Harvest Moon (SNES, 1996)
Graphics-7.5 Sound-6.5 Control-6 Challenge-6.5? Story-6
Level Design-5.5 Frustration-7.5/8.5* Fun-5.5 Originality-8
Overall Score-6
*Getting the max ranch master score (or thereabouts) after finishing a run
+
Pretty in-depth farming life sim within a JRPG-like format (clear and prepare land, grow (plant and water, pay attention to seasons) crops, feed and breed animals (cows and chickens), maintain and improve the farm (can upgrade your house twice using gold+wood as well as paint it), order goods in town, can use a horse to carry goods to the shipping box (gained after a few weeks, can also ride it and jump over fences with it), get married (4 different wives to choose from) and have up to 2 kids, fishing, etc.), day/night cycle (too fast though, can't enter town houses at night besides the bar and some items can't be found - however time actually stops at night until you go to bed and also stops while in the barn so you can take advantage of this to get more things done (however goods like fruit put in the shipping box at night just goes to waste))
Run button
Can jump over fences on the farm
Can read people's diaries (to check girls' affection scores - represented by hearts)
Some hidden items (you'll get a clue when some of them become findable (the manual tells about some as well)
Event-based tool upgrades - can buy them if you fail
Minor puzzles for two of the stamina berries
Can call on the horse or dog by whistling (R and L respectively) - later used in Ico
20 (!) different endings - each based on what you've specialized in/excelled at (can't get all of them in a single run)
Can prematurely end the game at any point with start+select+l+r when going to bed - this is the only way to check all your stats
Reputation system (affection from animals and women+your kids; talk and brush animals for more affection (hitting them lowers it)
Can do various things to gain women's and your kids' affection (festival dates, gifts, yes/no questions, etc.))
Basic happiness system (do well in general, spot seasonal animals and catch fish)
Can lose your wife (only temporarily and only once though)
Weather (rain, lightning storm, hurricane, snow - these can make calves sick) and weather forecasts via the TV in your house, can speed up text on a per paragraph basis, decent art direction (a bit like Zelda 3 or Earthbound)
Different fruit to collect depending on the season
Modern day or near modern day Japan setting
Can skip ahead to the next day by going to bed early (not recommended if you want the better endings or a high score though)
Wood and grass automatically ends up in storage boxes when harvested
Some relatively advanced tactics in how you place your crops (shown in the manual though)
+/-
Open ended structure and you don't have to focus on farming (can become a ladies' man or bachelor/outdoorsman)
The time limit per run is 2.5 years and a year is 120 days only with each season being a month long
Video tutorial - shows various parts of gameplay without any text so it's a bit lacking (there are various info tomes in-game though but they're very spread out so you're better off writing the info down or checking a guide)
Healing (stamina) spring north of the farm
Fatigue/stamina mechanic (upgradeable via hidden power berries)
Tile-based world
Zelda 3 reference (pond fairy for the golden axe)
Can't play as a woman
Jack and the beanstalk reference (magic bean - plant in spring at mountain summit)
It's not beneficial to keep livestock outside here besides not having to feed them when it's not winter (no boost to affection, various negatives as listed below)
Randomly find items by digging (can actually dig the same tile over and over; 10-50 gold, 2 power berries, moles - can't do anything with these) - A Link to the Past
Amusingly you can keep your dog or chickens anywhere (the latter won't lay eggs outside the farm's pen though, can keep chickens you want to sell in your own house)
Chickens eat (fodder from) grass here - weird but more convenient
No diagonal movement
All shops are closed on sundays (some on saturday as well)
Need to use a stone or a piece of fence to unplow a plowed tile
Stone fences are useless - can't jump over them and they hurt your score at the end
No fatigue from removing weeds or moving stones
Ripe crops don't need to be watered and will last indefinitely until picked
Chickens can't get sick or die from starvation
Can't fish nor buy livestock when it's raining
Pregnant cows don't get sick - the exception where it's good to have an animal outside since you don't have to manually feed them (unless it's winter; however breeding is less profitable than buying a new cow and (only adds a little bit to affection but also a good boost to happiness when the calf is born)
You make cows pregnant with a "miracle potion" (lol) - expensive
Spring crops will grow and can be harvested in the summer as long as you planted them during springtime
No competition for any of the women in town
Selling livestock results in a fairly big negative to happiness and reading a diary gives a -1 regardless of what it says
Seeing animals north of the farm is the best source of happiness overall (though sometimes you have to enter the screen several times) and the second is giving your wife a bunch of eggs on your anniversary
Can woo Nina or Eve pretty quickly using tricks (which are rather monotonous)
Spotting butterflies or the monkey doesn't add to happiness
Can't do anything during a hurricane day and they can happen twice in a row (they also destroy some of your crops - made more annoying because you can't use just 1 seed to fill in 1 tile (9 is minimum))
