05.10.11 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: hajimari no daichi, harvest moon
Harvest Moon for the 3DS, coming out early 2012, blah blah blah. If I know my Marvelous, there’ll be at least one delay before it comes out, so Summer 2012 is a safer bet.
Is it just me or are those some huge-ass vegetables? How are you going to harvest those? And would anyone seriously eat those monsters?
The stuff I’m hearing about the game isn’t setting my world on fire, though. Lay out your farm however you want? Design your own character? Change your hairstyle? This isn’t Animal Crossing, but fine. But what I really want to hear about is the farming system. Those neat rows from Two Towns seems to be missing now, and your farm looks a little plain. And I’ve been planting those same cabbages and eggplants and sweet potatoes since…since. What’s new this time? I’m seeing something about a “field levels” (段々畑) system that takes advantage of the 3D gimmick, but I’m not clear on how that works yet.
Until any really exciting news comes out about this one (or about Rune Factory 4!! Do want!), I won’t be shopping for a 3DS just yet.
I want a new Shepherd’s Crossing… ‘_’
08.04.11 / Harvest Moon, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (1)
Tags: bokujou monogatari, futago no mura, harvest moon, rune factory, the tale of two towns, twin villages
Natsume is bringing Harvest Moon: Twin Villages over as Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns! When exactly it’ll be published stateside, sometime in 2011 is all they’re saying. Natsume have been known to postpone release dates before, not to mention Twin Villages itself was delayed at least once before release. Anyone who’s read my posts about TV knows I wasn’t a big fan of it, but it did great sales in Japan and I hope it does great sales in America as well.
Marvelous has been putting a lot of effort in the Rune Factory franchise these days, which is good (I want Oceans!!), but I don’t want them to forget HM entirely. As long as the success of TV doesn’t mislead them into thinking that once-a-day saves and repetitive contests and rampant store closings and bland characters and forcefully slow progress are the way to go, no problem at all. Plus Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar was a disappointment to many HM fans, so maybe they’ll like TV better.
As for me, it’s too soon to replay Twin Villages The Tale of Two Towns, so I’ll be saving up for when RF: Oceans comes stateside. I suppose could also buy RF: Frontier while I’m waiting, but everything I’ve seen and heard of the runey system sounds so frustrating that I don’t really want to get involved. In the meantime, back to my other games.
30.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (16)
Tags: bokujou monogatari, futago no mura, grand bazaar, harvest moon, rune factory, the tale of two towns, twin villages
All right. I ended last time by explaining all the reasons why I found this game Random and Restrictive. But to prove it wasn’t all bad, before I dig into the rest of this game, I’ll mention another good thing I liked about this game: cooking.
Cooking
As distinguished from the cooking festival, which I’ve already explained was pure crap. Your team members lose the contest for you despite your hardest efforts, and it’s the same lines and the same events repeated over and over again. The town mayors vary their lines a little as the towns get closer, but it’s one variation, 5 repetitions, one variation, 5 repetitions, ad nauseam.
No, what I do like is the actual cooking. From the crops you grow and the things you process, you can cook over 300 different dishes in your kitchen, most of which look absolutely delicious. Salads, soups, hors d’oevres, main dishes and several other things. And unlike many other HMs, you don’t have to be taught the recipe to do it. You either cook over and over again until you’re “inspired” and suddenly learn a new recipe, or you can go straight to an FAQ and save yourself the pain of wasted ingredients. Here’s a link (Japanese) to save you time as well: 料理.
Even better, your energy doesn’t go down while you’re cooking, so you can cook all day and all night if you want. And you can make several items at once instead of just one at a time. You can select ingredients that are in your storeroom as well. If I had to mention just one drawback, it’s that the game keeps questioning you. Want to make a variation? Want to keep the quality of the dish? Etc, etc. A bit annoying having to click through all that, but it’s okay. I like cooking in real life, so I tend to like cooking games too.
Boring
1. The marriage candidates – Wow! They all look so nice! And they all suck so much! This is a very subjective opinion, so I’m not going to run my mouth on about it and invite needless argument. I’ll just say they weren’t my type. I keep comparing this game to Grand Bazaar because they’re very similar gameplaywise, stylistically and characterization-wise, but even the marriage candidates in GB had (a tiny bit) more spark than the ones in this one. The girls in Twin Villages are just dull, bland and similar, not much to choose between them. I chased first one then another, but I still couldn’t find anything to like. If I ever do a replay, I might try playing as a girl instead, maybe the guys are better.
