marinehaddock
I think it's one of the Harvest Moon games that really captures what people wanted from the series (pre-Stardew)
There's a fun story that you need to unlock everything
The characters are interesting and the marriage candidates are mostly delightful
The festivals are fun and feel more diverse than others in the series
My main gripe is my husband, the Wizard, only talks about the plot and I'd love to have any other dialogue with him
And you can only have 3 types of animals in your barn due to the memory limitations. It's a shame because the game has many cool types of animal but you feel tied to specific ones to meet the needs of every day farming
You can play through the story very fast if you wish
We had the main story completed in Autumn of year 1 with minimal preparation and mostly stalled by waiting on the right weather conditions cause weather is decided a whole year at a time.
But, it's easy to draw it out if you forget to set aside specific things for events.
Marriage was achievable and I enjoyed the interactions we got from the candidates (even if Chase did call me out on dating everyone) and this game has rival marriages though those are pretty hit of miss among fans
Personally I'd like this to come back in a queer way
The mining is fun, though fairly standard. It's involved just enough but it's really hard to get the material you need as the ore is hard to find and then there's only a random chance of it successfully becoming ingots. This has prevented me upgrading my tools consistently.
The fishing is fairly basic but the king fish add a fun challenge with having to land in the exact right spot and hope you get it. You can also catch all the king fish multiple times so they're really good to work towards.
Money is very hard won in this game overall. Fish don't pay a lot. If you plant crops consistently, the soil will get worse and your crops will decline in quality. Mining is based on chance. Animals are probably the most consistent but sheering the sheep makes you lose friendship
It poses an interesting challenge for a cosy game as it's really making you diversify your activities.
I also think it's interesting how the game is so centred around death. Multiple characters reference people who have died, there's the graveyard you can visit, etc.
I think it's interesting how death is such a present part of the world without AWL's strategy of "by the way, YOU will die" that can make you worry about wasting any in game day when the Very Fast March of Death is approaching.
I'd love to see a remake of Animal Parade - though I'd like if we could incorporate the acceptance of queer people especially when...
Well, the Japanese version called Julius a slur. They took it out in the translation but YEAH.
If you've got a wii and want to experience harvest moon, this is definitely the game I'd recommend for beginners. It's not too obtuse. It's not glitchy. It's not overwhelming. It's cosy with just enough difficulty.
There's a fun story that you need to unlock everything
The characters are interesting and the marriage candidates are mostly delightful
The festivals are fun and feel more diverse than others in the series
My main gripe is my husband, the Wizard, only talks about the plot and I'd love to have any other dialogue with him
And you can only have 3 types of animals in your barn due to the memory limitations. It's a shame because the game has many cool types of animal but you feel tied to specific ones to meet the needs of every day farming
You can play through the story very fast if you wish
We had the main story completed in Autumn of year 1 with minimal preparation and mostly stalled by waiting on the right weather conditions cause weather is decided a whole year at a time.
But, it's easy to draw it out if you forget to set aside specific things for events.
Marriage was achievable and I enjoyed the interactions we got from the candidates (even if Chase did call me out on dating everyone) and this game has rival marriages though those are pretty hit of miss among fans
Personally I'd like this to come back in a queer way
The mining is fun, though fairly standard. It's involved just enough but it's really hard to get the material you need as the ore is hard to find and then there's only a random chance of it successfully becoming ingots. This has prevented me upgrading my tools consistently.
The fishing is fairly basic but the king fish add a fun challenge with having to land in the exact right spot and hope you get it. You can also catch all the king fish multiple times so they're really good to work towards.
Money is very hard won in this game overall. Fish don't pay a lot. If you plant crops consistently, the soil will get worse and your crops will decline in quality. Mining is based on chance. Animals are probably the most consistent but sheering the sheep makes you lose friendship
It poses an interesting challenge for a cosy game as it's really making you diversify your activities.
I also think it's interesting how the game is so centred around death. Multiple characters reference people who have died, there's the graveyard you can visit, etc.
I think it's interesting how death is such a present part of the world without AWL's strategy of "by the way, YOU will die" that can make you worry about wasting any in game day when the Very Fast March of Death is approaching.
I'd love to see a remake of Animal Parade - though I'd like if we could incorporate the acceptance of queer people especially when...
Well, the Japanese version called Julius a slur. They took it out in the translation but YEAH.
If you've got a wii and want to experience harvest moon, this is definitely the game I'd recommend for beginners. It's not too obtuse. It's not glitchy. It's not overwhelming. It's cosy with just enough difficulty.
This review contains spoilers
Review for SEBEC Route only, I just restarted to play Snow Queen.
I absolutely loved this game. I got through the main story in about 30 hours, but I chose to spend 20 hours grinding just for fun (which ended up being the deciding factor for me playing Snow Queen). The grinding in this game is almost an idle game to me, only occassionally needing to change things up and after a while I had the enemies well memorised.
I missed the fusion spells Persona 2 has to offer, and I'll admit that the area limitations (in terms of what a character can hit based on where they are) were something that initially scared me when I tried to play this years ago. However, I actually adapted really quickly and only needed to change up my team layout a couple of times. I loved the first person perspective combined with how fast you move - bouncing off the walls brought me such great joy throughout.