-
Some tedious aspects (neither the livestock dealer nor the manual tells you how many grass tiles you need to buy a cow (16 tiles after taking each chicken into account (16 per chicken)), having to use a tool 6+ times on something to clear it until you've upgraded the tool since you're just standing there and mashing the button, you get tired too quickly early on and the watering can doesn't hold much - leads to backtracking to the spring and to ponds (the sprinkler helps quite a bit but it takes fairly long before you can buy it and it seems to make you tired a bit faster), can only carry one crop at a time to the shipping box - more backtracking)
Various interface/control issues (can't walk through nor push chickens even though they can walk through each other, use a bag of seeds (or other consumable item) once in the wrong place and it's wasted, can't pause while carrying certain items, can't see how many of a seed type that you're currently carrying, can't reach the middle tile in a 3x3 pattern unless it's grass so you need to leave a space open at the bottom, unskippable fatigue animations which pause gameplay for ~3 secs at a time instead of a stamina meter and hidden stamina stats for actions - 5 times in the hot spring recovers it all and you can use it over and over in a single day (the secret garden flowers north of your farm are apparently a power berry (extra stamina) indicator but that's it), can only buy one seed bag at a time, can't see what seed a bag represents while at the farm, keep running forward if you hold the run button down, can't change game/time speed, have to upgrade your house before the end of the first summer to be able to check the exact time of day via the menu, organizing fences and farm land is rather slow (one tile at a time, the latter (and watering) becomes a bit faster with better tools but it takes a while, boxing in (Simcity 2000) or drag & drop systems would've been preferable here, very limited player inventory - can only carry two tools at a time and you auto-switch the currently equipped item out if picking up something else, pretty short name limits, can't put a piece of fence back into the woodshed after taking it out)
Some typos and grammatical errors
Trial & error (hidden affection scores for animals and various happiness scores, the purple turtle shell talisman doesn't protect against disasters (does count towards your score at the end at least), the "money tree" you can buy in year 2 is actually a cow bell tree so it's pretty much useless, if you carry a flower into town on the day of a festival it just disappears, can't place bought chicken fodder in the fodder box - means you waste most of it unless you have a lot of chickens (should've just been added to the box automatically), only one egg at a time in the hatchery and if you try to place more they'll break, there is a narrow range of the number of crops you should sell to get the best score at the end of the game based on intervals of 512 (496-511/1008-1023/1520-1535) - more is not necessarily better!, grass tiles cannot be removed once planted - better to put grass to the east or north, time stands still in the barn but not outside (chickens do not lay eggs outside and can be eaten by wild dogs, cows risk sickness if it rains/you forget to feed them or crankiness if any fence pieces break, having numerous animals outside will cause a major slowdown), no need to feed calves/baby cows and they don't get sick, if you walk up to the wandering salesman and "use" a good on him instead of placing it on the table next to him it's wasted, can't place signs to help keep track of crops, once cows start to produce large milk there is no practical reason to keep brushing or talking to them for more than 2-3 days afterwards (for the top score when the game ends), Eve doesn't like going to bed at the same time nor before you so you have to buy her more gifts, Eve's affection score will not decrease if you talk to or even dance with any other girls during the flower festival (despite her warning), you need to hug (pick up) your dog 100 times or more to receive the best ending - no other point to the dog in this game besides warning about wild dogs, the women have preferences when it comes to gifts and you can't ask in advance)
No music during nighttime (nor when it's raining) - you'll likely spend more time during the night than during the morning and day
Repetitive (only two types of seeds per season, no seeds in fall nor winter (and no greenhouse) - 54 days with a good chunk of the game unavailable, not enough variety in what you can do to make the women like you more in-between the festivals and special events, the women repeat the same dialogue a lot (in fact all of them besides Eve act the same after getting married and only have some minor preference differences), )
Some out of tune instruments in some songs (emulation error?), Somewhat annoying dialogue sfx, No whistling sfx
Fishing isn't much fun (basically you just press the button when the rod twitches and it's a dice roll if you get a fish or not) and there isn't much to finding animals to the north either (a matter of luck if they appear and you can't interact with any of them besides the rabbit which is a single event)
Slowdown in the barn once you have 8+ cows or 10+ chickens
No summer festivals
A bit hard to tell the difference between a seeded tile and a non-seeded one when it's raining if playing on a TV
Buying perfume (and flowers) isn't worth the money?