The sage. Looks like a loli, talks like an old crone
Lia – Cute, friendly, likes cooking
Raspberry – Cute, friendly, likes animals
Nana – Cute, friendly, likes nature
Licorice – Cute, not so friendly, likes plants
The Sage – Cute, friendly, mysterious
Ariella – Cute, friendly, religious
There, that’s it. That’s all. They’re cute, but there’s nothing to choose between them. Remember the girls in the original Harvest Moon? Karen, Ann, Mary? Or even more recently, all the different girls in Rune Factory 3? Compared to that, this is just a giant snoozefest. You can go out on dates with them, which is even snoozier because you have to ask them out at certain times of the day and take them to certain places only. Then they have the nerve to get jealous if you date other girls. Man, you just can’t win with some people.
2. Time passing – Sooo slow. S o o o o o s l o w. Just like in Grand Bazaar, one in-game minute corresponds to one real life second, which sounds fast until you actually play it and realize it takes forever for anything to happen. With the innovations in farming and ranching, namely planting in rows and getting your pets to take care of your animals, it doesn’t take long to get your morning duties done. Wake up at 6, do everything by 8 and then… then… then… If you like you can plant crops in both Kotonoha and Bluebell and go back and forth and water them, I did that after a while and it still didn’t take that much time.
You can go exploring in the mountains, which gets real old real quick. You can do some pointless quests, more on that below. You can talk to townspeople and try to woo your bland marriage candidate. You can…uh… You can do like I do and start going to bed at 12pm every day, that’s what. Just like in GB, the more you water your crops the faster they grow, but do you have any idea how tedious it is to stay up doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all day long just so you can water your crops again like you’ve done a million times before? Just so they grow a little faster and give you more money that you don’t even need? After the first year I just couldn’t take it any more.
3. Still no mining – I guess the fans didn’t complain enough when GB came out with mining removed, so Marvelous repeated the crime in Twin Villages. Your main way of getting the ores you need for quests and upgrades is to find them in the underground tunnel once you’ve got it open. Even then it’s all a matter of luck when you break the ore open. After years of making mining increasingly more broken, Marvelous has obviously given up and said “This is a farming game! Go play Minefest Moon if you want to mine!” And that was the end of that!
EDIT: I am informed by akira666 that if you play far enough, you can unlock a wider network of tunnels that you can go exploring and ore-hunting in. This makes it better than Grand Bazaar, at any rate. I stand corrected.
Repetitive
1. The cooking festivals – I already went into why these suck above and in the previous post. It’s the same pattern every time: mayors say the same thing, Pierre says the same thing, and takes forever to do it too, Harvest Goddess says the same thing, etc, etc. The only nice thing is that you may occasionally get good quality seeds or ore from your mayor after winning. But that doesn’t make up for the extreme tediousness after the first few festivals. There are other crop and animal festivals as well. They’re equally repetitive, but they happen a little less frequently, so I don’t have an issue with them.
2. Your daily schedule – Wake up, water crops, groom animals, play with pets, talk to townspeople who will say exactly the same thing all the time, fill a few quests, give a few gifts, roam through the mountains…There’s quite a bit of stuff to do. But it’s the same “quite a bit of stuff” every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year. It got unspeakably dull to me after just a few hours. Especially the mountain exploration, I just couldn’t stand it. Jump here, pick up this item, jump there, pick up this other item, run there, jump there, avoid this stupid bear that comes out of nowhere and attacks you… I read a few Japanese reviews which loved that aspect of the game, but I just couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t.
3. Quests – Taking a cue from the Rune Factory series and similar games, Twin Villages introduces a request board system where the townspeople can post quests for you to fulfill. I’m not going to wax lyrical about Rune Factory, because that series is hardly perfect either, but at least in RF (2 and 3) the quests are partly used as a way of getting to know the characters, getting closer to them and exploring more about their personalities. Accordingly there are a number of repeated quests, but there are a lot of new, one-time only quests as well. Essentially they form part of the story.
*sigh* Talk about taking the form and missing the essence. Twin Villages has quests all right. Tons of them, ranging in difficulty from E to S. You even get nice rewards for the better ones. But there’s no point. There’s no soul. There’s no progress. You’re just the town errand boy, doing one fetch quest after another forever and ever and ever. I swear, these townspeople are the laziest people on the planet and you, the player, are the biggest enabler ever! How many times are you going to fetch poison mushrooms for Ayame before you shove them down her throat and choke her? It never ends! Get me this, and that, and this, and that, and this, and that. As you get further and further into the game, their requests become fussier and more convoluted: “Not just any rose bouquet, it has to be level 2.5 and above or I won’t take it, hmph!” At that stage of the game you’ll have to plant/produce the components yourself and create whatever item it is, and give it to them for a reward you usually don’t need if you’re that far into the game. So…yeah.
