Harvest Moon was unique at the time, I remember reading about the 64 game in Nintendo Power and was like "You can get married, have kids, etcetera!?" it just seemed so crazy compared to everything else. I obsessed over reading those couple pages in Nintendo Power, I actually played through one year of that game on emulator even though my pc at the time could only run it at like 20% speed. Animal Crossing kind of inherited the will of the game, for me anyway, just a weird life sim that was so different compared to everything else of the era. Not that it matters in the context of the video, but the Switch Harvest Moon game you showed is one of the fake "zombie" harvest moons. After Natsume lost the publishing rights in 2014 in the west they still retained the rights to the name Harvest Moon so they decided to make their own off brand shitty farming sims, while the actual "Harvest Moon" games are still being made but under the "Story of Seasons" moniker.
I felt the same way about the snes version. Having a family and making a farm as well as all the lil supernatural stuff in between felt like such a revolutionary idea that I had to get it.
I remember renting and really liking this game long ago. I don't think I ran out of things to do in the rental period, so I have fond memories of it. I think it was a trailblazer in its genre, so it should be seen in that light, giving partial credit for the games that came after it. Rune factory became some of my favorite games. I remember looking to buy this game back then and not being able to find a copy anywhere new or used
I remember liking the SNES Harvest Moon when I was a kid, but yeah I was really obsessed with Harvest Moon 64. Friends of Mineral Town which was on GBA is considered the "best" version, and it got a remake within the last year or two under Harvest Moon's new name Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. I'm not surprised the first game has a lack of things to do. It really seems like a proof of concept that they kept building on for the next several iterations. All the way up to Friends of Mineral Town they reuse that same village, mountain area and farm. After that the setting changes and the games become a bit more varied.
Honestly I kind of dislike the idea of "beating" a harvest moon game as an ultimate objective. I've played several games in the series, including stardew valley. I've never got to the end of the three years or whatever time they choose to stop you. I just play for a while, have a lot of fun starting my farm, building up ways of getting money and buying stuff, having a family and once I am satisfied... I stop and go play something else. I mean that is what simulation games are for right? Harvest moon having an ending almost gives the wrong idea tbh. Imagine if The Sims or simcity had endings... They all have objectives and once you reach your prefered objectives you just stop, and come back to play in a new save file a few years later or whatever. Honestly I aprpeciate that this game let's you see the ending whenever you want. Reaching the ending of a harvest moon game is to me more aking to getting the platinum trophy than to "beating" the game. Some people complain that they don't let you continue after the three years in some of these games (probably not this one). So I say... take it like a simulation game, just a very shallow one that runs out of content pretty fast, you have fun building up your farm, you accomplished your goals and you got bored and that to me is the ending of every simulation game.
seriously, how did he miss the "HOW TO PLAY" option on the menu, i get not using external guides, i do think it cheapens the experience, but if the developers put a guide inside the game, they probably knew the game is not very intuitive for first timers. also, how can he could not figure out that if he used a tool and nothing happened, he probably fucked up something? buffonery aside, i do agree with him that Harvest Moon SNES is barren (no pun intended), the game has almost nothing but the same gameloop. for those who can get into it (like me, and i havent touched this game in decades), its fine, but it is very poor content wise, the game has 4 types of crops, Fall and Winter are dead seasons, the player has no inventory, characters have sparse dialogue, has no cooking system, only a handful of tracks to play during the game, its a very small game with a troubled development cycle. it was a nice prototype, but thats that, a prototype released in 1996, the Nintendo 64 just released, and the Playstation was out for 2 years, its a miracle that this game spawned a series at all, let alone a currently living and thriving series (albeit renamed in the west as Story of Seasons). Later games refine so much, SNES Harvest Moon is like Metroid (NES), its a respectable piece of story, but its obsolete and vastly surpassed by its successors.
A lot of the fun I had with harvest moon as a kid was just imagining character traits for all the characters. Kind of like how one would play with dolls.
