So many Harvest Moons so little time

[ninjainspandex]

I'd really like to get into the Harvest Moon but there are just so many of them, what would be the best one for a newbie to the series? Which one is the best? I currently only own Harvest Moon 64 and Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA ( Which I believe is a port of the PS1 game?)

[Forlorn Drifter]

Friends of Mineral Town is a port of sorts of Back to Nature on PS1. It has quite a bit of stuff added in, a few things removed, and certain festivals and such swapped for different ones.

Where to start is going to depend on various things. Are you more interested in the social aspects, or farming aspects of the game? Newer titles offer more of both, but some are quite heavy on social aspects, which I didn't like. Art style also plays a factor for some, I personally find some of the newer stuff to come off odd, some of them having very feminine looking male characters, for example.

As to which one is best, just the yelling match. I like HM64, but Back to Nature is arguably better. FOMT had a lot of playtime from me, but I prefer BTN. Magical Melody also got quite a bit of playtime from me, and I really liked it. A Wonderful Life is very different from the rest of the series in certain aspects, but I liked it to an extent, although I found it very monotonous after a while. I haven't played much of the new stuff, someone else may be able to shed more light on that, and the situation of two companies now making the series...

[ninjainspandex]

TBH its just the farming and raising crops part that interests me, not too interested in the dating sim aspect of the games. Also these types of games seem better suited to handhelds, so I'm leaning towards FOMT.

[Forlorn Drifter]

If you want farming focused handhelds, FOMT is probably top tier. The Harvest Moon Gameboy games are a bit back and forth. They have some cool stuff going on, but I've known many people not to like them.

I heard quite a few good things about HM:DS, but it is also supposed to be plagued with glitches if you don't get the right print run.

[Nemoide]

I've only played two: Friends of Mineral Town and A Wonderful Life. I loved the hell out of Friends of Mineral Town - never finished it though! (I should start it over sometime this year.)

A Wonderful Life was a letdown for me. The game is so DIFFERENT from what I was expecting; I played through most of the first year and my farming vegetables made almost no money, it seems like animals were the only profitable thing. The game has recipes for food but I never figured out anything good - instead I ran around picking random plants/flowers and they became my primary food in addition to fish. Maybe I'll go back to it but I never felt like I understood what I should be doing.

[Forlorn Drifter]

A Wonderful Life has a much larger focus on livestock, at least in the beginning, something I wish we could see more of in the series. Later on in AWL you can get fun, mixed up plants. I believe it comes from mixing seed varieties, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I personally really liked the village in AWL. The secrets and little things in that game are much harder to find though.

I would suggest some of the various fan sites for Harvest Moon, but I can't remember any of the names of the ones I frequented, and at least one has gone offline.

EDIT: fogu.com and hmotaku.com are still up and running, although I think fogu might be missing some of the most recent games. I know fogu has guides and such, and cover everything wonderfully.

[Exhuminator]

Do you own a Wii, DS, or 3DS?

[ninjainspandex]

Do you own a Wii, DS, or 3DS?

Yes

[laurenhiya21]

I haven't play all of the Harvest Moon games, but out of the ones that I have...

I haven't put much time into it, but I thought Mineral Town was pretty good. It seemed like there were a lot of stuff to do, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

AWL is my definitely my favourite. Really like the small town atmosphere I guess ha. Plus hybridizing is so much fun for me, (the light bulb plants are the best!) but it is a bit slow so I can see why people might not like that.

Magical Melody is up there as well. You can move your house & furniture around, plant your crops anywhere, and buy different properties which I thought was kind of cool (makes me think of DS a bit but not as glitchy). Some of the sounds are kind of annoying for me though (main character doing things mostly) and your baby doesn't grow up fully (it's pretty annoying too ._.) but still I really like it and a lot of others seem to as well.

DS, Sunshine Islands, Grand Bazaar, A New Beginning, and Tree of Tranquility were all kind of ehhh for me. I would really only call Grand Bazaar bad, but the rest just kind of bore me I guess.

I've also played Animal Parade which I think is good, but it might not be a good one to start with? I remember the load times being kind of long.

[dogman91]

How about the original SNES game? Thoughts?