Non-interactive dancing (unskippable in-game cutscene)
Can't find any happiness increasing animals to the north during summer
Whatever you're carrying in your hands when the trader comes to buy your goods is wasted even if you're right next to the box
The Full Moon Berry is a special fruit that only grows for a few days in the fall (day 10 to day 12) and is found on the mountain summit - no hint?
Notes:
-Finished one year and got married+upgraded and painted the house, checked the other endings online
Bugs:
-Fences are bugged in that only broken pieces cause wild dogs to appear - means you're better off without having a fence!,
-The game determines whether a ground tile is "watered" or "unwatered" only when the day begins - you still need to water any seeds you plant on a rainy day or any summer crops that you pick vegetables from. In the summer, you also need to water tomato and corn plants on the days you pick the vegetables if it's raining.
-If you are married to Maria or Nina, they will give you a message about dancing later (during the flower festival). Each time you receive this message, the girl's affection score increases by 4 points. Talk to her repeatedly to quickly maximize her love towards you.
-Sometimes the horse will "freeze" in position for a few seconds and the saddle bags will not inflate. Although this is pretty normal, you are not paid for crops when this happens. If you notice it happening more than once at a time, whistle for the horse or do something to get him moving again. This should fix the problem.
-If you use the Medicine on a pregnant cow, it will reduce the pregnancy time to zero and the cow will give birth the next day (might make it worth using pregnant cows rather than buying them?)
Level Design-5.5 Frustration-7.5/8.5* Fun-5.5 Originality-8
Overall Score-6
*Getting the max ranch master score (or thereabouts) after finishing a run
+
Pretty in-depth farming life sim within a JRPG-like format (clear and prepare land, grow (plant and water, pay attention to seasons) crops, feed and breed animals (cows and chickens), maintain and improve the farm (can upgrade your house twice using gold+wood as well as paint it), order goods in town, can use a horse to carry goods to the shipping box (gained after a few weeks, can also ride it and jump over fences with it), get married (4 different wives to choose from) and have up to 2 kids, fishing, etc.), day/night cycle (too fast though, can't enter town houses at night besides the bar and some items can't be found - however time actually stops at night until you go to bed and also stops while in the barn so you can take advantage of this to get more things done (however goods like fruit put in the shipping box at night just goes to waste))
Run button
Can jump over fences on the farm
Can read people's diaries (to check girls' affection scores - represented by hearts)
Some hidden items (you'll get a clue when some of them become findable (the manual tells about some as well)
Event-based tool upgrades - can buy them if you fail
Minor puzzles for two of the stamina berries
Can call on the horse or dog by whistling (R and L respectively) - later used in Ico
20 (!) different endings - each based on what you've specialized in/excelled at (can't get all of them in a single run)
Can prematurely end the game at any point with start+select+l+r when going to bed - this is the only way to check all your stats
Reputation system (affection from animals and women+your kids; talk and brush animals for more affection (hitting them lowers it)
Can do various things to gain women's and your kids' affection (festival dates, gifts, yes/no questions, etc.))