Harvest Moon SNES is much more of a game I respect than like. It's very influential and every Nintendo Direct has 10000 games with a farm on them now. Now you can grow crops even in the newest Zelda. But also as you said there's a ton of different much better versions of this made after the fact so why would you go back and play this one specifically
Man that review was hilarious, really enjoyed it. I bought this game when it came out and loved it, didn't know anyone else who did. Everyone thought the idea was so dumb at the time. You can see how they hadn't really figured out how to make a good one yet, it's humanity's first crack at the concept. I enjoy how quaint it is though.
I liken gamers into two categories, though there's major overlaps in those two categories and mine is extremely simplistic. Still, there are two types of gamers to be: experience gamers and mechanical gamers. Experience gamers tend to see games akin to a book or a movie. They tend to look at them with the opinion 'whats the goal, the endpoint and the meaning of the narrative' Mechanical gamers tend to see games more like chess or board games. They tend to look at it thinking 'what can the system do, what's the core gameplay loop and how can I use it'. Games as a narrative platform vs games as a purely mechanical system. That's the main line of difference and why I as well could never get into harvest moon either. I didn't see the point. I also think this was the main reason why jrpgs have always had a bigger following than wrpgs. Wrpgs were usually more focused on the exploration and freedom rather than narrative drive. This changed, of course, when black isles and Chris avalone started up the isometric crpg craze of the late 90s with fallout. Either way, that's my 2 cents.
There is third type that a friend channel of his does a good breakdown of. Graythorn. Her double standards in gaming video. I don't agree with much of it, but it is topical to this video and relevant to many of your points.
@@KCUFyoufordoxingme I’m both, but I found that I lean more towards experiential. I primarily getting back into video games through stories. One thing that does bother me is when experiential gamers do not care about the mechanics, and it is so frustrating for them to play a game like Final Fantasy III or Dragon Quest III and say they suck because “where is the story, RPGs should have a story?” No they do not have to have a good story in order to be good. What is wrong with a mechanics driven game? Especially an RPG which tend to have deep mechanics that can last longer than most games. It’s just annoying that enjoying mechanics is like a taboo in the western JRPG fandom.
@@KCUFyoufordoxingme gonna check that out the second I get a chance. Like I said, it's mostly simplistic and I'm positive others have noticed these types of gamers before. It's just the one I usually use to categorize the two.
@@thomasffrench3639 I think one of the reason for the taboo might be (granted this is just me thinking off the top of my head and has no credence) because WRPGs were the RPG you would go to for mechanical gamers while JRPGs were for experiential ones. Granted, as I said before, this went straight out the window due to the crpgs of the 90s (Baldurs gate, planescape: torment) supplementing a lot of the older style WRPGs like Gothic and Lands of lore. Meanwhile nowadays I see more JRPGs focusing on the mechanics more than the experience with the soulsbourne games. This is just me though and I'm just assuming a lot. I find the bickering to be silly since the two styles of gaming are equally important to the medium.
@@dugonman8360 I think it depends on the game and era. There were a lot of Japanese Dungeon Crawlers not released in the west, and experience driven western RPGs. I don’t necessarily think that they are so evenly split by genre. I just think that since western gamers who loved complex mechanics were computer gamers, but in Japan PC gaming is nowhere near as big, which is why like every computer game got a port on a console. So much of the mechanics driven RPGs from Japan we’re not really chosen to be localized because it didn’t appeal to console gamers, and localizing an RPG is very complex, even for more mechanically driven ones. If I look at the Famicom and Super Famicom libraries I tend to see a significant amount of mechanics driven RPGs, not completely outshining experiential games, but enough to notice. I’m not too familiar with Computer RPGs, but Ultima is a pretty big example of experiential games.
