Zeusthecat

(Not Harvest Moon) Story of Seasons

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http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/14/7545635/harvest-moons-story-of-seasons-has-a-sublime-new-trailer

 

It's no secret, I'm a huge Harvest Moon fan (Magical Melody on Gamecube is one of my top 3 F-GOATS). So naturally, I'm excited for this game. The Streetpass functionality and being able to visit friends' homesteads and share resources all sounds like like some pretty cool stuff.

 

So... anyone else excited for this?

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Mother of god that is some speedy farming. That alone makes me way more interested than any Harvest Moon in recent memory. The tedium always wears me down eventually, no matter how much I enjoy them conceptually.

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Wait, wait, I thought the people who made the original Harvest Moon games had some issues and from now on the "Harvest Moon" series is made by others and not in the same vein?

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Wait, wait, I thought the people who made the original Harvest Moon games had some issues and from now on the "Harvest Moon" series is made by others and not in the same vein?

 

Yeah, now that you mention it I do vaguely recall that as well. So then does that mean that this game is made by the same people that made the original games or is this a new team?

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Hmm, a little Googling tells me that this one seems to be the "real Harvest Moon" since it's going to be called "Story of Seasons" and the new game with the Harvest Moon game. The Lost Valley looks kinda bad.

 

Man, things are going to be confusing, but it seems that the safe bet is "Marvelous Entertainment" since they made the other Harvest Moon games?

 

It looks like Japan won't be even getting the "fake" Harvest Moon game, like I said, things are going to be confusing.

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I really liked Harvest Moon for a long time, HM64 is one of my all time favorite N64 games and I also loved FoMT on the gba as well as A Wonderful Life. Everything since then I haven't been into though. I enjoyed Magical Melody, but it didn't have the same charm that the other games had for me and every single game after that I've straight up hated (I haven't played all of them though because I've given up mostly, so I haven't played the Wii games)

I'll get excited if I hear good things, but I feel like every time I try a new Harvest Moon game I'm disappointed.

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I really liked Harvest Moon for a long time, HM64 is one of my all time favorite N64 games...

 

Oh my god the amount of time I spent playing that game. I got so into that one that when I was in high school, I would set my alarm at 5am so I could wake up and play a couple hours before school. I have never done anything like that for any other game. The greenhouse was the fucking best.

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Well anything titled with Harvest Moon now is not the original developer.

 

The Polygon article is incorrect because this game is just called Story of Seasons, not Harvest Moon: Story of Seasons. But yeah still the same series.

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Yeah all this Clarification Shit didn't actually clear anything up for me.

 

Is this gonna be a good game or a bad game?!

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HMMMMMMMMMMM okay then. I'll keep an eye on it. 

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So are of the newer HM games really good? I played a couple of the DS games, the island one and the two towns one, and was pretty underwhelmed by both of them. I haven't tried the Wii one or the 3ds one though.

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So, this is the game to get then, because Marvelous is developing it?

Yeah for sure, it's a continuation of the Farm Story (Japanese name) series which has always been Harvest Moon here. But now things have changed and Harvest Moon has gone to another developer since the name is registered to Natsume in the United States. So the new game titled Harvest Moon which is coming out is kind of weird and Minecrafty for whatever reason and most likely is not going to appeal to long time fans who seem to love iterations of the same thing over and over. Harvest Moon is not really my thing but my wife loves 'em.

 

What is really not clear is if Story of Seasons will be the new U.S. title for the series now published by Xseed or if they are just going to name the games individually by the subtitle. Hopefully they choose the former as it's kind of a shitty situation for a game series that could certainly use more traction in the United States these days.

