? ive played it since it came out, and never thought it was complicated…
this might be because i like te harvest oon series, but i could be wrong
i absolutely agree, this game is a nightmare, i finally married after checking the net to find out what the hell this game was about, there is no guidance what so ever, i got married and the game still sucks, it made no difference to the game play at all, wife stays indoors all the time. this game is plain stupid, i have played animal crossing and that got boring after a couple of weeks but at least you could figure out what you had to do. i hate this game…