I always named the dog in every HM Koro because of this game. Ellen telling me the dog has a name and then asking me what name I want to give it like "wtf you just said the dog's name is Koro why would I change it????????????" But man, the Sprinkler should be available at the start, just expensive. Thank god they bothered to actually do tool upgrades much more smartly in future games. FUN FACT: If your Horse's saddlebags don't bulge out, the crop you just threw in essentially vanished into Horse Limbo. This is one of the biggest bullshit things in the game. Also the Horse imo should have been available in its adult shape first Autumn or Winter, no excuses. gud review I like this game I give it a 6/10+Nostalgia Bonus(!) and also Ann is best girl.
The point of Harvest Moon is to relax and run a farm. It's open ended. The game has multiple endings based on what you achieve over 2 years, you can take or leave these goals. It's up to you which approach you want to take. No other game was like this at the time. It was a breath of fresh air. I don't understand why you struggled so much with the tasks when most of the stuff in the game is covered by either the manual, character dialogue or the in-game notes you find in the stores. The dog is the one thing that isn't explained (Except 1 comment by your wife) and people still get confused about it to this day. But the dog is almost irrelevant so I guess they just forgot to explain it. The Manual :- Growing Veg : Page 10 & 11. Feeding Cows: Page 9. Under "Cow Barn" it explains there are "12 feeding troughs" The watering can and cow milking are mentioned in game. Flower lady: When she gives you the watering can: "It's for getting water from the pond." (This is unmissable dialogue) Livestock store note: "Cows on sale are young ones that can't milk. Takes 21 days to grow large enough for milking" I was able to work this stuff out as a kid with no internet. Almost all the info was there if you looked. I'll be the first to admit that Harvest Moon has some cryptic elements and hidden secrets. But that's part of the fun and mystery of playing the game. You are supposed to experiment, and try different strategies.
23:20 When developer Marvelous and publisher Natsume parted ways in 2014, the publisher kept the rights to the name. So any Harvest Moon since then is not made by the same people. The newer Bokujō Monogatari games are now localized as Story of Seasons. (Also, the Rune Factory series is a spinoff of it.)
Pogo is a great horse name! And your take on this game is similar to my experience with Stardew Valley. Once I accomplished the primary things I set out to do the motivation just vanished to keep playing. These kinds of games thrive when you're working towards something. Stellar Review! ✌
@@JasonGravesPoser Stardew Valley isn't lacking for things to do. My wife has hit a wall in that game so many times where she thinks she's seen everything only to discover a whole new crop, character, area or mechanic that hooks her right back in. It's an impressively massive game, but if you're not intrinsically motivated it's an easy game to drop off early.
I got lucky and played this on an emulator in the early 2000’s before farm sims took off. I loved it because nothing else like it was around. Boy how times have changed.
I remember coverage of this in Nintendo Power back in the day and thought it looked cute, played through years later and felt it was in need of more but was still mostly fun. Never touched any of the sequels, but Stardew Valley caught my interest when it released. Hard to go back after that, considering how much there is to experience there.
I was looking at your Google sheets, and I noticed that you have Wizardry V, but not the original Wizardry trilogy. Are you going to cover it, because apparently it’s the second best versions of those games after the PS1 ports?
@@JasonGravesPoser that’s fair. I probably wouldn’t have brought it up if Wizardry V wasn’t on there. I already know their classics, I want to see stuff like Orge Battle and Live A Live that not many people talk about. Excited for your Dragon Quest VI video. I just thought I would mention that it’s not like Ultima VII where the best way to play it is on the original PC version.
I would say 4 is more important than 5. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all expansions to the same game. 5 was made before 4, but released afterward and continued the trend. They all are the very same game with different dungeon floor plans. Well, they are all about the same shape and size and organization too, just different solutions to the maze with a few different dungeon npcs. 4 MIIiigghhhttt be why megami tensei (released 4 month prior to megatens september 11th release in may of the same year 1987) and Pokémon exists in the way that they do.
