Gamecube - Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

Format
Gamecube
Publisher
Natsume
Developer
Marvelous
Country of origin
Japan
Genre
RPG

Harvest Moon : Wonderful Life

By David Rasmussen
2nd Apr 05

This week’s game reviews look as much back at two interesting games, but more importantly gives you the heads up to look ahead to two new games to come.
We’ve already seen such sequels as Devil May Cry 3, Final Fantasy XII (that came out, right?), and this summer will see the release of a new (and seemingly final) Star Wars movie tie-in game (Episode III : Revenge of the Sith) as well as the long awaited Kingdom Hearts 2 coming at the end of the year.

But did you know this year will also see the release of a brand new Legend of Zelda game, as well as a brand new Harvest Moon for both the GameCube AND the GameBoy Advance?
That’s what I’ll be looking at this week, this review focusing on Harvest Moon : Wonderful Life, and it’s upcoming sequels Another Wonderful Life (for the GameCube) and More Friends of Mineral Town (for the GameBoy Advance)… and two MORE sequels with a feminine spin? More on that later.

Ask any serious fan of the Harvest Moon franchise, any at all, and more often than not they’ll tell you to stick to the Nintendo released Harvest Moon games if you want a serious gaming experience.
Apparently those game are more respected by serious “future farmers” than the few that Sony put out, which is only a halfway fair assessment of Sony’s few Harvest Moon games released to date if you think about it!

Yes, Harvest Moon for the PS2 blew like nobody’s business. The game, lasting only one year long with no ability to play past that one year (forcing the player to repeat that one year over and over again) was a travesty for Harvest Moon players. It had it’s quirks and it‘s positives, but the cons outweighed the pros in that one, and it just fell short of being a true contender. In the end that game had promise, but it failed to deliver once the game was in the PS2 and playing which is sad since Sony’s previous Harvest Moon game is (in my opinion) one of the best of the franchise!
Harvest Moon : Back to Nature for the PSOne, the first from Sony, should have been the bar set by Sony for future Harvest Moon games (which they failed to surpass with their PS2 game). Taking what came before in Harvest Moon N64 and improving on it, Harvest Moon : Back to Nature for the PSOne is one of the best Harvest Moons I have ever played to date! This game, by the way, you can get on the GameBoy Advance as Harvest Moon : Friends of Mineral Town (which you can link up to with the GC’s Wonderful Life so you can visit Mineral Town).

As for Wonderful Life? The story is simple enough, as is the case with all Harvest Moon games.
You have moved back to your family farm in this sleepy village after the death of somebody… isn‘t that always the case? Somebody in your family (who used to farm) kicks the bucket and doesn‘t leave an heir so it‘s up to you to “save the farm“ and “produce offspring“. Standard Harvest Moon storyline (which is probably why the PS2 version failed since it didn‘t stick to the standard storyline).
Yes, since this is a standard Harvest Moon game story then you know the drill by now.
Your job is to bring the farm “back to life”, as well as get married and have children. Simple as that.
Of course it‘s not so simple once you set down on the ground running the farm, but you should be able to get your legs under you fast enough to get the farm rolling along OK with only a little playtime logged in.

The graphics are improved, the gameplay deeper and longer, with a little bit of an evolving story since your character ages throughout the game (a gimmick recently picked up by EAGames/Maxis for their Sims 2 sequel). Yes, the graphics was good in the PS2 version, but the story sucked and the gameplay was shallow which also was a bad thing -- something you don’t have to worry about in this game!

You can farm a lot more stuff now, though they did keep the crop planting idea of one seed per one plant that came from the PS2 version, but even that is improved over the PS2 version in that you can start growing genetic hybrids! And no, protestors won’t blockade your farm once you start “hybridizing” screaming about genetic manipulation and all that… maybe it’s because your “hyrbid” maker is not exactly your normal run of the mill “device” used in making plant hybrids… uh, you have to see it to believe it.
(Hint - If your partner ever brings home a gigantic weird talking thing with two… “heads“? Let him keep it… it’s for hybridizing).

Yes, you plant crops, but you can also plant trees which is another first (as opposed to the PSOne game when you just harvested from trees but didn‘t plant trees). You also have your standard rhythm and roll range of animals both old (horse, cow, sheep, chicken) and new (goat and ducks) to raise, as well as new people to know and befriend as well as a few girls to marry… few as in less than when you played either the N64 or PSOne version which is basically the Harvest Moon equivelant of Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask… in that the same characters inhabit both games, but have different jobs and lives in each game ala the way the Zelda characters were different people in Majora’s Mask than when you first met them in Ocarina of Time.