The game is super clear in what you need to do and when unless it's something secret/unlockable (such as the Snow Queen Route - which I almost stumbled into doing the first time by pure chance - or having Reiji as a playable character). I was never struggling for where to go and there was only one occassion where I grabbed a guide and it was because I failed to notice a staircase on the map and a minor glitch later showed on the map that I'd already been down it when I hadn't.
I really appreciated the story for how the idea of Personas was handled. The game puts emphasis on the lack of a true self (in contrast to what later installments would insist upon) and confronts the fact that there are many aspects to what makes a person and those change depending on the situation and your existence in other people's eyes. It addressed the conflict of feeling like you're not being true to yourself because of how you act in different situations, the concept of someone being "fake", and recognised that that can be something difficult to navigate. In the end, it did give the simple answer of "it doesn't matter. Stop getting lost in the details. It's all you. You're you and you're real no matter what." and I think that is beautiful. I think it's something that is worth addressing regardless of age because anyone can get caught up in the concept of being "genuine". This game really reminded me why I loved Persona 2 so much and Persona 1 is now my second favourite in the series because of how frank and real it feels.
One thing is I really wasn't sold on Maki having feelings for the protagonist. I appreciate their relationship doesn't seem to come to anything, because it just didn't feel like it really made sense. Honestly, was cheering for Mark and Maki quite a bit - their relationship was pretty cute!
Controls wise, I found the d-pad difficult to work with compared to the joystick. I'd definitely recommend joystick for playability.
Songs are absolute bangers, I never got sick of the battle music and Battle Tesso is iconic. I'm desperate to use that track in any situation.
I wasn't completely enamoured with the 3D in the cutscenes - I'd have preferred 2D for them - but they don't look bad. They're clearly higher quality than the Playstation 2 models Atlus were using at the time.
I absolutely loved this game. I got through the main story in about 30 hours, but I chose to spend 20 hours grinding just for fun (which ended up being the deciding factor for me playing Snow Queen). The grinding in this game is almost an idle game to me, only occassionally needing to change things up and after a while I had the enemies well memorised.
I missed the fusion spells Persona 2 has to offer, and I'll admit that the area limitations (in terms of what a character can hit based on where they are) were something that initially scared me when I tried to play this years ago. However, I actually adapted really quickly and only needed to change up my team layout a couple of times. I loved the first person perspective combined with how fast you move - bouncing off the walls brought me such great joy throughout.
The game is super clear in what you need to do and when unless it's something secret/unlockable (such as the Snow Queen Route - which I almost stumbled into doing the first time by pure chance - or having Reiji as a playable character). I was never struggling for where to go and there was only one occassion where I grabbed a guide and it was because I failed to notice a staircase on the map and a minor glitch later showed on the map that I'd already been down it when I hadn't.
I really appreciated the story for how the idea of Personas was handled. The game puts emphasis on the lack of a true self (in contrast to what later installments would insist upon) and confronts the fact that there are many aspects to what makes a person and those change depending on the situation and your existence in other people's eyes. It addressed the conflict of feeling like you're not being true to yourself because of how you act in different situations, the concept of someone being "fake", and recognised that that can be something difficult to navigate. In the end, it did give the simple answer of "it doesn't matter. Stop getting lost in the details. It's all you. You're you and you're real no matter what." and I think that is beautiful. I think it's something that is worth addressing regardless of age because anyone can get caught up in the concept of being "genuine". This game really reminded me why I loved Persona 2 so much and Persona 1 is now my second favourite in the series because of how frank and real it feels.
One thing is I really wasn't sold on Maki having feelings for the protagonist. I appreciate their relationship doesn't seem to come to anything, because it just didn't feel like it really made sense. Honestly, was cheering for Mark and Maki quite a bit - their relationship was pretty cute!
Controls wise, I found the d-pad difficult to work with compared to the joystick. I'd definitely recommend joystick for playability.
Songs are absolute bangers, I never got sick of the battle music and Battle Tesso is iconic. I'm desperate to use that track in any situation.
I wasn't completely enamoured with the 3D in the cutscenes - I'd have preferred 2D for them - but they don't look bad. They're clearly higher quality than the Playstation 2 models Atlus were using at the time.
The love web was too complicated for me and not nearly interesting enough for me to care. I liked the sentry guns.
2019
Literally the only good thing in this game is the fact it let me turn Goro Akechi into my attic wife, if not for that I wouldn't have bothered completing it by the 50th day of literally nothing happening.
After everything that was said about this, I actually really enjoyed what The Teal Mask had to offer. I liked the new characters, I was interested in their stories and dynamics. Kitakami was really fun to explore and pulled a lot from the feeling of Johto that helped if feel like it had its place in the pokemon world. It's not perfect but I think as far as DLC goes without interrupting the stories of the previous main characters, it really worked for what it was.
The complexities of the new caves really appealed to me to, it gave a great sense for exploring and having to fight my way back as I see myself falling past something I'd want to explore.
The complexities of the new caves really appealed to me to, it gave a great sense for exploring and having to fight my way back as I see myself falling past something I'd want to explore.