Not Hardcore Enough to Raise Chickens

[ThrobbingEgo]

Sometimes the cartoonish games can surprise you. Heck, I've seen some crazy walkthroughs for Pokemon games to catch everything in one run that just made me wonder why people would put that much effort into what really is a very simple game.

It's really anything but. The story campaigns are simple, I'll give you that, but the competitive multiplayer is like the bastard offspring of rock paper scissors and playing chess blindfolded with Heroclix instead of chess pieces. Pokemon has all these layers of stats and hidden modifiers - Same Type Attack Bonuses, EV points, type immunity combos (which gets more complex each time GameFreak adds another type), and traits. Then there are pretty crazy move combos, pokemon with TMs designed to counter those move combos, equitable items... it's a very complex game with cute cartoon animals on the cover.

I just got Soul Silver for nostalgia, but one of my roommates plays tournaments.

 

[Mr. Mike]

Well, the point of gaming is for entertainment, or at least that sense of achievement when you pull off something challenging. I s'pose as long as you find it entertaining, you can max everything. I have that problem with Oblivion and Fallout 3, wanting to max my stats.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Thats what I call intensive farming. I could give it a try but there is no game for the PC, as far as I know.

Wikipedia has listed a so called 'Harvest Moon Online' that is supposedly slated for the PC, but I find it very unlikely that this is real as I've never heard anything about this game anywhere else. Otherwise, Harvest Moon has never been on PC outside of emulators. But really, if you've EVER owned a console or portable system in the last thirtenn years, then you probably have something you can play it on. So long as it wasn't made by Microsoft or SEGA and it isn't the PS3, you're good to go.

Come to think of it, why isn't there a Harvest Moon for PS3 yet? An HD Harvest Moon could have some real potential.

 

[Phantomess]

I'm playing through Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility and damn if it wasn't difficult the first YEAR, let alone the first season. Though by the second year, I'd bought every possible field and made a packet off the Honeydews in summer. Addictive, yes, I thoroughly agree... it's the only game I've spent more than an hour on my Wii for.

 

[ObsessiveSketch]

Man... for a second I thought you were talking about Farmville... I am not very formilar with the Harvest moon series though...

Harvest Moon is to Farmville
as
Super Mario Bros. is to ET: The Extra-Terrestrial

Wow could you make that analogy any more inaccurate? ET? Which was a collosal disapointment and by some accounts helped to the downfall in gaming in its era being compared to Farmville which is wildly popular and is opening up some form of daily gaming to millions of non-gamers???

Okay, I guess you're right. I should make it more accurate.
Harvest Moon is to Farmville
as
Harvest Moon is to a stolen, scamming 'game' that is single-handedly causing the downfall of gaming in our era.

 

[beddo]

I tried Animal Crossing and was unbelievably bored I believe the same would be true of these titles.

I don't like appointment mechanics in games, I want to play on my own time and I decide what to do, not the game. To me these are nothing but the fast food of gaming, repetitive nonsense to gain more pointless money to do even more repetitive nonsense. Pointless.

 

[Magus44]

I've been pretty much the same, I love the idea of a relaxing Farm simulator, but every time I get scared I'm not doing something right or the I'm going to miss something, and that stops me playing it. They need to make and easy version of it, less hardcore, that would sell like hotcakes with the DS user base. Maybe...
Have you tried Rune Factory? I kinda liked them more, with the whole Diablo lite thing.

 

[Susan Arendt]

I've been pretty much the same, I love the idea of a relaxing Farm simulator, but every time I get scared I'm not doing something right or the I'm going to miss something, and that stops me playing it. They need to make and easy version of it, less hardcore, that would sell like hotcakes with the DS user base. Maybe...
Have you tried Rune Factory? I kinda liked them more, with the whole Diablo lite thing.

Tried it, never really got into it, though. Just didn't connect with me.

 

[kaizen2468]

So perhaps it's time to cross Bad Company with Harvest moon. That should keep your attention. You farm for an hour, then defend against attacking mercenaries with your farming equipment.

 

[Hithlain]

I have loved harvest moon from back back back wayyyy back to Harvest Moon 64. It never changes, but I love it so much. I wonder why.

They've gotten much more complicated over the years and I'm not sure that's good. My favorite has been Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland because it felt like I actually had time in the day to DO stuff and that I wasn't always running around trying to make money. But you couldn't really marry or anything and you only had 1 year in the game to accomplish the goal.

 

[manaman]

I always called Harvest Moon my guilty pleasure. I have long been a fan of the series, and will continue to waste many hours on the game. I started much the same way. A friend took a look at my library and recommended the game to me. On the strength of the recommendation I started playing, only ot find after about a month that I was missing out on much of the depth of the game.

 

[syndicated44]

I ran into the exact same roadblock playing the one on the Gamecube. I just cant do it. I just cant. Maybe I just dont have enough love and compassion for my cute little animals. Hell I cant even get enough money to buy my first chicken. I have sat down weeks at a time working on it and just nothing works. I actually ended up getting married in one playthrough but I hadnt worked on my farm enough and I ended up getting slapped with divorce papers and now my little character lives in a shack with some guy who makes fireworks. Lesson learned I guess...

 

[JEBWrench]

Have they fixed the problem in Harvest Moon about farming being a complete waste of time?

(Don't get me wrong, I love Harvest Moon. But the farming itself was pointless... Except in Innocent Life, and that game had other problems.)

 

[Normalgamer]

Harvest moon is still insanely fun to me, even if I gave up on it long ago, I still have nostalgia of watching my brother spend all hours of the night doing math equations over it.

Ahhh~ good times.

 

[Ravek]

Harvest Moon can definitely be a very hardcore game. I know I've spent some time calculating the most cost/time-efficient crops, although I didn't obsess over optimizing everything quite as much as that walkthrough you mention seems to do.

Once a game gets above a certain minimum complexity level, whether playing the game is hardcore or not doesn't really depend on the game as much as on the player. If you take steps to make the game insanely hard, or make your goal to optimize your game to crazy levels, then you're playing a hardcode game.

In that light, the term 'casual game' should probably be understood to refer to a game that tends to attract casual players, and not so much a game that is inherently not hardcore.

 

[matrix3509]

I played the N64 version for something like a year because I was trying to get everything in the game. In the end though, I started getting more enjoyment out of swinging my farm implements at my livestock. I figured that wasn't a healthy thing to do, so I stopped playing altogether.

 

[geldonyetich]

Hey, now, don't go trying to get them to make the last few hardcore games casual. You've already some 98% of the games catering to the shallow approach.

 

[sunpop]

I used to play harvest moon and I actually beat one for the game boy color. No I really did I happen to have the cartridge sitting right next to me. Now that I read this I kind of have that feeling I need to play some harvest moon but then I will loos all track of time.

Well when you see in the news man found dead planting virtual crops the blood will be on your hands Arendt!

 

[Lost In The Void]

I picked up this Harvest Moon and began playing it expecting the same difficulty as my last HM, Friends of Mineral Town. This was the wrong way to look at it as this one is way more intense than that one. You have to maintain relationships with everyone, raise crops and somehow break even through all of this. I realize I could use a guide but even with a game like this, I don't want to, for me it takes away from the fun of discovering things for myself

 

[chvor]

I've got similar experience with the Persona series. I looked at the walkthrough out of curiosity and was greeted by the same thing: extremely tight schedule how to spend each in-game hour. I even tried it but it was too much like a day job instead of having fun playing a game.

Those games are meant to be replayed many times before you achieve greatness.