Not Hardcore Enough to Raise Chickens

[Mutie]

I go with "Lanolin" for the sheep.

Hahaha. I actually find naming stuff one of the hardest parts of the game... I'd sit there for half an hour listening to the same repetetive jingle over and over thinkin "Shit man... What am I gonna name this duck...?". I later formulated a catagory system based on semantics.

Aw man... Now I've got to play on A Wonderful Life.

 

[Same River New Water]

This reminds me of my experience with Viva Pinãta. It's all smiles and children's television tie-ins on the surface, but underneath is an infernally complex system of levers and pulleys like something designed by a deep-strategy grognard savant.

 

[GodKlown]

I first played Harvest Moon on the SNES waaaayyyy back when... I fell out of touch with the series until I bought a DS in 2006, and Harvest Moon DS was one of the first games I got. I enjoy the heck out of that game still, but have avoided the other versions because of their dependence on the stylus for everything. It is a very deep game, and without some of the walkthroughs available I wouldn't know much about some of the interactions and what they unlock... I was quite surprised by the complexity of the game.

I have heard rumors through the last couple of years about Natsume toying around with the idea of making a Harvest Moon MMO, but haven't found any concrete evidence to support it. It would and could potentially be a FarmVille killer, and certainly something needs to knock Zynga on its ass for online farming. Granted, I can't see Natsume dumbing the game down to a FB app because you know they'd need to sacrifice something to make it run smoother for a lite browser-based application, but even a mini-Harvest Moon would certainly make a dent in the number that FarmVille attracts.

As long as Natsume develops a Harvest Moon on the DS in the future that doesn't rely completely on the stylus, I'd be happy to buy it.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

OH god this remiinds me why I stopped playing these games. For example, the far less (in my opinion) complicated animal crossing, where I'd go back one day to say: Hmm, I'm in my free time now, so let's spend an hour and a half digging up all these weeds and planting a small forest. Fun. I only play Pokemon (obsessively) now.

 

[fionnbharr]

Natsume = Translator...So talented they even spell their name wrong on he title screen of HM64! Marvelous Interactive = The poor guys who make all HMs and never get named as the developers!

 

[Susan Arendt]

This reminds me of my experience with Viva Pinãta. It's all smiles and children's television tie-ins on the surface, but underneath is an infernally complex system of levers and pulleys like something designed by a deep-strategy grognard savant.

God, I love Viva Pinata. Never did get the damn Roario, though. Perhaps that'll be my project for the weekend.

 

[TheDoctor455]

I will never ever, for the life of me, EVER understand the appeal of these sort of games.

 

[nmaster64]

I will never ever, for the life of me, EVER understand the appeal of these sort of games.

Try playing one.

I hope they never remake one of the old GB Harvest Moon games for iPhone. It'd be the death of me.

 

[Lyri]

I rented the PS one version back when I was in High School, I was supposed to have it for 3 days.
4 months later I was explaining to my mother why there was a hefty bill on her doorstep.

I seriously love Harvest Moon, it's a simple premise that you'd think would be simple in play too but it's brutal.
A friend of mine picked it up too and she loves it, however she has a DS version which is lighter on the clock is ticking aspect, as in it is no longer there.
The three year time limit on some of the games may sound like a long time but it's really not.

 

[Bat Vader]

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

The Super Mario Bros. game was excellent though and the ET game was horrible. The ET movie was excellent though and the Super Mario Bros. movie was horrible.

In my opinion Harvest Moon is more complex and fun comapred to Farmville.

 

[Ashbax]

I got about 1 paragraph in, saw "Moved to North Carolina" and said "Wooo, im not the only gamer in this hillbilly state "

 

[Ashbax]

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

The Super Mario Bros. game was excellent though and the ET game was horrible. The ET movie was excellent though and the Super Mario Bros. movie was horrible.

In my opinion Harvest Moon is more complex and fun comapred to Farmville.

Thats what he just said...

 

[Bat Vader]

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

The Super Mario Bros. game was excellent though and the ET game was horrible. The ET movie was excellent though and the Super Mario Bros. movie was horrible.

In my opinion Harvest Moon is more complex and fun comapred to Farmville.

Thats what he just said...

So he was being sarcastic when comparing Harvest Moon and Farmville. I thought he was calling Harvest Moon and the Super Mario Bros. bad games. It kinda seems difficult to compare ET and the Super Mario Bros.

 

[Ashbax]

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

The Super Mario Bros. game was excellent though and the ET game was horrible. The ET movie was excellent though and the Super Mario Bros. movie was horrible.

In my opinion Harvest Moon is more complex and fun comapred to Farmville.

Thats what he just said...

So he was being sarcastic when comparing Harvest Moon and Farmville. I thought he was calling Harvest Moon and the Super Mario Bros. bad games. It kinda seems difficult to compare ET and the Super Mario Bros.

He was saying that Harvest Moon was better than farmville, in the same way Super Mario Bros. was better than ET, the worst game known to man.

...So yeah, he was saying harvest moon is awesome.

 

[Jingermanoo]

Loving the Rune Factory spin-offs, it takes the early Harvest Moons and adds dozens of hours more gameplay.

I feel that the Harvest Moon series has never really taken off in the UK and maybe this Farmville tripe could attract a lot more attention to it.

 

[zamble]

I loved Harvest Moon on the SNES.
I also thought I was pretty good the first time I finished it, had the florist as a wife, the stables were bursting with cattle and chicken and overall the farm was very profitable.
And then the parents returned just to tell me 'wtf did you do in those 2.5 years we were gone on our cruise? lazy bastard!'.
Second playthrough I now married the bar girl after very short time, the stables were bursting just a little later, the farm was very profitable despite a summer full of tornados. In the end I had a child, the biggest possible house etc. and I felt like I had achieved nearly everything I could in that playthrough.
'Hey, we're back from our cruise! It is interesting what you (or mainly the dog) did to the carpets but you should have really worked much harder, lazy bastard!'

heh, that's funny. What a way to raise an obsessive kid, huh? Or maybe that's commonplace among Japanese families? I heard once that they tend to be more strict in relation to boys and what they accomplish, even as kids, don't know if that's true but...

OT: Those walkthroughts really ruin it, I don't think the creators ORIGINALLY tought of the game to be played like this, that's what I always tought of HM series. BUT, when SUSAN mentioned what she had to do to get the piece-of-whatever-shiny-thing-they-tough-of-this-time, I tought maybe they went too far. How could someone think of that alone? Guide dang it! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt in case anyone don't know and think I'm only cursing)

 

[Plurralbles]

Finally some respect for how complex Harvest Moon games have become. Seriously, I have put more effort into strategy in Back To Nature than I have in four Total War games.

but total war are freakin' easy?

 

[The Random One]

Great article as usual, but the cool thing is that Harvest Moon isn't really difficult, it's just difficult to get the awesome incredible super duper extreme final ending. What that means is that if you want to milk some cows and smooch some gals you can do it, but if you're the kind of in-depth junkie who likes to analyze raw code you can get your fix off of it as well.

Personally, I'd never put that much effort into a game, no matter how cool it would be.