technically it's like looking up an old friend and realizing they've become terrible only to do a bit more research and realize that their apartment landlord stole their identity and due to complicated legalese was forced to changed their own identity while the usurper got to keep the original identity, but only in a few countries.
I saw an ad for one of the Natsume harvest moons that literally said that they were celebrating 20 years of them making harvest moon. I would say that is intentionally misleading people since they hadn't made the game for 20 years, it was just 20 years of the name harvest moon existing.
Looks at no more heros and Skill girls great games with marvelous on them. And good game with Xseed on them like the last story and Sakuria of rice and ruin
Pump & Dump: Hoes of Mineral Town The "bad ending" is actually the good ending and you must bang every woman in Mineral Town including Ellen before leaving town
saaaaaaame. I was like, why the hell do they look so similar to a past memory XD isnt that harvest moon? XD had no idea the companies split and everything and the name changes too
@Tidder T The dev revived and revitalized an almost dead love for farming sims, and he has been openly transparent that his idea to make SDV came from his love of HM when he was younger. HM doesn't own the farming sim genre.
@Tidder T Definitely mostly dead at the time of the SV release. HM and SoS were stil being released, but were not populair anymore. SV revived the love for farming sim games and made it more widespread. Plus, the fact that it was all done by one guy, he deserves all the credit.
@Tidder T Have you even played stardew valley?? It has so many more different things and the story is definitely not a rip off. Other than that you got a farm from your grandpa, anything else of the story is completely different.
My girlfriend bought Harvest Moon: One World for Switch today and when I saw the shitty framerate and mobile tier graphics, I thought something was up so found this video. I showed it to her and she got a refund and is waiting for the Story of Seasons game that comes out in a couple weeks. What crazy story. This would be like if Nintendo rebranded Zelda to "Link Quest", but then some random chinese bootleg company still released Legend of Zelda games in the states.
Idk, in terms of romanji you can spell it as natsume or natume and it doesn't make a difference. They probably didn't have a fixed name in english before that (the localization overall was pretty bad though).
@@calendariocalendula7158 Harvest Moon came out for the SNES in 1997, and they were already branded as Natsume back then, so "Natume" was just a plain wrong in 1999.
I was gifted my gamecube and a copy of another wonderful life in middle school, like 2007, and it was my first harvest moon game. I still have it! And I will never get rid of it. I fell absolutely in love with harvest moon, farm sims, and other simulator games. It just holds so much value in my life. And I would spend my summers at my grandma's and I would help her pick corn and strawberries and green beans, swim in the pool, and then play another wonderful life. I had no idea about the split until about 4 months ago when I first heart about SoS:FoMT and I was blown away. I got the game for switch when it released and I'm extremely pleased. It makes me want to go back to 2007 and help my grandma pick corn and swim in the pool. My sister got a copy the same day I did and we just have both been sucked into the past pretty hard. It makes me sad that natsume is making harvest moon games. It just feels icky. And like a slap in the face to me. Like it's just a game, yeah, but harvest moon has an absolutely massive hold on some people and their memories.
With the remake of FoMT bringing new HM/SOS content into RU-vid, I'm genuinely surprised with how lukewarm to negative Harvest Moon DS's reception is to a lot of people. It's honestly one of my favorite in the series!
My favourite part is always finding more sprites. I wanted to get to 60 but never achieved it cause I never finished the game. Hoping they’ll do a remake for switch so I can finally finish the game
"Then you to see what they've been up to since then and find out *THEY WERE A VICTIM OF LEGALIZED IDENTITY THEFT OUTSIDE THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY* " There, fixed that for you.
Hard disagree on your view of Magical Melody. That game is hands down my favorite Harvest Moon game that I’ve played. But the gamecube release was better than the wii release. I liked how there were characters that moved in or out depending on what requirements you were meeting. It had a lot to do and a lot of socializing with characters and I enjoyed having to choose what farm to take for soil quality and space. It encouraged me to save up and buy different land for different for different purposes. Highly fertile land for growing crops, a large area of land next to the beach that is good for a ranch, and other land for orchards and such.
Yeah, MM made me feel like this was MY town. I buy property, double the town's population, and feel like a pillar of the community that they rely on, rather than just being a farmer and selling items to the townsfolk. And then Jamie wants me to leave it, knowing full well the town will die if we both leave......
Yes! I loved it too. I think people just hate it because it was extra kawaii looking. When you look past that, it's a great harvest moon with so much to do.
