I'd always heard good things about the Harvest Moon series since it premiered on the SNES back in 1997, but for some reason, I overlooked it and never added any game in the series to my library. Blame it on a lack of funds, I guess. But this time, thanks to a sale at Target, I picked up the newest member of the Harvest Moon family and got a chance to see what all the rabid fanboys/girls were going on about.
Most magazines and websites label Harvest Moon as an RPG, which I personally think is extremely misleading. When I think of an RPG, I think of an epic "save the world" quest a la Chrono Trigger or Golden Sun, and Harvest Moon is certainly nothing like that. It'd be more accurate to liken it to something along the lines of The Sims, only slightly more structured. It's mostly a simulation, but with a bit more backstory and some guidelines to the way you play.
The player-controlled character is a young man, and he's just inherited his father's farm, complete with a single cow and some large patches of fertile land. It's up to you to make the farm prosperous and raise a family. And...that's basically the entire plot, believe it or not. Anything else that happens in the game is pretty much up to you and who you befriend, where you go, and what you do with the farm. And that's the beauty of it, really. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play the game, so you can set your own schedule and experiment in raising crops and animals to make money. Or you can skip the farming and try to make a living off of foraged goods like flowers and fish. It's your life--do with it what you want!
There are a couple of rules though. First of all, you have to get married at the end of the first year. There are three potential brides to choose from, and each one of them has different likes and dislikes so you have to plan your "wooing" strategy carefully. The girl you marry determines how your son will look and behave, sort of like real life. Winning a girl over isn't particularly hard--all you have to do is talk to her and give her things she likes every day and she'll fall for you completely. Hmmm...my feminist side is itching to comment on this feature (not to mention that you always have a son and no chance for a daughter...), but I'll refrain for now.
Aside from the unusual and quaint sort of gameplay, you'll likely notice how nice the game looks. The scenery in Forget Me-Not Valley all looks very pretty, from the ripples on the water in the ponds and river to the way the trees and grass sway in the wind. You won't see any fully-rendered tomatoes but the painstaking detail taken in the setting is great. Everything that should cast a shadow does and you can even see the clouds in the sky move with the weather patterns. Each season has its own distinct and realistic look too, with everything brown and orange in the fall and snow on the ground in the winter. So even though the art style for the people and animals is kind of cartoony cute, the world around them looks about as real as a video game can get. It's a very pretty game and that realism will certainly help draw you into the Harvest Moon world.
Forget Me-Not Valley is a big place filled with lots of different people, each of them with a different daily schedule. The more you interact with them, the more you'll learn about them. Most of them even give you gifts if you're nice enough. And as the game progresses and time passes, you'll actually see everyone age! The whole game spans some 30 years and you'll see the children grow up and the adults go gray, including yourself. I must give a big thumbs up to the developers, since I've never seen a game where the environments and people reflect the passage of time so well. It's really impressive.
Harvest Moon isn't perfect though. While the game is fun, it's definitely not for everyone. At its best, it's an immersive and addictive game, and at its worst, it's very repetative and possibly even boring. Like real life, you can find yourself waking up and doing the same tasks day in and day out with very little variation. Simulation players know this and likely expect it, but RPG gamers wouldn't. And while the game definitely looks good, some of the other technical aspects fall a bit flat. The controls in particular are quirky at times, making even simple tasks frustrating. Moving a cow to a specific spot is one such task that comes to mind, though there are other instances. And I lost count of the vast amount of spelling mistakes in the text ("Mae" when it should be "Male" for example), so the game feels a bit rushed in that sense. But all in all, it's a very impressive title, and after playing it, I can easily see why it has amassed such a huge cult following. Who would've thought such greatness could emerge from such humble roots?