THE GOOD:- VERY interesting plot line
- Many festivals and items are unique to only this game
- Very large selection of marriage candidates
- Play as a boy OR a girl
- A good number of save spots, so you can play up to at least 4 games
THE BAD:
- Heavy lag
SUMMARY:
Plot~
It was a glorious day in the village when suddenly everything went wrong - the Harvest Goddess turned to stone!
After the love of nature has seemingly vanished, the Harvest Goddess has cast a spell on herself that can only be broken once you find 50 musical notes, hidden in events and good deeds around the town. It's up to you to beat Jaime to saving her!
This plot line is quite different from the other Harvest Moon ((HM)) games. You now have more of a purpose - collect the notes and free the Harvest Goddess ((HG))!
Graphics/Sound~
While these graphics do exceed those of FoMT and the like, they're not exactly as good as we saw in AWL/AnWL. However, the "chibi" like quality does give an interesting twist to the game, with bubbly animals and over exaggerated features for the characters.
The rain is like that of FoMT, which is constantly all day, rather than AWL's on and off weather.
The sound is, yet again, not as advanced as in AWL, but it does fit the chibi theme. A thing that was heavily missed was the thunder, which was realistic, yet absent in this game.
Building~
One of the best features of this game is the building feature.
You're able to upgrade your house, which is actually a requirement for marriage. The levels go up to level 5 ((I believe)) and become available after befriending Woody, Joe, or Kurt, the people who will be building your house. As you upgrade your house, the room gets wider and the house gets taller. You can have up to 2 floors, and the room gets quite large.
The worst thing about the second floor is you can't put your bed up there, which is disappointing if you wanted to make it a bedroom.
A great feature is the ability to buy more than one house! You can buy up to three, which will allow you to have different house for different needs. For example, if you have a house in the town and a house in the mountains, you might want to stay in the town house if you need to catch a shop early in the morning. But if you're planting crops in the mountains, you might want to stay in the mountain house. It's very convenient to have more than one!
More buildings include your chicken coop and your barn. The chicken coop cannot be upgraded, but the barn can! You can upgrade it once, giving you room for twice as many animals. But you may not purchase more than one of each.
Land~
Right beside Building on the scale of great features is the land feature.
When you begin, you have the choice of three plots of land. Depending on your needs, you'll choose one of the plots of land. The plot by the river is great for farming, but if you want animals, you'll need to buy the ocean plot later. The ocean plot can house both farming and animals, but the soil is bad. The village property is very small and can't house either, but you're closer to the village and the shops.
Aside from these three, there's plenty more! By befriending the Mayor, you unlock new plots of land around the town. Basically, any plot that isn't being occupied by a store, or will later be occupied by a store, is purchasable! Depending on the area they can run up to tens of thousands of dollars.
What's so great about this land? Living, of course!
If there's a certain spot that you like, you can move your house there! Go to the wood shop and request your house to be moved. This goes for any building, including your house, chicken coop, and barn. For instance, if you like living in the mountains, you can move all three of those buildings up there!
Marriage~
Here we go, the ever-famous marriage!
An excellent addition to this game is the quantity of marriage candidates. There are over 5 people to marry for both boys and girls, all with different personalities and different appearances. I'll leave it to you to find out about them, it should be a nice surprise!
Your husband/wife will never leave your first house. I mean, of course they'll walk around the town, and continue their daily lives, but if you have more than one house, they'll never live in anything except the original house!
Aside from that, you get a child again! That most disappointing aspect is that your child will never grow up. It sleeps in a crib, and you can either hold it, or let it crawl around!
Lagging~
The most disappointing aspect of this game is the lag.
I noticed that when walking past a large group of animals, such as the ranch or your barn animals, the game will lag and become very slow. But this is somewhat avoidable, and will usually go away within a few seconds of leaving the area!
Musical Notes~
The biggest part of this game is the recovering of Musical Notes! In order to free the HG, musical notes must be collected.
Some are hard, and some are easy! There are 100 notes in total, but you only need 50 to get the HG back! They range anywhere from putting something in the trash to shipping one of every fish.
Overall~
Overall, this game is one of the best HM games I've played. There are so many unique features and aspects of this game that it rarely gets repetitive. If I had to choose between all the HM games, I'd say this would be the first I get.
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