Misc
1. Controls – I wasn’t sure whether to add this because at first it really bothered me, but after a while I got used to it and barely noticed it any more. Basically this game is going to hurt your wrist. In order to run, you have to press the L button and hold it. Doesn’t sound so hard huh? Try pressing the L button now, holding it, and using the directional keypad at the same time. Go on, keep doing it, keep going. It’s extremely uncomfortable and takes a while to get used to. It would have made more sense for the R button to be used, or for you to be able to press L once to turn dashing on, and L again to turn it off. What’s worse, I don’t even think it’s good for your L button to be depressed that long. However, just like the awful touchscreen-only controls in Island of Happiness, once you get used to it you don’t really notice it so much any more. As long as you don’t have any wrist or finger troubles (or very small hands), you should be okay.
2. The Harvest Goddess is annoying – She’s always been annoying, but I swear she gets worse and worse with every passing game. This time she caused half the trouble in the game by sealing the tunnel, and instead of fixing it she makes you have to do it. Not content with this, she insists on popping up every time you do something insignificant. “Ta-daa, you just ran 100 steps on your horse!” “Ta-daa, you just pulled up 100 turnips!” “Ta-daa, you’ve done a ton of errands, I hereby dub you ‘Errand Boy!’ As your reward, you can do even more errands!” <– yes, this really does happen. I can’t stand that cow.
3. Bad carryovers from Grand Bazaar – I already mentioned the slow pace and the lack of mining.
-They took out the double jump, which would have made navigating the mountain easier.
-They added more bugs and fish to catch, but only have a few designs for each one so that catching one feels just like catching another. And if you use the wrong fish in a recipe it fails, hard.
-Again you can only have one save point, and you can only save once a day, right before you go to bed.
-Milking and brushing your cows and sheep takes forever.
-Just like GB, the game comes with your house, kitchen and barn set up already so you can jump straight in. I miss having to construct all those things. Then again with the horrible upgrade system, maybe that’s for the best.
And so on, and so forth. I think I’ve devoted more than enough time to these explanations. To be fair there are a few things I did like, like the stuff I’ve already mentioned, and the graphics and the calm music, but they were few and far between, and not enough to override the negatives.
25.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (12)
Tags: bokujou monogatari, futago no mura, harvest moon, the tale of two towns, twin villages
Yes it’s strange, isn’t it? Before the game came out I posted about how excited I was and how I couldn’t wait for the game to come out, blah blah blah. Then once it came out, I made one first post and then…nothing. And if someone hadn’t commented asking me about it, it would have stayed as nothing because, quite frankly, I didn’t like the game.
Well, so why didn’t I post saying so? First of all, it was hard for me to admit to myself that a game in one of my all-time favorite series, and a game I’d been looking forward to for so long, actually kind of sucked. I played the game for about 5 in-game years, longer than I’ve played most other HMs, because I was waiting and hoping that it would suddenly get interesting, that the light would suddenly go on in my head and I’d fall in love with it. When that didn’t happen, I decided to go for plan B: stop playing the game for several months, start all over again and see if you can discover the missing magic. That’s what I was working on when I was asked to comment, so if I do play Twin Villages again and suddenly like it, I’ll be sure to post about it.
Now the second, and equally valid reason why I haven’t posted about this earlier is: the game isn’t that bad. ‘Cos you know, if you hate a game, the words just flow off your keyboard, you can’t wait to bash it. If you love it, it’s the same, you can’t say enough good things about it. But if it’s merely average, or in this case rather less than average, it’s like…okay…what do I say…should I even bother? Does it deserve my time? Let me just move on and play something better, etc, etc. So I’ll put this out there from the start: Harvest Moon Twin Villages is not a terrible game. It’s just boring, repetitive, predictable and uninspired.
Before I go into the details, I’ll just mention the one thing I did like, and that was the ability to farm in rows. See the way the land is shaped in the pictures up there? By pressing and holding a button (I think it was A?) when you’re tilling your field, you can plant your crops in a row instead of on individual spots. What that means is that when you water one plant in the row, you water all of them as far as the water in your can will allow. This saves a lot of time and effort when watering. Plus it looks really cool. In the same way if you stick a bottle of fertilizer into your field, it affects all the crops in the row instead of just those in the immediate squares. I really liked that innovation, it made farming a whole lot easier.
Now for everything I didn’t like. And there’s a lot of it. In order not to make this a huge block of text, I broke them up into four main divisions: Boring, Random & Restrictive and Repetitive. There’ll be some overlap between the four, which is why I put Random and Restrictive together, but in general that’s how I saw things.
Random and Restrictive
1. How you progress the story – The story behind this game is that two villages, Bluebell and Konohana, are at loggerheads with each other (except not really, they’re actually quite friendly). As a result, the Harvest Goddess got angry at the bickering several years ago and blocked up the tunnel under the hill that they used to go back and forth. Now she wants you to get everyone back together and happy again and to reopen the tunnel. (If you’ve played Rune Factory 3, this reunion mission might sound vaguely familiar). Fine, okay.
