Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[timferius]

Was back to nature after 64? Then that was the last I played. I'm pretty sure if I remeber friends of mineral town IS a remake of back to nature,though back to nature is fairly different from 64

[BigD145]

For farming in particular you have many options to run a farm how you like, not necessarily so you can do everything all at once. You CAN, but most people are going to focus on one or two animals they like and certain veggies that go into cooked dishes they and their sweetheart like. Marriage is the grindiest part as you have some quantity limits on naturally growing favorite items and one gift a day BUT everything leading up to marriage doesn't exactly tend to be easy. Planting anywhere is more of a Rune Factory thing where you have all seasons available to you while you dungeon plunge (i.e. be distracted).

Your "and then some" conveniently elides that it seems to lack all of the things I care about--much like Farmville, which is not only not charming, but manages to work its way over to putrid.  For reference, I hate The Sims, too.

What I see in the dev list is a lot of numbers.  "You can do THIS MANY x and OVER y MANY z."  To me, all of this means lots and lots of grinding in order to make something in a game that I'd rather just doodle out on paper.  Does it really add to the game to have a crafting system that big?  Does that much customizability add, or detract?  How about the lack of story-driven gameplay?  How does that interact with the genre?


In my opinion, the last good--perhaps the only good--Harvest Moon game was Harvest Moon 64, with Magical Melody making it into the "sort of okay" slot.  And, in my further humble opinion, the main thing bringing the series down is the urge to expand everything in size.  More vegetable types!  More vegetables in your plot!  Ten romance options, all as deep as seen in a game published 10 years ago!  Remove the border between farm and town so you can plant stuff pretty much anywhere!  More recipes!  More crafting!  A whole busy screenful of people and animals running around in way too little space!

Well, you know, that adds time to the game, sure, if you can make larger vegetable plots--and it adds time you can spend grinding things out to try each romance option, if not any further satisfaction--and removing that border makes your day last a lot longer, and makes your route a lot more circuitous--but is time really what you're looking for?

Let's be honest: I feel like they took a Harvest Moon game and are grafting all the things I hate most about Animal Crossing and Terraria onto it.  I don't feel this improves the Harvest Moon formula, really.  It just adds three games' worth of things I dislike, rather than only one.


Unfortunately, not everyone is going to share your enthusiasm, and I'm really frustrated because it seems like a lot of games I used to like are moving in this direction, rather than the opposite.

So you want harvest moon with only farming? but on the other hand you say you have to farm too much to do the romance? sorry i dont follow you o.O

I wanted to play Harvest Moon 64 because it was charming, not because I especially liked farming simulators or whatever.

[Tellemurius]

Was back to nature after 64? Then that was the last I played. I'm pretty sure if I remeber friends of mineral town IS a remake of back to nature,though back to nature is fairly different from 64

Back To Nature was released a year later after 64 for the PS release just set in a different world. Friends of Mineral Town added more npcs to interact within the game since being on GBA, Natsume wasn't screwed with the loading times of psone though you lose the 3D BtN and 64 tried to use.

[Sappho]

I'm confused about the negative feelings towards the features of this game. I'm a die-hard Harvest Moon fan. My favorite has to be the original on SNES, the one I obsessed over for weeks before it finally came out and I played it to death. But it had problems. The time limit was a big one - once it ended, that was it. You couldn't keep going. Limitations in general - limited time, limited space, limited options. But it was the first try, and it was well done. Ever since I played that game, I've always been looking for something very similar but with the problems and shortcomings addressed. None of the other HM games gave me what I was looking for. I wanted freedom to design my farm, decide where to put things. I wanted to be able to interact with more of the world, not just run to pre-generated locations for picking berries in the forest, for example. Because of the time limit, you were forced to maximize your time every day. I never felt truly free to explore.

In this game, I will have more freedom. I can design my farm how I want. I can plant things outside my property. There will be a nice, big variety of things for me to plant. And then there's the mines - they look fantastic! A little bit of fighting, some mining, and a whole lot of exploration of procedurally-generated areas. That hits a happy button in my brain. I love exploration.