Tale of Two Towns was the very first Harvest Moon game I ever played, and I still heavily enjoy it to this day. Also played the one with the Bazaar, don’t remember my feelings since then tho
Y'know..it's not inaccurate to say that current Harvest Moon with Natsume making it themselves is a "Shell Of It's Former Self" because that's..really what it is. The Harvest Moon brand is just a shell being puppeted by Natsume's greed. Empty, devoid of spirit and understanding of why the games were liked. The spirit is now it's own series over there as Story of Seasons.
Harvest moon animal parade had the best art and was my first harvest moon game. I got to try harvest moon a wonderful life as well. And other future games mentioned here.
Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town was fantastic, such a trip down memory lane. I grew up on Back to Nature, and I love this remake of a remake. Sentiment aside, Story of Seasons is where I put my cards now.
So many people at first thought natsume make harvest moon, first of all, they slap their logo in cover but leaving small space for marvelous, second they consistent with their logo, in other hand marvelous keep changing logo for few times
I love Magical Melody, I played it maybe 100 times as a kid, I feel like it was really great. Also, I feel like the two greatest Harvest Moon games were Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade. Those games were so fun, had wonderful art styles, tons of content, and honestly I'd just wish they'd make something like those games. I played tons of ANB and loved it, but I feel like it didn't have the charm or strong characters of Tot and AP.
I was one of those people that was still playing Harvest Moon when the split happened, so I knew the pick up Story of Seasons, but honestly...I didn't really like that one very much either. So I had kind of a falling out with BOTH series (though technically I guess I was never a fan of the "Harvest Moon" series) But I dunno, Friends of Mineral Town remake looks awesome! :D
It IS awesome and it has so many quality of life improvments over the GBA version! You can now stack items (9 per slot in your bag and 999 per slot in the fridge/cabinet) You can also have access to your items and tool much easier. Now you also see your exact amount of stamina and if you talked/gifted the villagers/animals/harvest sprites. It's really worht it!
They’re not really that comparable to be honest. Yes they’re both farming games but I feel completely different playing stardew and harvest moon, especially the older games
@oneone164 yea it’s lost it’s charm for sure. I like a wonderful life but it’s bassically the only relevant 3D harvest moon/story of season game. I don’t really enjoy the games post 2010 at all to be honest.
I guess they already told you, but nowadays the original Harvest Moon is now called Story of Seasons, Marvelous changed localization team from Natsume to X-Seeds around 5 years ago, but because they couldn't keep the name of the franchise they had to change the name. Harvest Moon A New Beginning was the last one to have the original title, and those onwards starting at Harvest Moon The Lost Valley are just knock-offs of Natsume. 7:05 Is even worse what you think, because in some girl versions of Harvest Moon like the Back to Nature if you played as a girl and you get married the game ends. No joking, is probably one of the most sexist things done in the videogame industry. No wonder Japan has being having issues trying to grow its population by having more babies with such outdated mindset. What a way to destroy girls childhood of the 90s.
I mean, I don't think that really destroyed anything for me, I didn't think much of it. At the very least, in Another Wonderful Life, you could actually play longer because after your character passed on, you returned in a "Heaven" chapter. This did end up happening in Harvest Moon Special Edition as well, which yeah was a boy, but honestly that version had such a bad frame rate problem a lot of people avoided playing all the way through anyway.
Nevertheless, the sexist controversial issue about Back to nature is corrected in the GBA release of more friends of mineral town. Now i understand why the girl version of Back to nature was not released in US. because this is unacceptable in US, while Japan is more acceptable due to its relatively more patriarch society. However, I would not have know this until i played the PSP version
Calling something like that "one of the most sexist in the industry" is a bit extreme. It also wasn't meant to be sexist, the series' main focus was telling a story. Old fashioned certainly, but it was supposed to be a "happily ever after. Japan's population crisis is due in large part to the pressure put on men to be the sole provider, they're actually the ones who feel as though their life ends when they get married while for the women its considered "settling" if their spouse makes less than them. So both sides consider marriage to be a bad deal.
@@ZombieBarioth But is still sexist, imagine how many girls got dissapointed after playing a while they can't play anymore because of the gender they choose to play wich most of the time would be the same as them, specially when there is no explanation on why their playthrought ends when they married while the boy stills does. In the male playthrought the female character stills works in the farm, so there is no excuse to stop female players on continuing their save files. Is was already hard to introduce girls to videogames when some of the few they liked slaps them on their faces for having fun with them. If isn't wasn't for the fact the game is so niche and done in the 90s it would get a huge backlash from the public.