The first time i heard of harvest moon was on the stardew valley wikipedia. Its no shock that the guy who made stardew valley was a big fan of harvest moon growing up because its a clear inspiration and has a lot of the same mechanics. I love the snes to death and when i heard of this game i wanted to play it, still havent yet tho. But watching this review really makes me appreciate all the visual indicators in stardew and even though its a lot of the same stuff it seems like its conveyed a lot better judging from your experience.
I struggled with the horse name too. Unlike you, I never came up with a good name for anything on this game. Farmer was Joe, dog was Jim, Horse was Jack. Everytime. Liked your review. Gg
My headcanon is that realizing she married a man whose true love is actually a cow instantly broke Maria's faith in both God and humanity. All she does now is stand in the middle of her bedroom, staring blankly at the south wall.
Finally made the video! It was worth the wait. Very good. I love harvest moon but I agree with alot of what you are saying on how it can be better. They address alot of your issues in later games. Like just being able to do more with your money, more diverse dialog, they add festivals that give you little goals when playing, the ds one has a mine and even a battle system like Zelda when monsters and animals attack in the mines. This was definitely one of the weakest entries in the series but it was the first.
I pretty much agree with your entire conclusion about this game, it needed more to do and things to spend money on but it's a great foundation for the series. +1 comment for the algorithm
I didn't play this one, but I played Harvest Moon 64. From what I see in this video, I can say the N64 version is a fully upgraded version of this. Its one of the best titles on 64, and I suppose would technically one of the only rpgs on that console that people forget
I bet you would like the Harvest Moon spin-off series Rune Factory a WHOLE lot more. It's basically this level of Harvest Moon farming (though much easier) combined with a dungeon crawling RPG element, a LOT of crafting and even a half decent storyline in the later ones. You can still get married, (in one of them you have to as the second half of the game you play as your kid. Never heard that before...) but it's alot more satisfying to be the saviour of the world with godly weapons and armour as well as the greatest farmer around.
For me, sim games are at their best when simulating something fantastical, like being a pirate, designing crazy roller coasters, or being a freaking ant. If you're simulating the otherwise mundane, it needs to have interesting or unrealistic spins to them, in sim city you can cause natural disasters or at the very least crank them up to maximum occurrence. In the sims, people act like their personalities are generated by ai. But farm sims generally seem like "IT'S REAL LIFE, BUT CUTE!"
If rimworld is any indication raising chickens is indeed the worst thing ever. Just a few of those cluckers can quickly multiply into hundreds and it will take days for your colonists to slaughter and cook them all. They eat the grass quicker then it can regrow leaving none left for the more useful milk-and-leather livestock and if the farm fence gets damaged for any reason all of the chickens come pouring out. Eventually the game itself starts killing chickens with lightning bolts as if in agreement. Thankfully chickens do not explode on death that distinction belongs to a different animal
A couple of years ago, I played Harvest Moon SNES on the japanese Switch Online service. I thought it was really charming and liked it a lot (to be fair this was my first farming game), but I never got past fall thanks to the language barrier. This year I finally decided to finish this game in a language I could actually read. Before I played the game I researched it beforehand, so I didn't run into the same issues as you did and could plan my goals. As a whole I really enjoyed building and managing my little farm. The seasons felt pretty distinct, with my favorite being summer. Though after one ingame year, the novelty wore off (especially because the boring winter), and I became increasingly exhausted. It didn't help, that Fall and Winter are really boring in this game. Especially the second year was dreadful, because I didn't have anything to do except feeding my cows and making money (which I had more than enough of). I practically had to force myself to keep playing. As a result I overslept the last 10 days, causing 3 of my cows to die. (Excellent Castlevania 3 music choices btw.)
The hit the nail on the head. I liked the snes version back then, but yes it was a little sparse. the 64 version did do a lot to address the issues. You had more interaction with your neighbors that mattered. There was a little more to spend money on.