Unfortunately, the only way you can get the villages together again is by winning a series of cooking contests which are held a few times a month. After you bring them together enough, the local engineer Airin decides to reopen the tunnel, which she only does in stages every couple of months or so, whenever she feels like it. So the story can only progress in a very specific way at very specific times, and if you miss those moments, you have to wait even longer to get anywhere. Alrighty then.
2. Winning the cooking festival – What got my goat, then, was that winning the festival wasn’t up to your own skill. It was largely based on luck. You compete in the festival in randomly chosen teams of three. One week you, Ayame and Chihiro go up, the next week it’s you, Gonbei and Kiriku, etc. You can’t control who’s going to be on your team and you can’t control the quality of the food they’re going to present. So you can spend the whole month lovingly growing and tending your crops to grow the best vegetables you can, raising your animals’ love levels so they give the best milk and eggs. Prepare lovely tasty dishes that Pierre will simply adore. Present them. Then Mao or someone else will present some burnt crap, ruin your score and let the other village win, just like that. You still build some village rapport when you lose, but it slows you down a lot, not to mention pisses you right off.
Shenlow, the lazy blacksmith with the panda fetish
3. What upgrades you get – This is the big one, which probably did the most to spoil this game for me. In most Harvest Moon games, there’s a lumberjack or whatever you call him. When you have enough lumber/material and money to upgrade something on your farm, you go see him and you upgrade, simple. Additionally, there might be quests to do in the beginning to get the fishing rod, hoe, axe, etc, once you have them you can usually upgrade them whenever you’re ready. Cool.
Not so in Twin Villages. There’s a quest board available and if you want an upgrade to your farm or to a tool, you have to check the message board at the beginning of the month. Find the upgrade quests Airin and Shenlow have posted. Go see them and they’ll let you pick ONE upgrade you want done, even if you can afford 2000 upgrades. You pay up, have that upgrade done, and then you have to wait (im)patiently until the next month to get another chance to pick another upgrade. Just one. And you can’t get makers (cheese, wool, etc) until you’ve upgraded a certain number of times, which slows your progress even further.
Accordingly, both your facilities and your farming/ranching tools only grow very, very slowly, leaving you steaming and fuming for the rest of the month. I know they did it to extend the longevity of the game, but instead it just feels like forced and senseless slowdown and makes Airin and Shenlow look like the laziest <bleeping> pieces of <bleep> in Harvest Moon history. What in the world are they doing for the rest of the month?
3b. While I’m on the subject of restrictiveness, the game makes things even harder by specifying certain levels of items you can use. In the beginning any kind of stone or lumber will do, but later on Shenlow might say he wants only moonstones that are 2.0 stars and above. Oh, too bad you can’t mine them. And don’t bother jumping in the waterfall either, anything you get (at a much lower drop rate than Grand Bazaar), will never be more than 0.5 stars. Your only hope is to try your bad luck in the intervillage tunnel once you’ve opened it up fully, and such high level ores don’t appear until the 4TH YEAR of game play. Yes, you read that right. Fake longevity, anyone?
4. What seeds/items are available for sale -Yes, the pain doesn’t end there. Twin Villages also randomizes the items available in the general store (the one run by the Mexican siblings) and the seed store run by Gonbei. Let’s say you want to plant some cucumbers at the beginning of the spring. Unfortunately you don’t have any cucumber seeds left over from last season, or you haven’t gotten the seed maker yet ‘cos Shenlow and Airin are…no comment. So, full of hope, you run down and check Gonbei’s store, but he only sells 3 random types of seed every day. No cucumbers for you today. Today it’s turnips, potatoes and cabbages. No problem, I’ll come back tomorrow. Nope, no cucumbers for you then. Okay, next day. Oh no, he’s not open that day. Next day, holiday. Next day, still no cucumbers for sale. Want some turnips? Next day, it’s raining so he’s not open. It can be days before you finally get those cucumbers to plant, by which time you’ve probably filled your field with something else.
The same goes for the general store. They do keep feed for your pets in stock regularly, but that’s about it. It can take ages for you to find rice on sale, or oil on sale, or curry on sale, or flour. These things all go bad sooner or later in your storehouse, so you can’t just buy 99 of each every time and hang on to them. You have no idea how frustrating it is to want to make a recipe in time for the cooking contest or just for fun and neither store in Bluebell or Konohana will stock the one item you need to make it. I mean, at least for the seed store you eventually get a seed maker, but you never get an oil press or a curry maker so it’s just Graaaaargh!!!
