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| Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town GBA review | |
| developer | Natsume |
| publisher | Nintendo |
| author | Mike |
| date | Dec. 22, 2003 |
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| sound | |
| gameplay | |
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| reviewer's toast | |
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Chromehounds
NA Review by Marcin
Oblivion-The First 3 Hours
PC Quicktake by walTer
Comic Quick Takes January 25, 2006
Feature by Mike
When you hear the words ‘farming sim’ I am reasonably sure images of exhilaration and lunacy don’t immediately flood your cranium. Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town bills itself as such, and there is much more under the surface than one would suppose. The Harvest Moon series has been around for ages on various platforms, and must be doing something right to have made the leap to the Gameboy Advance. HM:FOMT is an incredibly well done and addicting little game.
The premise of the game is simple. You are a young boy who inherits a farm from a dying man he once visited with his family. You start out with very little money and some rudimentary tools, and herein lies the beauty of the game: how you proceed is completely up to you. In order to get your farm going, you will need to start generating some money. Want to scavenge the countryside, looking for items to sell? Check. Decide you want to start growing some small vegetables for some cash? Check. The freedom is welcome here. As time goes on, you will have a steady income that allows you to expand your farm, buy livestock, purchase gifts to woo the ladies, and upgrade your tools and equipment.
When the game starts, you are given your farm, a dog and a cluttered field. The first thing you will need to do is clear the field so you can prepare the land for planting. This involves pulling up grass, chopping up stumps and smashing rocks. This will take a couple days, and will help you get the pacing of the game. Do too much work, and you will get tired. Fortunately there are certain herbs you can eat to regain some stamina, and also a hot tub you can visit to replenish some energy. Be careful if you overwork yourself and turn blue – you might end up in the hospital. As you upgrade your tools and rucksack, things will become a bit easier and take less time. For instance, your starting rucksack holds only three tools and three items. It’s tedious dragging things three at a time to your sell-bin, but soon you will able to upgrade to a larger capacity.
Time moves rather quickly in HM, so having a strategy of how you are going to spend the day is important. A full day is around 10-11 minutes, by my guestimate. This is misleading, however, as time stops whenever you are indoors. You can spend as much time shopping or mining as you want. Once you are back outside, the clock begins ticking. Certain stores are closed on some days, so you will need to plan your visits accordingly. Shops also are open different times, and will close at night. There are also four seasons, which are thirty game days each. Just like in real life™, you can’t harvest during the winter, so it’s key that you do your growing and harvesting before winter hits.
You can also raise livestock. Sheep, cows and chickens are available for raising, and while each costs a bit of money to start out with, will soon grow into money producing machines, provided you take care of them. You also have a horse and a dog. Be sure to give them attention each day, as their ‘love’ will grow.
There are several other areas in HM. You can upgrade your equipment by mining for material in the nearby mines. Each upgrade takes a certain mineral and a cost by the blacksmith to upgrade. You can only upgrade after each item gets a special amount of use, however. Each month brings special events that break up the day to day chores, such as horseracing or a baking contest. These events are not mandatory, but break up the working grind quite nicely. You can also win money, prizes and items by participating.
Then there are the ladies. There are a handful of girls in the game, and one can be yours. You’ll need to give them the right things for them to become fond of you. You can tell how much they like you by the beating heart under their picture. Finding that special lady can take time and patience. Finally, there are friendly elf sprites that once befriended, will help you out with the assorted chores on your farm, and you can improve and expand your farm by adding rooms and appliances.
The graphics in HM are a colorful and cartoony. There are quite a few animations due to the massive amount of things you can do, and all are excellent. People walk about the town, your dog puts around the farm, and cows graze. There is always something going on, and it all looks great. The screen will gradually darken and lighten as the daylight changes. Sounds are well done, all the moos and baas sound right. Bouncy happy music plays throughout the day, and stops when the day ends to be replaced by crickets and other assorted nighttime noises.
There are a couple areas that could have been improved. The control scheme is a bit hard to adjust to at first. You use a combination of the shoulder buttons with the other buttons as shortcuts, or you can access a menu at the bottom of the screen. I suggest reading the manual and memorizing the shortcuts to save some time and frustration. My biggest peeve, however, was handling objects. To use something, you first hold it, then interact with whatever it is you are doing by pressing the A button. The A button also drops items. Permanently. Once you have dropped something, it’s gone for good. There were a couple of times that I just purchased something, and instead of hitting the B button to put it into my inventory, accidentally pressed A. Gone. Forever. A simple ‘are you sure you want to drop this’ would have completely eliminated this gripe. Also, I would have liked some sort of fatigue meter. As you get tired, you’ll fall over, and briefly turn blue. While this works, a meter would have been better, I feel. Finally, the translation to english was poorly done in places.
There is so much to do in HM that I am sure I’ve missed one or two details. Discovery is one of the joys in the game, so I don’t feel too bad. If you enjoyed the previous games in the series, or wished for a handheld version of something similar to Animal Crossing, look no further. HM is an endless game that allows you to play how you want. You can also save the game at any time, which makes it perfect for those on the go. Harvest moon is an addictive timesink, and offers something for every gamer.