Honestly, I don't think concrete beginning and end are criterias for RPG, many best ones start in Medias Res (give me assault on spaceship with huge backstory SKIPPED but implied over farm boy or tavern start and killing rats any day) and tons either have unfinished ending (KOTOR 2), end on cliffhangers (infamously ALL of Mass Effects), or nobody actually finishes them (the Elder Scrolls). An RPG can be WHOLLY just midgame experience from the get go. And most action games actually do have proper start and ending... but even with atmosphere, gear upgrades and skills, something like Assassin's Creed 2 is still not an RPG... But Quest for Glory is. It's weird. Question "what is an RPG" is hard to answer because by all means, second Mass Effect has less RPG elements than most action games and nobody doubts genre of that. Experience points? Sports games like FIFA and online arena shooters i.e. COD have them now. Character growth and progression? Then Spec Ops: the Line is a role-playing game, but it's clearly not. Ditto Ezio trilogy. Character customization? Most jRPGs have none of that... Doesn't matter. Dialogue options? Would exclude Diablo-likes or SRPGs/Tactics stuff... Combat based on stats and not your aim? That would remove a lot of modern'er action-RPGs. Having boardgame-derived combat is just what many RPGs HAPPEN to have, not what they NEED to use (i.e. strategy or football manager can be more based on classic board games too and you can make a fully action shooter set in Shadowrun universe). I think the game is an RPG if it is one _by feels,_ purely. An average KOEI game has more RPG elements than recent Bioware stuff, but they're clearly their own thing and Bioware cliche storm will be an RPG even if you remove leveling ENTIRELY. Seriously, play New Game+ in Mass Effect. No level progression anymore, combat is cover shooter, and yet, it still is a role-playing game experience. It's about immersing yourself into a character (role-playing) while having a feel of growth and progression throughout the story distinct from just upgrading gear or story development, amount of freedom and customization are secondary (Final Fantasy IV is an RPG, the Godfather is not, the latter has fully customizable protagonist, and many classic RPGs are more linear than GTA). Otherwise, NBA 2K is an RPG. xD
If cows were automated in their care by paying staff to do it even at a huge cost and only when the cow was happy enough, this would be a snes top 10 for me. Late game cow care causes this game to drag into the worst chore for far too long in a way I never want to do again, but the first half of the game I love and had fun with. The most miserable "best ending" to try to get on the snes. Side note: one of the least titted thumbnails with one of the most titted animals on it. Feels like a missed opportunity. Mooy deserved more love brushes.
I love Harvest Moon. I think that The Games that came after this one are Better with some standouts in the Series. RPG stands for Role Playing Game so in Harvest Moon You're playing the Role of a Farmer. so I think it counts even if it's a bit of a Stretch. The End Goal of Harvest Moon is to Build a Thriving Farm and to make your Grandpa Proud when he visits you again at the end of the 3 years or whatever it is. Yeah every Game that Has similar mechanics and Elements has a lot of WTF do I do in it until you establish your own routine. Grass regrows after you harvest it so the Game makes you pay More for the Seeds. Seems as if you had a rough time with this. I'm kind of surprised that you actually Stuck with it. Good Review though.
You'd probably have a field day (lololol) with the Rune Factory spin-offs. They're Harvest Moon with a whole ARPG grafted onto it. Dungeons, monster bashing, spells, weapons, leveling up, the works.
never played the SNES game only the GB one which was... kinda boring but i LOVE stardew valley and now to see how many events and stuff are clearly from this game is funny
Yeah Harvest Moon on SNES is not a great game to be honest. Even the original creator of Harvest Moon said that the SNES version of Harvest Moon did not meet his expectations and was not his original vision of what the game was supposed to be like. He actually said that Harvest Moon 64 is more like the game he tried to original make on the SNES all along. Funnily enough Harvest Moon Back to Nature changed the most out the whole series by that point, and the whole series took more after that game than Harvest Moon 64. Now a Harvest Moon clone comes out every other week on Steam, some are great, some are bad, and this game sits soundly in the bad section in spite of its influence.