Sure, some players will want to maximize their profits or score or whatever. But I'm not in it for that. I want to roleplay. Sure, the game might not have any mechanics in place that encourage me to plant some flowers outside the house of the girl I like. But I can do it if I want, and tell the story in my head, in my own way. I might not maximize profits by planting a variety of crops, but I can do it for aesthetic reasons. (I used to make pictures in the SNES HM by planting crops in particular shapes. I was very proud of my Mario head.)

Basically, from what I've seen, this game has everything I want. It even has a multiplayer feature - I've been looking for a proper multiplayer Harvest Moon for years, and none of the terrible ones on BYOND has even come close to hitting the mark.

Vector, you say there's no story-driven gameplay and it looks like it will be a grind-fest. But that's all in your play style. I want to tell the stories myself, and this game will let me do that. I can make a female character and date a girl in town - might seem unimportant to you, but I've never been given that option in these games. I was always either forced to play a male character (like in most games) or forced to only date boys (ugh). If you look at it as a "game" in the sense of it being driven by shiny rewards and progress markers, then sure, this game is probably not what you're looking for. But if you look at it as a fantasy world where you can create your own character and story, and be free to play them how you want without being constrained by a pre-written storyline, then this looks absolutely amazing.

So maybe it comes down to whether you actually like roleplaying, or just "winning." Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games with good storylines. It's something that will sell me on a game even when the mechanics and design are terrible. But most so-called RPGs just don't really seem like roleplaying to me. They seem like watching an interactive film. I'm not playing the role, I'm just hitting the buttons until the next plot point. That's the real grind-fest - fight X low-level enemies to get strong enough to fight X mid-level enemies to get strong enough to fight X high-level enemies to get strong enough to fight the boss. All just button mashing with a story behind it. A real roleplaying game has to be open-ended. You have to be able to decide how you want to play. You have to have options, even when it comes to something as simple as what to plant and where to plant it.

[Knave]

Well said, Sappho. Couldn't agree more! Now if only I could actually ply this game already

[Akura]

Well said, Sappho. Couldn't agree more! Now if only I could actually ply this game already

I agree with this, and the above agreed-with statement.

[Vector]

Yeah, that is a good point.

I really do like roleplaying, but the thing is that I feel like there's a fine line where I no longer want a piece of software to do it with, you know?  I feel like story, graphics, etc. offer us something to supplement our imaginations.  Too few restrictions and you might as well just turn off the game and imagine it up yourself (or, as I usually think: "Why aren't I spending this time hoeing a vegetable garden and going on dates IRL?"  This is not an issue I typically have with grand strategy games, fortunately); too many and you end up with "press x to win."

So, I'm all for an expanded game a la Stardew Valley from what we had in the HM64 days, but I always felt like what I wanted was, yes, definitely some more freedom about how you play the game, longer days, stuff like that (jesus christ fuck that tiny rucksack)--but I also wanted more secret triggered events, character storylines, and things like that that would help generate the atmosphere.  I feel like the flagship series has emphasized expanding areas and things like that, but never bothered to work on the pre-scripted part of the game, and it was this delicate interaction between script and personal choice that had helped me relax so much.

HM64 really felt like a small town where there was nothing going on but daily life and the occasional festival--it felt like the area that my family's from IRL.  I have, in fact, actually worked a farm for a brief period of time before.  My mom was born in, IIRC, a one-road coal-mining town; they had to drive for hours to get to a town with a hospital.  It hit huge nostalgia buttons.

So in HM64, the hotspring construction project is a Big Honking Deal.  Karen wanting to leave is a big honking deal.  Someone new coming into town is a Big Honking Deal, as is getting a letter and all that.  They managed to make the gameplay restrictions mesh with the tone.  Later games told me that we were in a small town, but it didn't feel like it was.  There wanted to remove restriction--which is good, the game needed it--without recognizing that some of the restriction was what gave the games their charm.  Only being able to get a certain kind of flower seed once a year.  Having your buying options limited so that the snake oil salesman seems like a viable opportunity.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  I feel like I'm making no sense, and I also recognize that there are people here who will probably feel like I should just grow up and pretend all the extra stuff isn't there, but there really is a reason why I'm bringing this up that isn't simply "I don't like having nice things."