@@ZombieBarioth This is so true, it's actually very common, almost expected that men don't even have much influence in their children's lives other than providing for them. Many of them end up mostly living separate from the household so they can live closer to a good workplace, or they're hardly home at all. Men are the main providers, women are supposed to be the main caregivers, and schools are often told things even before parents are, generally having quite a bit of say in how a child over there acts. Japan is...interesting to say the least with its customs. And sadly, has a super high suicide rate because of the expectations within the culture over there.
Harvest Moon 64 looks better than any of the trash "Harvest Moon" games Natsume has made in the past 6 years. It at least dared to have a unique artstyle, my god. Anyway, great video!
Natsume had to change the name to story of seasons. Those are the real harvest moon games and are actually good. The games that are under the Harvest Moon titles now are just knock offs. But the ACTUAL games, are still pretty good IMo
@@kayleighbrown459 Oh yeah, I know that. I just find it funny how a game from 2 decades ago looks better than the games Natsume are currently making, haha.
I was introduced to this game a long time ago and was blown away by it. I did not get to play it much, only the instant classic feeling hit like a truck. I need to add it to my collection. Great video!
I loved the hell out of Magical Melody. It was certainly better than A Wonderful Life. I didn't like that the "canon expected" person they wanted you to marry is the most abrasive individual in the game, who tells you to leave the town if you want to marry them. I never got into the DS games, though. Nowadays stardew valley scratches the farming itch, though I have my nitpicks about it.
I just remembered that lost valley was the first harvest moon game I ever got before giving up and soon getting a new beginning later. I put so much time in new beginnings, I was getting millions of dollars, was married, and was with child so new beginnings has a special place in my heart~
Hero of Leaf Valley is my favorite so far. I really appreciate the plot and it really gives you a reason to actually befriend the villagers. Love the different take on Innocent Life A Futuristic HM. Nailed the futuristic stuff however the game lacked events outside the main plot. The events mostly happen every Sunday and once you save the island there are no more. You can’t even give gifts to villagers.
Harvest Moon 64 is the game i've been going back to for a solid 15 years, but i've still never married Maria... LOL Btw this video is awesome it perfectly encapsulates what happened.
11:05 fun fact in Japan a lot of companies, book writers, game makers and anime shows or actually named exactly what it is because they noticed that a lot of teens don’t read the description. Which is true I only read the description like 50% of the time lol.
the original concept is the best thing about it, they never really pulled it off right more gritty, more relatable, less uwu lose your job in the city, your fiance dumps you, you're ruined evil abusive alcoholic grandpa dies, he has a run down farm outside a stuck up fancy village you always hated going to as a kid Village is ancient and haunted, there are rumors of sprites and river monsters, villagers hold 'festivals' regularly and are part of a harvest goddess cult. Build your farm, plant crops, raise animals, craft, fish, hunt, explore, fight monsters, win the townspeople's favor through courage and hard work & you will have a video game that I would want to play.
Another great video Jak! I also grew up with A Wonderful Life, besides that I only played a few others in the series. I had no idea they separated versions purely based on gender, that's so wild.
Games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing seem like they have some great mobile potential since they can easily be built to be never-ending games. With mobile being by far the current most popular and most successful gaming platform, there's a lot of potential for them there.
I remember i played back to nature and wonderfull life religiously when i was a kid and only got back into the series when a new begining came out and to this day a new begining is my favorite HM game ever, it was so absurdly jam packed with content, it's a shame it has such a bad pacing for the first half year or so because it makes it really hard to replay but man in a technical way it's just the most complete and best harvest moon experience.
Huh, complete opposite to me. It's probably my least HM title (before the company split). It was fun for a (in game) year, you can upgrade a lot of stuff and level your town quickly. But then it came to a halt because of some requirement that you can miss and had to wait for another year to finish. I stopped playing in 2nd year bc it got too repetitive
One day maybe the name Story of Seasons will hold the kind of sentimental value your talking about instead of Harvest Moon. And only the veterans will know about the Harvest Moon phase of Story of Seasons and new fans will grow the same type of attachment we have... maybe
... the two main harvest moon games I played were Grand Bazaar and Tale of Two Towns, heh, I guess I missed out on the series in it's prime. But I still really loved it, especially Grand Bazaar at the ability to build up your own little shop. Tale of Two Towns is pretty fun too, and the art style is super adorable in that one.
Most people kind of write off the DS era games. I think they're arguably some of the best. They're just a little too similar. Sunshine islands is nearly identical to island of happiness. The systems are just overhauled significantly for QOL.