I count a lot of games as an RPG if you're taking on the role of a character. Like in HM and other farming games youre taking on the role of a character that inherited their grandpa's/their family's farm. I mean even in an old atari game like Space Invaders or Galaga, there's a story in those games' manuals that say you're fighting off an alien invasion or something so that means you're controlling a spaceship thats fighting off said alien invaders. And you're definitely right, Harvest Moon SNES is definitely boring, at least compared to all the games that came afterward but you what HM game is even more boring? HM GBC.... I mean you can play as either a boy or a girl on it but they took out the marriage mechanic so it's just straight up the real literally first farming simulator on a handheld. I loved your review, I discovered a few months back and I've been watching you off and on since then :)
Oh I can imagine the game boy one not being fun. At least not to bingeplay like this. For 5 minutes at a time between classes in school Harvest Moon sounds like it would be a cool gb game
@@JasonGravesPoser Yea I mean HM GBC 1 and 2 were unique for being not just the first HM games on handheld but for being practically the first HM games in general that allowed you to be a girl or a boy, but the first HM GBC game was definitely completely boring (then again i believe that one is a literal port of the SNES version with the marriage/dating mechanic taken out). HM 2 gbc was a little better because while it didn't have the marriage and dating aspect, it at least had a friendship mechanic and there were some interesting events you can witness with the villagers (like two of the shopkeepers falling in love) and there were some neat collectibles in there too (I think after you get past the whole 3 years thing you can start collecting pieces of a treasure map for something). And HM 3 GBC was probably the best one out of all 3 of the GBC HM games because there was a lot to do and the marriage/dating mechanic did return but you could only marry the farmer npc that was basically the other playable character you didn't choose. But honestly I think the best thing about HM GBC was that you weren't stuck just going to the farm, mountains, and nearby village. You could literally hitch a ride on a ferry to a nearby island and visit the city there. You could even breed horses, cows, chickens, and I think sheep and take on little side jobs/requests (which i think was the prototype of the villager request system in most modern HM and SOS games nowadays). It was really fun. But definitely all 3 of the HM GBC games weren't good for long playing sessions except for maybe when you're riding the bus to and from school. If I wasn't playing Pokemon Yellow or Silver on my red GameBoy Color than I was playing Harvest Moon 2 GBC. I seemed to have a lot of patience for it back then. lol
The game that you're looking for is Stardew Valley, man; it's really cheap on Steam, and the creator (one dude that coded and made the entire game alone) is almost done with every content he wants to add to the game!
To be honest, the game just looked nice and played fine. The GBA version, and 2 and 3 from the GBC are better. Modern ones have different tastes, i won't play them all together, or you'll get too fatigued
This game is an inferior version of stardew valley and any other modern farm sim. There just isnt much to do as you pointed out. Definitely a game that hasn't aged well.
I think your whole premise of reviewing retro games is a bust as you don't seem to be able to comprehend anything without having your hand held the entire time.
Ted kaczynskis observations are prone to the issue that he doesn't add secular materialism into his equations. He put the root of all of modern mans downfall on the back of the industrial revolution but never put 2 and 2 together that it might be moreso our cultural erosion from the true, the good and the beautiful that causes it. Our failings didn't honestly start with the steam engine, we can see that society still remained hopeful, united where everyone felt a part of the greater community. This dissolution began after WW1, when Woodrow Wilson threatened all of Europe to join his little club house else they'd be bombarded to oblivion and back. Either way, I can't believe I just wrote some of my criticisms on Ted Kaczynski on a video about Harvest Moon.
How do you NOT know what to do? Hahaha Aren’t you into games that don’t hold your hand the whole time? But now you need to be hand held how to play this game? 😅
Harvest Moon is an ROG is the same way Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 is a WW2 FPS. That is to say its really not. Its a farming sim, and a dated one at that. I do not like this game.