5. Random store closings – Oh, you thought that was all? Guess what, not only are the storekeepers flighty enough to stock only what they feel like stocking, but they’re also lazy enough to close up shop all day when it rains. Even if it’s not their day off, they just don’t work when it rains, full stop. When you couple that with their weekly day-offs, the festival closings and the just-documented difficulty in finding a particular item in the stores, you can see just how annoying it can get. Maybe Marvelous was trying to promote ‘strategic’ gameplay, or maybe they were trying to keep an element of surprise in your day-to-day affairs. I don’t know. All I know is, I hated those storekeepers so, so much. So much.
Okay, this post is getting a bit too long. I’ll rant about the other things next time. Or maybe I won’t and this is representative enough of why I had a poor time with this game. I wanted to like it, but it didn’t want to be liked by me. Oh well.
02.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Romance game, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: bokujou monogatari, futago no mura, harvest moon, the tale of two towns, twin villages
As I said in an earlier post, I’m assuming Marvelous is going with 4 marriage candidates each for its main characters. Unless they announce any more, it looks like it’ll be 2 girls each from Bluebell and Konohana, and 2 guys each from Bluebell and Konohana. Of course I could be wrong… Anyway, time to compile the details I have so far on the potential partners from Bluebell.
GUYS
Ash (アーシェ)“He runs a rival farm. He’s always kind to everyone because he believes it’s a man’s duty to protect weak people and small things. As such he’s especially kind to women, children and elderly people.” He looks and sounds pretty boring and generic to me. Next!
Camille (カミル)
“A quiet guy, doesn’t talk much about himself. Has a great sense for flower design (?) and stuff along those lines. His dream is to someday win a flower arranging contest (!). Likes cats.” Okay, not to perpetuate stereotypes or anything, but that doesn’t sound very manly to me. Flower arranging!? He’s even called “Camille!”
GIRLS
Lia (リア)
I’ve also seen the name romanized as Leah, but I think Lia is cuter. “She’s very popular in the village because she’s cheerful, considerate and organized. She likes to make tea and candy. She wants to open a shop in the city one day so that people can enjoy the sweets and tea she makes.” Not bad, not bad. She’s a bit bland, but not bad.
Raspberry (ラスベリー)
“Blunt, lighthearted, doesn’t discriminate against anyone. She’s usually optimistic, but she does get depressed sometimes. She can also be quick-tempered. She moved to this village as a child, but she still has the accent from her hometown.” Kyoooot! Even her name is cute, and I like her design and outfits. Looks like I’m playing as a boy this time round. Based on the one screenshot they showed of her, it looks like she speaks in a Kansai accent.
Looking good, Marvelous! Keep me posted!
02.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Romance game, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (3)
Tags: bokujou monogatari, futago no mura, harvest moon, konohana, the tale of two towns, twin villages
I’ve shelved TMGS3 for the time being while I decide which guy to go for next. I’m very satisfied after dating Konno-senpai, so to throw myself back in the dating game for an inferior guy is like, hmm… But I get the feeling Shitara’s route will be all kinds of awesome, so maybe I’ll do that. Thanks to all who wrote about how to change the picture on my desk. I thought for sure Fujiyama was stalking me, *brrr!*
Right now I’m playing Harvest Moon: Twin Villages (a.k.a Bokujou Monogatari: Futago no Mura)! I used to really love Harvest Moon games, but most of the recent ones have been iffy-to-okay, not great. Sunshine Islands would have been great if I hadn’t played it right after Island of Happiness. The similarities between the two made SI feel very stale and unoriginal. In the same way there are a lot of similarities between Twin Villages and Grand Bazaar, particularly in terms of the art style and controls, so it lacks a bit of freshness.
As far as the story goes, there are two villages you can live in: Bluebell Village and Konohana Village. Hundreds of years ago the two mayors had a falling out and the two villages have theoretically been on bad terms ever since. Theoretically. I came into the game expecting some real rivalry and hostility between the two villages, but everyone’s actually really friendly. Even the two mayors have more of a friendly rivalry, they say the funniest things when they compete in the cooking contest (taking part in which is the only way to reunite the villages, go figure). Plus you can go to any of the villages any time you want, shop there all you want, do quests for the other villagers, talk to people, you might even be able to woo the girls on the other side with no real consequences, and basically have a good time with no restrictions.
Furthermore, Bluebell is supposed to be the “ranching” village and Konohana the “farming” village, but you can start keeping cows and chickens in Konohana right away, and I’m pretty sure you can grow crops in Bluebell too. What that means is that apart from the decor, there’s not much to choose between the two. Even better, you can up and move to the other village between the 23rd and the 30th of every season if you want. I’m yet to figure out why this would be a good idea when you can travel there any time, but this is more evidence that the rivalry is practically non-existent.