[Ivefan]

I feel like I'm making no sense...

You're making some kind of sense, but I am not sure how it is related. You want it to be more scripted NPCs and events? Or you wish to impose some limits on what one is able to do?

[Vector]

There's one main factor:

I felt that after HM64 things stopped feeling like a small-town farming experience.

Things were expanded, which was great, but they expanded things in such a way that it destroyed that feeling.  I would like to see an HM expansion that retains that.  Perhaps you don't add much more characters, but you add more depth to their particular storylines.  Perhaps you don't add much more vegetables (without needing a greenhouse) or too many more animals, you make the growth system slightly more complex than just "water every day."

Or if you can plant everywhere, you can't plant everything everywhere.  Don't just act like you can plant an eggplant in every kind of soil and stuff will be fine.

That's what I'm trying to say--I feel like they've expanded through simple replication, almost copying and pasting, rather than adding legitimate depth to the system.  So when I look for the dream Harvest Moon successor, that's what I want: a game that still feels small, but doesn't feel pinched.

[Ivefan]

Ah. I kinda feel the same when I played the rune factory games. Which plant will give me the highest profit? Plant it everywhere and thats it.
But rune factory had other things that made me like it.

Implementing soil type/quality and ways to change it like fertilizers or irrigation could be interesting.

[Infuriated]

I can't wait for this. I think my ideal is a game something like this but with even more profession options... (and years and years of backlogged ideas just in case I unleash my brain on a programming language but I'll spare everyone the novel ;P) there have been some changes that kinda went against what I like but overall, I really could not ask for more since I've been waiting for anything that looked/played like the original HM.

[Sappho]

There's one main factor:

I felt that after HM64 things stopped feeling like a small-town farming experience.

Things were expanded, which was great, but they expanded things in such a way that it destroyed that feeling.  I would like to see an HM expansion that retains that.  Perhaps you don't add much more characters, but you add more depth to their particular storylines.  Perhaps you don't add much more vegetables (without needing a greenhouse) or too many more animals, you make the growth system slightly more complex than just "water every day."

Or if you can plant everywhere, you can't plant everything everywhere.  Don't just act like you can plant an eggplant in every kind of soil and stuff will be fine.

That's what I'm trying to say--I feel like they've expanded through simple replication, almost copying and pasting, rather than adding legitimate depth to the system.  So when I look for the dream Harvest Moon successor, that's what I want: a game that still feels small, but doesn't feel pinched.

Aha, now I think I better understand your point of view. Something about HM64 hit a nostalgia or familiarity button with you and you want to replicate that feeling with more behind it. So it comes down to wanting complexity over variety, which makes sense. I would certainly not be opposed to complexity being focused on more than variety. On the other hand, I'm also happy with variety - I suppose it would be hard to disappoint me with this game, based on what I've seen. Whatever direction it goes, it already has almost everything I could want. Lucky for me, I guess. : )

[Sirus]

Now that I can actually afford this game when it gets released, I'm doubly excited for it.

Seriously, I just want to grow turnips, get married, and raise cows. Since I can't do any of those in real life, Harvest Moon-likes are my only hope

[Chaoswizkid]

(or, as I usually think: "Why aren't I spending this time hoeing a vegetable garden and going on dates IRL?"  This is not an issue I typically have with grand strategy games, fortunately)

"Damn... why didn't I wake up and try annexing my neighbor today, instead of playing this game... ugh..."

[Steelmagic]

(or, as I usually think: "Why aren't I spending this time hoeing a vegetable garden and going on dates IRL?"  This is not an issue I typically have with grand strategy games, fortunately)

"Damn... why didn't I wake up and try annexing my neighbor today, instead of playing this game... ugh..."

"ugh... i could've spent my time actually usurping the Holy Roman Empire, rather than wasting it on this game".