Basic happiness system (do well in general, spot seasonal animals and catch fish)
Can lose your wife (only temporarily and only once though)
Weather (rain, lightning storm, hurricane, snow - these can make calves sick) and weather forecasts via the TV in your house, can speed up text on a per paragraph basis, decent art direction (a bit like Zelda 3 or Earthbound)
Different fruit to collect depending on the season
Modern day or near modern day Japan setting
Can skip ahead to the next day by going to bed early (not recommended if you want the better endings or a high score though)
Wood and grass automatically ends up in storage boxes when harvested
Some relatively advanced tactics in how you place your crops (shown in the manual though)
+/-
Open ended structure and you don't have to focus on farming (can become a ladies' man or bachelor/outdoorsman)
The time limit per run is 2.5 years and a year is 120 days only with each season being a month long
Video tutorial - shows various parts of gameplay without any text so it's a bit lacking (there are various info tomes in-game though but they're very spread out so you're better off writing the info down or checking a guide)
Healing (stamina) spring north of the farm
Fatigue/stamina mechanic (upgradeable via hidden power berries)
Tile-based world
Zelda 3 reference (pond fairy for the golden axe)
Can't play as a woman
Jack and the beanstalk reference (magic bean - plant in spring at mountain summit)
It's not beneficial to keep livestock outside here besides not having to feed them when it's not winter (no boost to affection, various negatives as listed below)
Randomly find items by digging (can actually dig the same tile over and over; 10-50 gold, 2 power berries, moles - can't do anything with these) - A Link to the Past
Amusingly you can keep your dog or chickens anywhere (the latter won't lay eggs outside the farm's pen though, can keep chickens you want to sell in your own house)
Chickens eat (fodder from) grass here - weird but more convenient
No diagonal movement
All shops are closed on sundays (some on saturday as well)
Need to use a stone or a piece of fence to unplow a plowed tile
Stone fences are useless - can't jump over them and they hurt your score at the end
No fatigue from removing weeds or moving stones
Ripe crops don't need to be watered and will last indefinitely until picked
Chickens can't get sick or die from starvation
Can't fish nor buy livestock when it's raining
Pregnant cows don't get sick - the exception where it's good to have an animal outside since you don't have to manually feed them (unless it's winter; however breeding is less profitable than buying a new cow and (only adds a little bit to affection but also a good boost to happiness when the calf is born)
You make cows pregnant with a "miracle potion" (lol) - expensive
Spring crops will grow and can be harvested in the summer as long as you planted them during springtime
No competition for any of the women in town
Selling livestock results in a fairly big negative to happiness and reading a diary gives a -1 regardless of what it says
Seeing animals north of the farm is the best source of happiness overall (though sometimes you have to enter the screen several times) and the second is giving your wife a bunch of eggs on your anniversary
Can woo Nina or Eve pretty quickly using tricks (which are rather monotonous)
Spotting butterflies or the monkey doesn't add to happiness
Can't do anything during a hurricane day and they can happen twice in a row (they also destroy some of your crops - made more annoying because you can't use just 1 seed to fill in 1 tile (9 is minimum))
-
Some tedious aspects (neither the livestock dealer nor the manual tells you how many grass tiles you need to buy a cow (16 tiles after taking each chicken into account (16 per chicken)), having to use a tool 6+ times on something to clear it until you've upgraded the tool since you're just standing there and mashing the button, you get tired too quickly early on and the watering can doesn't hold much - leads to backtracking to the spring and to ponds (the sprinkler helps quite a bit but it takes fairly long before you can buy it and it seems to make you tired a bit faster), can only carry one crop at a time to the shipping box - more backtracking)
Various interface/control issues (can't walk through nor push chickens even though they can walk through each other, use a bag of seeds (or other consumable item) once in the wrong place and it's wasted, can't pause while carrying certain items, can't see how many of a seed type that you're currently carrying, can't reach the middle tile in a 3x3 pattern unless it's grass so you need to leave a space open at the bottom, unskippable fatigue animations which pause gameplay for ~3 secs at a time instead of a stamina meter and hidden stamina stats for actions - 5 times in the hot spring recovers it all and you can use it over and over in a single day (the secret garden flowers north of your farm are apparently a power berry (extra stamina) indicator but that's it), can only buy one seed bag at a time, can't see what seed a bag represents while at the farm, keep running forward if you hold the run button down, can't change game/time speed, have to upgrade your house before the end of the first summer to be able to check the exact time of day via the menu, organizing fences and farm land is rather slow (one tile at a time, the latter (and watering) becomes a bit faster with better tools but it takes a while, boxing in (Simcity 2000) or drag & drop systems would've been preferable here, very limited player inventory - can only carry two tools at a time and you auto-switch the currently equipped item out if picking up something else, pretty short name limits, can't put a piece of fence back into the woodshed after taking it out)