You seem to be part Terminator in this game since it takes a lot to put you down for the count.
You don’t collapse anymore, and since there‘s no doctor in this game there would be no one to take care of you anyway so that‘s a loss. Since you don’t collapse after overworking it means you’ll stay on your feet even if your hungry, but you become less productive if you overwork your character so be careful.

Another difference between this game and previous Harvest Moons is that there are no major storms like before to trap you in your home, which means you can get the most out of each and every day… however the weather can now change suddenly so you have to watch the weather at least twice a day (since the weather has the capability of shifting about twice a day).
Another downer for this game is the days you play. Previously you played a four month year (four seasons) with 30 days a season, for a grand total of 120 days a year. This time, however, your days are numbered down to only 10 a season for 40 days a year…. But then again considering you have 30 years to burn that means you have about… hmm… 10 years of gameplay if you compare it to the previous games which is still more than previous games (3 years for the N64, about 3 or 4 for the PSOne).
But, then again, once you “finish“ the game you could continue to play it past the “end“ in the N64 or PSOne versions, which you can‘t do here (ala the PS2 version).

You can do all the standard fare in Harvest Moon games here. You can farm, raise animals, fish to supplement your income or cook new things, gather stuff for money or ingredients for recipes, and even work in an archeological dig (instead of working in a mine like in previous games) to dig up precious minerals and valuable artifacts you can sell for pocket money.
Yes, at this point the game should be so interesting you will be more than willing to forget there ever was a PS2 Harvest Moon game! But now… the downside.

Unlike previous towns you played in this one lacks even a general store, let alone any interesting places to visit! You only have one person, who sells seeds, and a “traveling merchant” who sets up shop every so often to sell you things. And forget the places like the Church or racetrack in previous games, they are not present in this game!
As for the things that are here? The merchant is (sadly) only really useful part of the time. Once you buy all then things you really need to get from him he ends up taking a long time to restock, so you mostly use him more to sell things to (to build up your farm’s financial stock so you can build upgrades, buy animals and seeds, and so forth).

As for the new animals? One you buy from this merchant (the goat) and one you get when you build a duck pond in the first year (they’ll show up one day).
HOWEVER buying the goat is a waste since it’s only useful for one year and that’s it, and the ducks don’t seem to have any use since there’s a glitch in the game which (seemingly) doesn’t allow them to lay eggs YET it seems the chickens are somehow laying duck eggs… don’t ask me why the chickens are giving birth to ducks all of a sudden… in fact don’t think about it too much, you might not like the “answer”.

Come to think of it the game has a few “glitches” to speak of, which is probably why this game isn’t exactly being universally recommended by all sides as the game to own.
Sometimes you may have your animals out in your pasture only to notice that they “vanished” suddenly! They’re still there, just invisible… you’ll end up walking into them if you wander your field. Just go into your barn and press the recall button and they’ll reappear again in your barn.
Sometimes your cow becomes a bottomless pit and (if your not patient and wait for it to finish it’s food) it’ll keep eating whatever you dish out to it again and again… another glitch.
Word is also if you fill the barn all the way up (all stalls filled) the game will freeze up.

Or if you have a male then you don’t need to spend money on Miracle Potion… which is a bad thing and a long story to boot! But since I’m here to give you the good and the bad then here it is, the long story of the Harvest Moon “birds and bees”.

We’ll start with the “goat glitch”. If you buy a goat from the traveling merchant you’ll quickly find that the game gives you no recourse by which to sell said goat once you buy it! Seems that the only person who’ll buy the stuff you bought from the traveling merchant IS the traveling merchant, which is a pain since you can’t exactly stick that goat into your bottomless backpack and take it back to the guy to sell it once it’s dried up. I tried to “push” the goat all the way into town once to sell it and that didn’t work either, just so you know. And, as if to further mock your decision to buy the goat, the goat can’t even be “mated” to replenish the milk and becomes a useless thing in short order.

Which brings us to the “cow glitch” and why you should never ever own a male cow!
Another downer is that this game has done away with the endless spring of milk that once came out of your cows (which is also seen in the milking goat which loses it‘s milk in one year‘s time, same as the cows)! The only way you can keep your cows giving milk is to keep getting them pregnant! So, to this end, you constantly have to have your partner bring mating cows in to… well… mate (once the milk is gone since you‘ll interrupt the milk cycle if you do it too soon).