After the split i just consider a new HM games to be bad and moved on to the 3ds titles (i dont own a switch) so im currently playing Story of Seasons Trio of Town cause i like the Tales of Two Town and i might like the 3 towns and well im now into it ...... If i have a switch i would visit SOS friends of mineral town cause .... HM back to nature was my first HM game then i moved to FomT on the GBA. Shortly after i got my ds i went for tale of two towns cause the other ds games did not stand out to me thou i did give HM Ds and HM Ds a pass cause im not fond of the wonderful life characters and i cant get the Fomt characters to move in cause i lost my fomt game..... But oh well i pass on it and started my obsession with tale of two towns then Rune Factory series and now here i am at Story of Seasons.
The only reason I started playing was because I got the game from my auntie....who stole if off of her ex then proceeded to fall in love with the game the first game I had was harvest moon ds much fun much fun but then I use to have the Wii version they were so fun and I got addicted for a bit but then I just stopped for a bit and a few years ago I got the ds game back by finding it in a box and now am in love with it again its a comfort game for me lol I love it
I wish I saw this video before buying Harvest Moon Light of Hope :( I tried my hardest to get into it because hey, it has harvest moon in the title and it costs as much as a regular game (quite pricey). Thank goodness I have stardew valley to ease my farming urges but I really wish I didnt waste money on such a terrible game that I thought would revive my love for the franchise. Definitely looking into getting the Story of Seasons soon
ive only played tale of two towns, but ive fell in love the series. im gonna eventually get the old ones, but the new one look so different im not sure ill enjoy it as much. also i would have loved to tell my friends to play "plow and propose" lol
Don't worry. The makers of these games just changed their name to Story of Seasons. Those are the good ones and have the same tone. Just released a remake to FOMT
I grew up on Harvest Moon Ds and the game is wonderful. I have such good memories of it. I wish they would just come out with a game with cool characters and a nice storyline. I love Harvest Moon, but the newer games are unplayable. StarDewValley literally showed them how it should be done and they still keep failing.
My favorite game in the franchise before the Remake of Friends of Mineral Town was Tree Of tranquility on the wii, Mostly because nostalgia, but I just love the little things that it had.
It’s crazy that Natsume’s only job was to publish for the west and their translation to English was terrible. Yet they put their name super big on the boxes, leading people to believe they made the Harvest Moon games.
I've played other Harvest Moon spinoffs such as Innocent Life and Rune Factory and those were really good games in my opinion because they tried out different scenarios such as a sci-fi and fantasy setting respectively. I also played Tale of Two Towns and the premise of getting two towns to reunite was also a cool plot. This all proves that there were good games after Back to Nature, but everything else is just soulless now.
As someone who eagerly awaited the next game after Harvest Moon A New Beginning and found out about the name change as it happened and the first Story of Seasons was announced, it's so weird to me there's still people who don't know this. I know it's confusing going in and I don't blame people who aren't active in the gaming sphere, but I can't help it, like it's been years now.
I’ve bought every game since Harvest Moon DS and I love every single one of them. Edit: I should say I own every Bokujo game. I knew about the split and never bought one of their knock offs games.
I've always wanted to get into this series, but Stardew Valley kinda does everything I'd want from a game like that, so I don't know if I actually will. That's really interesting that Harvest Moon is still a quality franchise, just under a different name. I've always assumed it was just bad now.
Both Story of Seasons for 3DS are great but without combat. Doraemon Story of Seasons are beautiful and very cool and the remake will be fun. Stardew Valley in overall is better with huge customization but...i still prefer Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons
Stardew valley is a great game but it's heavily westernized so it has a different vibe from harvest moon/SoS. Both are great, it really depends on what you're looking for stylistically.
Stardew is fun but after awhile i got tired of it granted i had to use mods to keep going until my mods broke and i got tired of fixing it i did finish the game thou well finish in a sense im done with the bundles.
Wow, this summarise what happened to me I started with BTN, then tried to pickup harvest moon again after 10 years later. The new harvest moon always look weird so I never pick up one Few years ago, I stumbled into story of season and immediately fall in love. I am currently playing that Tangentially, I picked up stardew valley a few years ago and was really happy with it, it feels more harvest moon than the other harvest moons
I grew up with harvest moon. I've spent so many hours playing, SNES, Mineral Town, Wonderful life, Magical melody, and DS cute. I've since moved on, but recently that I've begun wanting to play a farming game again (last I played was Stardew(it's better in everyway but I thought the characters lacked compared to HM's. There was a missing charm.) --I always had to educate my friends that Stardew is heavily inspired by harvest moon; its not a rip off. Later I learned that the series is now called Story of seasons when I spotted Mineral town remade on a switch direct. What a burst of nostalgia. I'm SO glad I got back to farming games at this time cause I'd probably pick up a "Fake" harvest moon game in stores without knowing. Anyhoo, Right now im playing runefactory 4 special. Never played Rune factory before but I remembering that rune factory used to have the tag line "Fantasy harvest moon". And, Damn, This game is AMAZING. lol. Looking forward to SoS: A wonderful life.