As far as the game itself goes, I’m only on Year 1 Spring 26, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it just yet. I’ll limit myself to two complaints for now: One, the map is rubbish. Remember the map from Sunshine Islands, how you could see where everyone was with one glance? In Rune Factory 3 the map even tracked movements, which was really convenient. Yeah, well, say goodbye to all that. Twin Villages’ map is awful and lacks a lot of detail. You can only see where your character is at any point in time, nobody else. You get a slightly more in-depth map when you’re in town, but when you’re exploring the mountains and other places, tough luck. It wasn’t so bad in Grand Bazaar because there weren’t that many places to go, but in Twin Villages it’s extremely annoying.
Second complaint, time still moves way too slowly. They brought back that system from Grand Bazaar where if you water the crops twice a day they grow faster, but the minutes pass so slowly that you’ll be done with all your watering, foraging and quests with game-hours to spare. Luckily I learned my lesson in the last game, so I don’t chase those extra days, I just go to bed. Unfortunately the time affects other things, particularly festivals. Most of them start in the afternoon, so you might have to wait up to five real-time minutes to progress with the game if you’re taking part in one. It sounds short, but there’s nothing to DO while you’re waiting, so you’re just sitting there staring at the screen…staring…staring…starinZzZzZz…
But still, I just started. After having to eat crow on my initial Atelier Lina review, I’m going to be as optimistic as possible about this game until I’ve finished at least one year. I’ll write a second post on the game then.
Read follow-up post here.
02.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Marvelous, Romance game, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: dragon quest 9, harvest moon, island of happiness, saga 2
I’m doing a replay of this game, ever since I gave up on it back when it first came out, out of boredom. I’ve made it to Winter 1 and now I’m rediscovering why I quit the first time. Winter is
boring! I’d forgotten how boring because the most recent HM games I played, RF2 and 3, had winter farming and lots of other stuff to do. In IoH it’s wake up, feed animals, wrangle wonderfuls out of Chen, mine if I want, sleep. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Mining is kinda fun though, and this time round I definitely want to get married so I’m toughing things out. My goal now is to make a ton of money in the mines this season, buy as many town upgrades as I can in spring, get married, have a kid and then put at end to the game. I hate having unfinished business.
You might be wondering what’s happening with the more recent games I’ve been playing (Saga 2 DS, DQIX) and why I’m playing old stuff over them. Well, I’m wondering that myself. I guess it’s just the case that sometimes the old, familiar game is more fun to play than the newer, drier ones. But I’ll get back to them eventually.
02.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: harvest moon, the tale of two towns, twin villages
By now everyone must have heard about the latest upcoming Harvest Moon game for the Nintendo DS: Twin Villages. You can pick either the Westernized village of Bluebell or the Japanese-style village of Konohana to farm in, and what you get to do depends on where you choose to live. Bluebell is more about ranching, and you get to raise alpacas and other creatures, and keep an apiary too. Konohana is farming-oriented, so you can grow and process all kinds of crops. The mayors of both towns try to woo you and get you to come to their villages. Long ago the two villages were friends, but now they’re rivals. I bet anything the main objective of the game is to make them friends again through farming/ranching.
Anyway, I found shots and descriptions of the main characters on the official site, so I thought I’d post them here.
The Hero
According to the website he loves natures and has dreamed of living in a place with lots of greenery since he was a child. He moves to the villages in order to fulfill this dream. He’s a curious person who never gives up or backs down from a challenge.
The Heroine
Her description goes as follows: A cheerful girl who loves to grow plants and raise animals. She goes to the village to fulfill her dream of being a farm owner. She has a gentle nature who is good at taking care of people and can empathize with others’ feelings.
Normally I like to pick the guy in Harvest Moon games, but this time I like the girl’s design and outfit better. I won’t even complain that it’s sexist that the guy is all “bold” and the girl is all “gentle” in this kind of game.
So far only 6 marriage candidates have been introduced, but I’m thinking there’ll be a total of 4 for each hero(ine). I’m all for reducing the number of candidates, so long as there’s an accompanying increase in things to do in the game. None of the HM games have been able to avoid getting boring after a year or two, but maybe HM:TV will be the first. I’m looking forward to it!!
Harvest Moon: Twin Villages comes out February 25th in Japan!
02.11.10 / Action RPG, Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Rune Factory, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: harvest moon, rune factory 3
Somewhere in my heart I’m not quite ready to let RF3 go yet, though I am looking forward to the upcoming “Twin Villages“. So while there’s still lingering affection in my heart for this game, I thought I’d do a quick write-up of the villagers in the game (excluding the marriage candidates) and their likes and dislikes. If I still feel up to it later I’ll do the marriage candidates as well.
Wells
Head of the village. Monica and Shia’s grandfather. Dislikes monsters but is generally a good guy.