But, you might ask, why not buy a male cow to do that? Why? Because you’ll be the one whose screwed if you do that. The thing mates with all the females whether you want him to or not!
There’s supposed to be an option to do that, you’re supposed to be able to go to the catalog and order your partner to administer the “miracle potion” to the cow to make babies, however it seems the male cow is smarter than the people at Natsumi since it figured out that (yes) it doesn’t need a miracle potion (or your permission) to off and get any girl cow pregnant! Which means, yes, a male cow will even mate with it’s own mother (if it was born into the barn and raised to adulthood as one of your animals) and you don‘t have to even “encourage“ it… which is kind of disturbing if you think about it.

Yes, this is yet another glitch in the game, and yes this has happened to me once while playing the game!
I had a male cow born once and kept it since I thought it would be cheaper than having to use the Miracle Potion on outside cows year after year… then the male cow off and impregnated his “mom” while she was still giving milk all on his own without any “orders“ being given for it to happen and whatnot, which messed everything up and… well, you see my point.

Oh, during the game you‘ll hear talk that “selling the offspring of your cows will traumatize the cows“!
This isn‘t Babe, you know! Don’t listen to a word they’re saying since I’ve sold the offspring (after the above story’s events happened) and never ever has the cows ever been “traumatized” by the selling.
Sell the male ASAP (though you can wait until it’s worth abit more than newborn status to sell since they won’t be fertile right away)… and on the bright side you can even name the cow just so you remember to sell it… names like “4Sale”, “SellMe”, “BuyMe” and so forth.

As for the overall pace of the game? Yet another downside.
Because the game is only 40 days (10 days a season) that means this game has skimped greatly on the “festivals” as opposed to previous Harvest Moon games, lowering the festivals down to 3-4 rather pointless little “events” which are supposed to be “festivals” but really aren’t very good.
We have “New Year’s” which is boring (and illegal since you can watch the village homeless person and thief steal from everyone during the “festival“), we have a “concert” event in the Summer (music from the village hippie) which is dull, a “Harvest Festival” which takes place at, of all places, the local bar… and I don’t know what Winter’s event is though I guess there must be some “Event” for that season.
Let’s face it, in comparison to the fun fests the festivals of the N64 and PSOne were, these “festivals” are major letdowns and boring to boot!

Another downer (which this game seems to have lots of) is all the things you miss once you get married.
Because the game is so hopped up on this being the first game where you watch your kid “grow up” it kind of skips out on the important things. You don’t see the wedding (and come to think of it nobody else in the village gets married), you don’t have the first day your wife tells you she’s pregnant, you don’t even see the birth (as you did in the N64 and PSOne versions)!
You end Year 1 married… must do since the game will end if your not married… and start year two with a small baby boy. Well, on the bright side at least the child doesn’t dress up like a Marrill (Poke’mon)!

Then there’s the lack of “hangouts” in this game. Because there is so few places to go there isn’t much places for socialization with your neighbors, or to generally hang out.
In the N64 version you had a bar, a cake shoppe, a seed shoppe, a church, a wineyard and a mine to hang around… oh, and you had a racetrack. The PSOne game had basically the same hangouts (a general store and a seaside fast food joint instead of a cake shoppe though) as the N64 version.
This? You have a bar, a mansion, some other places (not very interesting)… and that’s it! Yes, there is a place to meet the Harvest Sprites but UNLIKE the PSOne version you can’t hire them!
Oh, and no racing this time out!

Yes, you have more plants, more animals, more farming and fishing and more stuff to do.
However you also have less festivals, less places to hang out, no races to bet on or compete in (what’s the use of having a horse if you can’t race with the horse) and less choices of who to marry (three instead of five as in the N64 or PSOne versions) the game falls short in some areas.
It doesn’t help the game any, by the way, that it also is marred with glitches here and there.

That’s that. I can’t think of much else to say about this game. Huh?
Well, I could say more but I better stop before I ramble on too long… yeah, yeah, I know, too late.
The next game? I can tell you there’s practically nothing on the new games that I can tell you other than to check out the few screenshots for More Friends of Mineral Town at Nintendo‘s official website… but I’ll give you a 4-1-1 on what comes after that, and why it’s so feminine… after the breakdown.
By the way, I tell you right now they have better ironed out those glitches present in this game, because they had more than enough time (while belting out the sequel) to fix the problems in this game and make it better. When June comes about I better be happier with that game than I was with this, and that’s all I’ll say.