Some typos and grammatical errors
Trial & error (hidden affection scores for animals and various happiness scores, the purple turtle shell talisman doesn't protect against disasters (does count towards your score at the end at least), the "money tree" you can buy in year 2 is actually a cow bell tree so it's pretty much useless, if you carry a flower into town on the day of a festival it just disappears, can't place bought chicken fodder in the fodder box - means you waste most of it unless you have a lot of chickens (should've just been added to the box automatically), only one egg at a time in the hatchery and if you try to place more they'll break, there is a narrow range of the number of crops you should sell to get the best score at the end of the game based on intervals of 512 (496-511/1008-1023/1520-1535) - more is not necessarily better!, grass tiles cannot be removed once planted - better to put grass to the east or north, time stands still in the barn but not outside (chickens do not lay eggs outside and can be eaten by wild dogs, cows risk sickness if it rains/you forget to feed them or crankiness if any fence pieces break, having numerous animals outside will cause a major slowdown), no need to feed calves/baby cows and they don't get sick, if you walk up to the wandering salesman and "use" a good on him instead of placing it on the table next to him it's wasted, can't place signs to help keep track of crops, once cows start to produce large milk there is no practical reason to keep brushing or talking to them for more than 2-3 days afterwards (for the top score when the game ends), Eve doesn't like going to bed at the same time nor before you so you have to buy her more gifts, Eve's affection score will not decrease if you talk to or even dance with any other girls during the flower festival (despite her warning), you need to hug (pick up) your dog 100 times or more to receive the best ending - no other point to the dog in this game besides warning about wild dogs, the women have preferences when it comes to gifts and you can't ask in advance)
No music during nighttime (nor when it's raining) - you'll likely spend more time during the night than during the morning and day
Repetitive (only two types of seeds per season, no seeds in fall nor winter (and no greenhouse) - 54 days with a good chunk of the game unavailable, not enough variety in what you can do to make the women like you more in-between the festivals and special events, the women repeat the same dialogue a lot (in fact all of them besides Eve act the same after getting married and only have some minor preference differences), )
Some out of tune instruments in some songs (emulation error?), Somewhat annoying dialogue sfx, No whistling sfx
Fishing isn't much fun (basically you just press the button when the rod twitches and it's a dice roll if you get a fish or not) and there isn't much to finding animals to the north either (a matter of luck if they appear and you can't interact with any of them besides the rabbit which is a single event)
Slowdown in the barn once you have 8+ cows or 10+ chickens
No summer festivals
A bit hard to tell the difference between a seeded tile and a non-seeded one when it's raining if playing on a TV
Buying perfume (and flowers) isn't worth the money?
Non-interactive dancing (unskippable in-game cutscene)
Can't find any happiness increasing animals to the north during summer
Whatever you're carrying in your hands when the trader comes to buy your goods is wasted even if you're right next to the box
The Full Moon Berry is a special fruit that only grows for a few days in the fall (day 10 to day 12) and is found on the mountain summit - no hint?
Notes:
-Finished one year and got married+upgraded and painted the house, checked the other endings online
Bugs:
-Fences are bugged in that only broken pieces cause wild dogs to appear - means you're better off without having a fence!,
-The game determines whether a ground tile is "watered" or "unwatered" only when the day begins - you still need to water any seeds you plant on a rainy day or any summer crops that you pick vegetables from. In the summer, you also need to water tomato and corn plants on the days you pick the vegetables if it's raining.
-If you are married to Maria or Nina, they will give you a message about dancing later (during the flower festival). Each time you receive this message, the girl's affection score increases by 4 points. Talk to her repeatedly to quickly maximize her love towards you.
-Sometimes the horse will "freeze" in position for a few seconds and the saddle bags will not inflate. Although this is pretty normal, you are not paid for crops when this happens. If you notice it happening more than once at a time, whistle for the horse or do something to get him moving again. This should fix the problem.
-If you use the Medicine on a pregnant cow, it will reduce the pregnancy time to zero and the cow will give birth the next day (might make it worth using pregnant cows rather than buying them?)