Birthday: Winter 19
Favorites: Dango (だんご), expensive flowers (高級な花), mago no te (まごの手).
Also likes: Japanese food, grilled fish, sashimi, ordinary flowers.
Hates: Jams, cakes.
Monica
Wells’ granddaughter, Shia’s little sister. Cries easily and has a penchant for biting. Dislikes anyone who takes Shia’s attention away from her.
Birthday: Spring 26
Favorites: Expensive flowers (高級な花), rings, arm rings and other accessories.
Also likes: Jewels, knit items, ordinary flowers.
Hates: Fish, sashimi (刺身), grilled fish.
Gaji
Touna’s guardian/brother figure. Owns the weapon store. A quiet considerate guy who understands more than he usually lets on.
Birthday: Summer 12
Favorites: Curry udon (カレーうどん), gold (金), platina (プラチナ).
Also likes: Metal ore (including junk ore), udon dishes.
Hates: Sashimi (刺身).
Gluten
Father of Chocola and Rusk. Runs the town restaurant. His cooking is so good travelers come from far away to try it. Likes chocolate so much he named his daughter after it. No, seriously.
Birthday: Fall 10
Favorites: Chocolate cake (チョコレートケーキ), hot chocolate (ホットチョコレート), chocolate cookies (チョコクッキー).
Also likes: Sweet snacks, honey (ハチミツ), chocolate (チョコレート).
Hates: Wine (お酒).
Rusk
Gluten’s son, Chocola’s younger brother. A notoriously finicky eater who hates vegetables of all kinds but loves sweets.
Birthday: Spring 26
Favorites: Chocolate cake (チョコレートケーキ), hot chocolate (ホットチョコレート), chocolate cookies (チョコクッキー).
Also likes: Sweet snacks, honey (ハチミツ), chocolate (チョコレート).
Hates: Vegetables.
Marjorie
Marion’s wise grandma. A sensible old lady with a wealth of knowledge about magic and medicines. Will revive you if you pass out (for a healthy sum of money).
Birthday: Winter 11
Favorites: Relax tea leaves (リラックス茶の葉), relax tea (リラックスティー).
Also likes: Colored grasses.
Hates: Cheese (チーズ) and cheese dishes.
Hazel
Karin’s hot but sharp-tongued mother. She’s openly critical of her daughter but really loves her and wants what’s best for her.
Birthday: Spring 8
Favorites: Diamonds (ダイヤモンド), diamond ring (ダイヤモンドの指輪), diamond brooch (ダイヤモンドブローチ).
Also likes: Vegetables, cakes
Hates: Desert fish (砂漠の魚) and desert fish dishes.
Don Charcos
What’s Rune Factory without a fat, food-loving rich guy? Don Charcos is Eliza and Sophia’s dad. Like Sophia he has a habit of saying the opposite of whatever he means.
Birthday: Summer 8
Favorites: Fried sand flounder (焼き砂ヒラメ), boiled rockfish (岩石魚の煮付け).
Also likes: All cooked food.
Hates: Ores.
Eliza
Don Charcos’s daughter, Sophia’s older sister. A fashion designer with a very unique sense of fashion, Eliza also runs a store that sells home furniture and clothes. She’s got a very nice, mature personality, I really wish she was a marriage candidate.
Birthday: Spring 21
Favorites: High quality fur (上質の毛皮), ball of wool (毛糸玉).
Also likes: Sheep down (モコ綿), pretty spider silk (キレイなクモ糸), fish.
Hates: Mushrooms (きのこ).
Shinonome
Runs the local inn and bathhouse. Smiles a lot but is tougher than she looks.
Birthday: Winter 26
Favorites: All sashimi (刺身).
Also likes: Mushrooms (キノコ).
Hates: Fruits and fruit dishes.
Carlos
Aion’s overprotective, overloving big brother. Has a sunny, thoughtless personality. Loves fishing and runs the fishing hole with his sister.
Birthday: Summer 3
Favorites: Shining tai (カガヤキタイ), tokimeki tai (トキメキタイ) and all tai (sea bream) dishes.
Also likes: Fish.
Hates: Bread (パン) and bread dishes.
Ondolfar
One of the horned people. A bookish, knowledgeable guy who supports Cururufar from behind.
Birthday: Summer 30
Favorites: Premonition of love (恋の予感), gold juice (ゴールドジュース), rune staff (ルーンスタッフ), magic broom (魔法のほうき).
Also likes: All juices and staves.
Hates: Items dropped by monsters.
Zeze
Hyperactive dwarf who lives in the monster village. Kinda cute, really.
Birthday: Fall 26
Favorites: Tempura udon (天ぷらうどん).
Also likes: All udon dishes.
