Gamertell

The Harvest Moon games are something special. They’ve developed a devoted cult following, which people who have never experienced the games may not understand. Especially since, on the surface, each game seems to be pretty much the same. Natsume obviously gets it, as the series is probably it’s best known property. Games in the series have appeared on practically every system, including the Wii, GameCube, PS2, PS1, PSP, DS, GBA, Game Boy Color, Game Boy and SNES.

It’s only when you take a closer look at the Harvest Moon series that you appreciate what the games allow players to achieve. I recently had the opportunity to rent the Wii entry, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, and fell in love with the series again because of it.

So if you’ve never played the games and are wondering why people are drawn to them, here’s a brief overview of Harvest Moon‘s many charms.

There’s more to the world than what you can see.

There’s a strong fantasy element present in the Harvest Moon world, in the form of the Harvest Goddess, Harvest Sprites, and occasionally the Harvest God, Witch Princess and Wizard Prince. These fantasy characters won’t do mystical and magical things every day, but sometimes Harvest Sprites will help you at your farm or the Harvest Goddess will bestow some kind of blessing. It’s really more about the element of fantasy being there, but the whole point of the game is to focus on hard work and real, daily life.

Hard work is rewarded.

In Harvest Moon the overall goal is to be a successful farmer. And, thankfully, there’s really no way to fail. If you want to focus on crops to build your wealth, go for it. Or if you’d prefer to raise animals, that’s fine too. There’s really no way to totally waste or lose money, especially in the Wii entry, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, where you can take a part time job during the day at one of the island’s establishments to earn some extra cash. As long as you’re making some sort of effort, you’ll gradually earn money that you can put toward expanding your place.

There’s no need to rush.

There are no deadlines in the majority of the Harvest Moon games. You can work at your own pace to achieve your goals, and you can spend as much or as little time a day/week/month playing the game to reach those goals. Once you’ve developed a basic farming routine for essential work and your character has built up some stamina, it’s easy to complete many tasks. There is an in-game clock, but unless it’s a festival day, you need to attend to a potential spouse event or you need to get to one of the stores before it closes, you can pretty much ignore that.

Small actions can make a difference in the lives of others.

Harvest Moon also has elements of a communication game. Players can develop relationships with all of the townspeople, and sometimes even the supernatural characters like the Harvest Goddess, Harvest Sprites, Witch Princess, Wizard or Harvest God. If you become good friends with people, you could unlock special events, earn the right to enter their homes, get special items, learn new recipes or perhaps even get one of the bachelor or bachelorette characters to marry your character. Building a relationship could be somewhat trying in earlier games, where you’d have to talk and give gifts to townspeople, but in more recent games relationships can be built by talking on a regular basis or working at the same job together.

No two games are ever really the same.

There are two basic plot elements to every Harvest Moon game - the Harvest Goddess is in some kind of trouble and there’s a dilapidated farm your character is going to restore to prosperity. Plus there’s the whole animal/crop raising and townspeople to make friends with. Aside from the fundamentals, Harvest Moon is sort of a sandbox game. Since there are no requirements that must be met to have a successful farm, you can achieve it any way you want. So you could mine, ranch, harvest, fish or work part time jobs until you get enough money to expand your little empire. Plus, there can be different villagers, crops or farm animals in each entry. Occasionally the tasks to assist the Harvest Goddess do require players to perform certain tasks, but again, assisting her isn’t mandatory. Each time you play, you can use different strategies to succeed.

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