2:21 you can hold 2 tools at a time, swap them with X. 7:05, both those games improve upon the male version ones, I remember my watching sister playing at the GBA version and it had a few different things that improved over the original FOMT.
Plow & propose 😂 I could see that doing well in market. I love sos friends of mineral town on the switch and it was my introduction to any of these series. Excited for the new sos and ill probably try harvest moon one world just to see what's up with it
I am currently playing Harvest moon 64 on the switch. Loving it. I think they really perfected everything withRune Factory for the DS. The first game was so fun, and I never finished the second game, but it was also awesome.
I literally have every single one of these games. No joking. Definitely some were to wild lol but wii ones and gamecube ones were great but friends of mineral and and back to nature were the best still
innocent life: a futuristic harvest moon was by far the best, it took an entirely different turn, the story was HEAVY as hell and dont even get me started on how humongous the whole island is not including the jungles and caves you need to explore
i started on back to nature ps1. A bit playing save the homeland and get bored because of you need to restart all of the interaction after ending. Played AWL and loved it. Then i grew up. So excited when SOS FOMT released, played it with the same formula as HM BTN back then. Feels nostalgic. I just bought SOS AWL from the last steam summer sale, and still playing it rn.
For anyone curious of "Harvest Moon" updates, the new "Harvest Moon: One World" game is not doing that well at all. It is kind of mixed to negative. It has a bunch of neat ideas/concepts/elements to the game..., but the game world looks really bland, you are pretty limited what you can do in the game and need to unlock some things, you can't really micro manage much in the game, and you can't date/marry and I guess other things until you beaten the main game, WTF? So I suggest save your money, $60 is asking way too much for the game, and past it, until the price may or may not drop, go on sale, etc. So stick with any future Story of Seasons games. I suggest getting Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and/or the current Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town.
No matter how much harvest moon/story of seasons franchises were released, today, I still play only one of it- Harvest Moon-Back to nature. The first Harvest Moon game I ever played since highschool on PS1, and i recently downloaded the PSP emulator and played the PSP version again to throwback my fond memories of it
My first harvest moon game since when im a kid is back to nature, then as time goes on i play save the homeland, and then the last one and one of my favorite harvest moon is hero of leaf valley.
another series you may want to look at is medabots also known as medarot the English version was also translated by Natsume and has not seen another one of the games from the series since the gba and game cube, the gba games did get a wiiu port but they lacked the ability to link to one another i.e. pokemon red to blue
FoMT, MFoMT and Island of Happiness were my jam back then. I used to love it so much. I don't know about now. If only I still have the console, I'd play it again.
I don't understand how such a peaceful franchise can gather such a feisty fanbase. I'm not even a fan of the original Harvest Moon and it cost me nothing to learn what happened to it after The Lost Valley, (one time, both Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons were on sale for the 3DS eshop and I wanted to do a bit of research to see which one was worth it, as again. I'm not a fan of the franchise, but I'm willing to experiment if the game comes cheap.) Yet, people still acts like after the split between Marvelous and Natsume Inc the series died. It simply changed names people! Is rare for that to happen but is not the end for a franchise.
Man, I have Harvest Moon: A New Beginning for my 3DS:XL, and man, it's fun! Decided to start a new save now since I forgot how to play, but I can't wait to see all the little secrets again!
I have to say my first harvest moon game was the same as him but i played Rune Factory frontier a few years back and it felt like a step in its own direction and as i play Rune factory 4 i in my opinion like the direction they went for it. I mean i get to slay magic beasts, craft awesome weapons, and then go home and tend to my farm. Isn't that awesome?
Just came to say that another wonderful life is the best version, it has more content than A Wonderful Life and isnt laggy like Special Edition. In more friends of mineral town there is a bit more as well but not a lot. They came out after and usually had more polish.
@@ogueyratogeyrat7448but big head cow looks cute thou. They are adorable the thing i dint like with wondeful life title is the players death kinda wanted them to be immortal anyways i like HM/Story of Seasons games to not have ending well they could have one but not stop there or change playable characters thou that wasnt too bad in RF2.
I really would love if they went all in on an actual Harvest Moon title and make it AAA. Loved the N64 when I was a kid, kinda hated everything afterward haha.