Hates: Sweet dishes.
01.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Japanese, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Rune Factory, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: harvest moon, island of happiness, mais, review, rune factory 3
Phew, where do I begin? Because it’s not a bad game at all, by any means, but there’s all these little and not-so-little things that made me wonder, why do it this way? Why do that? Why didn’t they do this instead? Anyway, let’s get down to it, from major to minor.
1. Story: The story is whack. I don’t want to spoil, but they trotted out the same old same old “I have…amnesia!” story again. It was fun the first time. It was nostalgic the second time. Now it’s just old. But that’s not the worst part, the worst part is that you find out what your past is all about and it’s shallow, nearly-nonexistent and laaaaaame.
Fine I’ll spoil it: [SPOILERS FOLLOW, avert gaze!]
[SPOILERS FOLLOW, avert gaze!]
[SPOILERS FOLLOW, avert gaze!]
See, there’s these monster creatures and they’re at odds with humans. Luckily enough, Mais is half monster so a powerful being wipes out his memory and tosses him into a village to try and make peace. This will somehow make some magical tree bloom and magically save the land from destruction. Gee. Seems the monsters and the humans had a huge falling out years ago, and, like, nobody remembers what it was about but they’re all still mad anyway. Then Mais shows up and he’s like “Let’s have a party!!” (no, srsly) and then they have a party and everyone’s happy. So anyway that was the boss’s plan and somehow he knew you could do it even without your memories, and whoopee, it all worked out, congratulations! See? I told you it was whack.
2. Transformation: The woolly transformation gimmick…wait, let me explain that. Since 
you’re half-monster you can turn into a woolly using a magical belt…wait, what kind of sick woman would have a baby with a sheep?! Ewww!? And if you’re half-woolly, why do you need a belt to transform? The whole thing is silly and useless. It was marketed as a cool option where you could get the girls to tell you secret things they wouldn’t tell your human self, etc etc. Puh-lease, we should be so lucky. They just make throwaway comments about what a cute woolly you are, and it plays a role in a few of the (lamer) quests, but it doesn’t add anything to the game. If anything it takes away from it. And the big reveal, when the townsfolk find out the cuddly golden woolly and Mais are one and the same? They’re all like, meh, cool, whatever, so what. Whaaat? That’s it!? I just told you guys my ultimate secret on which the whoooole game hinges! React a little, dammit! Faaaail!
3. Recipes: The system for learning new recipes SUCKS. It suckssssss!!!! First you buy “bread” from a store – it doesn’t fill you up but it’s still called bread. Cooking recipe bread, pharmacy recipe bread, forgery recipe bread, accessory recipe bread. Fine. But after you waste your money on this bread, you’re not guaranteed to learn a recipe. Nope, it’s all about your current level in that skill. Not high enough? Tough cookies, you just spent 2000-5000 on empty air. See you tomorrow.
4. Rune Points: You know how in previous games, after you run out of Rune Points your skills/magic start using up your HP? And take it little by little? This time once you run out of Rune points, the very next move you make takes up HALF your HP. Next move you make, you pass out on the spot. I mean, eventually you learn your lesson and watch your RP like a hawk, but it’s an unreasonable and inconvenient system nonetheless, especially in the beginning before you get the hang of it.
5. Crop system: The soil in your garden has fertility levels. The more you grow something on the same spot, the lower the fertility gets. Lower fertility = greater chance of your crops dying. The theory is that you need to use fertilizers and practice crop rotation to keep optimum fertility. The theory is good. The practice is not. And that practice is, unless you pour buckets of fertilizer on your crops every round, they’re going to be dying left and right. Either you analyze every single square before you plant on it or you make fertilizers by the ton. Either way it’s tedious and unproductive. This is the second-fastest I’ve ever giving up on growing crops in a Harvest Moon game, next to Island of Happiness.
6. The dungeons are really small and simplistic. Maybe if I went back and compared the previous games I’d realize they aren’t so small, but I doubt it. The dungeons are small and boring, the enemy variety is very low (almost all recycled from previous games) and the bosses are all pushovers, including the final one. Get in, do whatever quests and errands it takes to get the boss to appear, fight the boss, move to next dungeon. Rinse, repeat. Oh, and try to stay awak….z…zzzz…
So there you have it, the minor and not so minor things that made RF3 a bit of a disappointment for me. I think what bothered me most of all was the weakness of the story though. Everything else I could live with, but when you battle, forge and woo your way through a game for a silly denouement – lol you were carrying out my plan all along, enjoy the lack of a proper backstory or afterstory – I can’t help being a leeetle bit peeved. Maybe they rushed this one out a little too fast. Take your time with the next one, Marvelous, and remember: an RPG is nothing without a good story.
Peace out.
