Harvest Moon series. Console VS Handheld

[ZeroAX]

I'm a fan of the Harvest Moon series, though to be honest I skip a lot of the games because they are so same-y, and when they try to innovate sometimes they just fall flag on the ground (I still have nightmares about It's a Wonderful Life).

Last year I bought on a whim Harvest Moon Animal Parade on the Wii and I was super happy to find out it's probably the best Harvest Moon game I've played in years, even better than Back to Nature (and its GBA port, because that's what it was a port, Friends of Mineral Town) which for close to a decade was the high point in the series for me.

But I run into a small problem. The game has a pretty slow in game clock, which is great cause you really DO have a lot of stuff to do in a day in this game (unless you just care about the farming, but socializing is just so rewarding and fun in this game, you want to complete the quests and tasks everyone asks from you), but it means a day lasts very long, getting from one place to another takes time (even if you can ride your animals around town, which is super nice btw), and those loading times.....GOD those slow ass loading times.

The end result was that a single day would last 40-60 real life minutes, which means that in order to make fast progresss I needed to spend a LOT of time.



This kind of killed my enjoyment of this game, cause I simply didn't have the time to spend on it, plus those loading times really did get to me.


So I tried the DS games to get my Harvest Moon (or Rune Factory, though I only tried the first game in that series) fix, because with their cartridge format and handheld design philosophy would be much better for casual and quick play.


My problem though was that the DS games just aren't as good. And this is a problem the series has had since the begining. The console versions innovate and make the greatest breakthroughs and the handheld version either try to immitate or just completely fall flat.

(with the exception of Friends of Mineral town which was just a direct port, so it wokred well).



Am I the only one who thinks this way, or do the handheld Harvest Moon games have more to offer than I think?

Also has anyone played the new 3DS one? It will be released in Europe next month and it sounds really good. I was wondering if it's more like Animal Parade or the DS Harvest Moon games.

[KDub]

I loved playing A New Beginning. There is so much to do and so much progression to be made and unlike other games I don't get exhausted in game from actually trying to have a full day. Building the town is fun too and adds an enjoyable new layer of gameplay!

I did manage to progress pretty fast though since you can forage in the forest to help with cash, made things a little unbalanced sometimes. But at the same time it isn't easy to get your livestock up to high levels for contests and good products, they need constant attention.

Short answer: Yeah it is really great and a good fresh start for the series.

[ZeroAX]

I loved playing A New Beginning. There is so much to do and so much progression to be made and unlike other games I don't get exhausted in game from actually trying to have a full day. Building the town is fun too and adds an enjoyable new layer of gameplay!

I did manage to progress pretty fast though since you can forage in the forest to help with cash, made things a little unbalanced sometimes. But at the same time it isn't easy to get your livestock up to high levels for contests and good products, they need constant attention.

Short answer: Yeah it is really great and a good fresh start for the series.

It has quick save right? Is the game's town tightly packed like BtN or spread out like AP?

[Forlorn Drifter]

Well, you like the social aspects, so that puts you in a different part of the fanbase from me, as I'm one who doesn't like the socializing that much outside of gaining a wife in the game. (Kinda like real life-I'm not particularly worried about a person unless I might marry them or I'm a blood relation.)

I haven't had a chance to play it, but there is the DS/3DS game Tale of Two Towns, which may or may not be good. Also, have you looked in to Magical Melody on the Gamecube? I think its worth a mention, as its one of the better releases in my opinion.

[Konacha]

I'd figure I'd bump this up since it talks about the Series and is a huge announcement. It was announced that XSEED is going to do the newest translation of Harvest Moon called "Story of Seasons" because Natsume owns the rights to the name Harvest Moon. It is the next game of the series, however with XSEED doing the translation I am really happy on the newest game because XSEED is a good translation company unlike Natsume (who has spelling errors 1st graders can pick up).

The newest game looks really cool with how you have different lands within the game and also I'm happy customization is back too. So here is to XSEED doing the newest game.

[ZeroAX]

hm...the new game looks interesting, but I haven't even got past the first year in a new beginning.

It's funny, 10 years ago I was desperate for a good harvest moon game other than the snes original and back to nature on the ps1, and now there are so many great harvest moon games that I'm burned out. It's a shame too, cause animal parade (slow wii loading times notwithstanding) and a new beginning are REALLY good.

[darsparx]

Dang, I knew it was only time before I saw a thread about this series. The sad thing is the only game i've had any luck playing and knowing what the heck to do and where things are is FOMT...the psp version of that is harder to play in my opinion. That one particular game seemed to get several remakes from what research I've done online Though I really want to play ANB I keep hearing great things about it and a few others in the series

[ZeroAX]

I believe the best Harvest Moon game you can play on the systems you own is Animal Parade. It's really good, but 1 day can last up to an hour (for me it lasted on average 45 minutes), so prepare for a veeeeeery long playtrhough. Mind you the game isn't a slog, your days are filled with fun/interesting things to do.

[darsparx]

One of these days I will, i enjoyed fomt(even though there's no true ending and I always go for Popuri.....I've tried going for the others but Popuri is so easy and is a great girl to attempt ha ha

[laurenhiya21]

(I still have nightmares about It's a Wonderful Life).

What didn't you like about it? I know a lot of people didn't find it to be the best Harvest Moon, but I haven't heard of anyone not liking it THAT much... I'm just curious because it's my favourite HM haha.

Although I guess my opinions are a little weird in the first place, because I didn't like A New Beginning very much... Moving all the animals out is a chore, training my pets is a pain, and I couldn't really find much to do other than forage anything and everything. (there might of been something else as well but I can't remember...) I reallllyyyy want to like it since I like the customization and the different animals you can get but... either I'm doing something totally wrong or it's just not the Harvest Moon for me :/ It's hard to tell either way since I haven't heard anybody with a similar opinion so... I dunno.