A new beginning for Harvest Moon?
September 20th will, for the most part, be remembered by the vast majority of the gaming community as ‘the third day I sat in my underpants playing Grand Theft Auto V.’
That day I was staying with my boyfriend and his housemates – all three of them had in their possession hard copies of the game and had temporarily transformed into button-mashing vegetables. But that was fine. I couldn’t give a monkeys – I was snuggled up in my Pikachu onesie, wielding a 3DS in hand, planting my very first turnip. AND BOY, WAS THAT A MOMENT.
It’s been a long time coming to the UK – over a year and a half, in fact, what with three very frustrating delays from our friends at Natsume Inc. (whom I’ve always envisaged dressed in dungarees, chewing corn as they programme) – but Harvest Moon: A New Beginning has finally arrived specially for the farmers in all of us Brits. Following the same classic formula, you as the player are a young farmer who arrives in a derelict, failing town to make your living. Along the way, you will encounter many characters, most of whom are ‘unlocked’ by completing certain tasks, usually by constructing new houses, because in this game, you’re also a master architect (how cool is that?!). Depending upon your sex in-game, 6 of these characters become available to you as marriage candidates. Cue frantic gift-giving to raise their friendship! There are, however, many great untraditional additions to this game that will make ANB a worthy extension to your virtual farming collection.
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Graphically, ANB departs from the style of its predecessors, featuring both a more intimate ground angle as well as including the bird’s-eye view, which we can alternate at will. Though the 3D effects are nothing to write home about, they at least are not distracting and as I prefer my experience without the 3D, this personally wasn’t a major flaw for me. But from a gameplay perspective the visuals shrink in comparison with the Herculean addition of free movement around the map with the circle pad and… jumping. That’s right, feel awesome, because now we can jump over chickens, over crops, over fences – hell, we’ll jump over anything. If you have played a Harvest Moon game, you will understand what I mean when I say freedom is bliss, and bliss is what ANB dishes out in spades.
So what else? Well, for one, Harvest Moon is getting more accessible for a young audience, which is brilliant. Spread peace, love and agriculture across the generations! While I remember progression in the very first Harvest Moon DS game to be a real arduous slog, two months in-game on ANB and my farm is thriving. This is made so easy by the fact that your first cow barn already exists – you don’t have to pay for it and build it! – and you’re given a FREE COW. I was so excited that in a fit of ecstasy I inappropriately named it Carrot. Moreover, customisation has hit its grandest scale yet: character hair style and colour, skin tone and clothing are all changeable, and once your workshop is unlocked, you can freely change the appearance of your farm and the whole town. You can’t delete the villagers’ houses, though, because that’s just mean…
I was snuggled up in my Pikachu onesie, wielding a 3DS in hand, planting my very first turnip. AND BOY, WAS THAT A MOMENT
It’s also all about some of the smaller things. For a ‘weeaboo’ like myself, I almost died when I found out that new types of crops now include Japanese-inspired wasabi. You don’t have to grow potatoes all the time; now, so many varieties of crop exist, you can pick and choose based on what you like to eat. Forest exploration has become a walk in the park with shortcuts and, overall, the money-making process stays infinitely engaging while there are so many ways of going about it. My favourite addition has to be bee-keeping, but there are also fish-traps, paddies and several new types of livestock, including alpacas and llamas.
It’s official then, if you like the Harvest Moon franchise, I recommend ANB whole-heartedly. But what brings a smile to my face more than the game itself is the knowledge that it exists because my childhood dreams of owning my own farm are obviously still thriving in a new generation. I wonder, what is so great about virtual farming? Farmville, which spawned from Harvest Moon’s legacy, has taken Facebook by storm and it’s just so goddamn addictive, but golly, we can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s a desire to return to our natural roots and take the quaint, quintessential life – virtually. Maybe it’s a want of the antithesis of the dark, gruesome, combative games that have conquered the market and feel as if they’re being shoved down our throats. And maybe it’s none of those things, and we just find those chibi faces and happy background tunes so damn adorable we can’t stop.
The success of Farmville has highlighted the popularity of the farm-simulator genre
Whatever it is, who knows. All we know is that when we wake up and step outside that farmhouse and pick that first ripe crop, that’s our moment of triumph. That’s the time we dance around our room in our pyjamas because we’ve been playing since the night before, eyes red and blotchy, waiting to reap the delicious rewards of a hard week’s work in the fields. That magical feeling of achievement just keeps us coming back for more.
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