Harvest Moon Breakdown the 1st (GameCube Version)
What’s Hot? - It’s abit of a tradeoff. You have gained more depth in the farming, better graphics, longer gameplay and more to grow, raise and do. As well as abit more depth with your neighbors. Overall it has it’s merits and it’s pluses and somehow I think it’ll be a great addition to your collection while you wait for the sequel, however…

What’s Not? - However for that depth this game offers you, you end up giving up quite abit.
You gave up festivals, places to hang out, lost out on seeing your marriage and the birth of your child, and abit more. And, of course, we have those little glitches which just ain’t no good. So, like I said above, it’s give and take. This game leaps ahead previous Harvest Moon games with brand new things and a better look, but fails in having less to do and less places to go. Still, if I had to say whether or not I can recommend this game for playing? I can recommend it… with a few reservations. I like it, but if I had the choice I’d like to get a copy of the classic PSOne Harvest Moon : Back to Nature for my PS2, and I even have a PSOne memory card to save the game on if they never do a PS2 re-release of that game.

Moments to Remember? - At times there’s some moments in the game that really stand out. These are the “cutscene” events, which are abit too few and far between for my liking… but good, nevertheless.
Still I wish the game had more outstanding moments, like in previous Harvest Moons (the PSOne version once again standing out in my mind as the most memorable).

What to Ignore? - Let’s see… didn’t see my own wedding in this game. Missed living as a married couple with the wife before the child came. Missed the birth. I seem to have lost abit in the rush to get the baby out just to milk the growing child thing to death. Wish the game took it’s time with that.
Also didn’t like how the game sometimes goes at a normal pace, then takes a leap in years jumping from period to period (first the baby’s a young kid, then he’s a teen, then older).
I wish I could ignore it, as well as the “glitches” present in this game, but that’s not exactly something you can ignore… so I didn’t.

Overall? - It’s a mixed bag. My favorite is still the PSOne version (the one game that I feel disproves the naysayers who claim Sony can’t make a good Harvest Moon game), but I kind of like this game.
It’ll hold me over until the next one this June at any rate…
Yes. If the PSP re-releases the PSOne Harvest Moon on the PSP that is a game I would love to check out… once Sony wakes up and cranks down the PSP’s outrageous $250 price tag to something I can afford.

What? You don’t like the male lead (who, according to the sites dedicated to the series, is named “Jack”) in this game? If you don’t like the male lead you can always cross your fingers and hope Another Wonderful Life (female version) hits soon! Female version? What’s that!
When Nintendo ported the PSOne Harvest Moon game over to the GameBoy Advance they seemingly tweaked around with it a little bit. If you remember Harvest Moon 3, for the GameBoy Color, you’ll remember that you had a choice between male or female character (the female character being a short game since you stopped playing as her after she married and had children), and that’s something Nintendo seemingly picked up on when they released Friends of Mineral Town in Japan since two versions of this game exists : a male and a female version.

In Japan two versions of this game existed.
One is the one you know now on, the one released in America. The one starring “Jack”.
The second started a female lead, and is only now being considered for US release after all this time.
The “female” character, sadly, was basically the male character “altered” to give the impression that he was in fact a she… which is kind of sad since they could have went out of their way to make a female character for this game instead of “recycling” their old character and turning him into a girl. Other than that the story was the same as the original, except now you chased the boys instead of the girls. Sorry, no lesbian variant storyline for this game from what I read about it.

The one problem with this female version… and no it’s not the lack of a lesbian option… is that it’s woefully short. The original Japanese female version of the game was too much like the GameBoy Color Harvest Moon 3 game, in that it ended once the female lead got married and pregnant.

As for this new version? I don’t know if the game will carry on past marriage and children, but considering they went out of their way to make BOTH a Another Wonderful Life and More Friends of Mineral Town with a female lead I’m guessing this time the game will last longer (past marriage and child birth).
However as to when this game will release? Only time will tell. Somehow nobody at Nintendo OR Sony wanted to touch the female variant version, so when and if Nintendo finally rolls out the female Harvest Moon is anyone’s guess. Right now they’re presently hot on getting ready for Another Wonderful Life so I expect it’ll be a long long wait before we ever see a female version of “Another Wonderful Life”.
Stay tuned in anycase. I hope to have a review of the latest Harvest Moon sometime this summer.

-- David Rasmussen 2nd Apr 05

Gamecube Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Images