 

I really wish Marvelous would make a Harvest Moon WiiU as my wife would seriously love to play it. It's the perfect platform. She actually only likes the Wii ones since you can play as a female and they have shitloads of animals especially in her favorite, Animal Parade (although Tree of Tranquilty is also great to her). She finds the previous DS ones she tried on my old DS to be tedious and not user friendly in terms of interface so did not sink the hundreds of hours to the finish like she did on the jam packed Wii ones. The problem is she started with Tree of Tranquilty and tried to go back to older ones like the PS2 and Gamecube one, but in such an iterative series you see how limited the interface is when you go backwards. But she hasn't played any of the 3DS ones so far since they are the most current and she says she would love to play this one. If I do get a New 3DS at some point I will give her my old one and buy her Story of Seasons. She just can't afford a 3DS for herself right now and neither can I. Her younger sister has one she never touches but she refused to let my wife borrow it for a year to play The Tale of Two Towns.

She's also not interested in the branching Minecraft Harvest Moon.

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For anyone wondering, one of the better culture bloggers on ANN posted a short "versus" review between Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. Check it out!

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Oh hey, I forgot this even came out. I guess I could get it for my commute...

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I got this for my birthday last week and cannot stop playing it. Klaus, you handsome perfumer, you will be mine!

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I got this for my birthday last week and cannot stop playing it. Klaus, you handsome perfumer, you will be mine!

 

Oh awesome, that's good to hear! I've been thinking about Harvest Moon lately and have kind of had the urge to jump back in to my Magical Melody save that I haven't touched in about a decade. But maybe I'll pick this up instead. Have you played previous Harvest Moon games and if so how do you think this one stacks up?

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Hmm, i might run next door and get this for my upcoming vacation. Either this or Mario Puzzle and Dragons.

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It's very much more Harvest Moon. I've played mostly Friends of Mineral Town. I'm only in Autumn of year 1, but I really like it. I like the way it slowly rolls things out to prevent you from being overwhelmed. There are minor differences from the ones I've played (like time doesn't stop when you're inside)

There are some interesting changes, like instead of a shipment box on your farm, there's a market you go to to sell your goods, and in a given week, the vendors are going to pick a couple things to value more than usual. As you buy & sell more, the vendors will have more and more to offer, and more vendors will show up to sell different things. 

 

These are exactly the kinds of games that get their hooks into me, and if you liked Harvest Moon, this is a very safe bet. (I really like the animals they seem to have added. So far I've unlocked a long haired cat, cows, chickens & angora rabbits for purchase.)

 

You also can constantly rearrange your farm buildings as you grow & expand. There are even secondary fields that are particularly good at growing certain crops (leafy crops, fruit trees, mushrooms, etc.) You compete against the NPC farmers to get a chance to lease them. (These are things that open up over the course of a couple seasons.) Also it doesn't seem like winter is a dead time with no crops. Winter was always my least favorite season, but there seems to be farming to be done then!

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That all sounds really great! A slight bummer though that time doesn't stop while you're inside. Does time still move at the same breakneck pace that it did in previous games or do you feel that it moves at a reasonable enough pace that you can get your chores done and do some exploring in a single day without driving your character to exhaustion?

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That all sounds really great! A slight bummer though that time doesn't stop while you're inside. Does time still move at the same breakneck pace that it did in previous games or do you feel that it moves at a reasonable enough pace that you can get your chores done and do some exploring in a single day without driving your character to exhaustion?

 

It is still ~1 second = 1 minute in game. They still do that thing where your initial tools are super tiring to use, but you upgrade over time to let you accomplish more in proportion to how far you are in the game. I can get through tending to the relatively small amount of crops I currently have growing, and to my couple cows, and still be able to run around chopping wood/smashing rocks, fish/dive in the river and have time to spare, especially once you get the horse. The harvest sprites seem to be back, but I haven't figured out how to get them to help me yet. My farm is still small enough that I don't need any help. 

 

The actual process of tending to your crops goes much much faster than the old games. Even with the worst watering can, you can water entire plots of 9 crops at once in a couple seconds and it's not super exhausting.  Really it seems like they did a nice job balancing things that make you money for little stamina loss as well as things that you can do that have long term impacts (like clearing big rocks out of your fields) that you need a couple days worth of effort to do with the worst tools.

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That all sounds really great! A slight bummer though that time doesn't stop while you're inside. Does time still move at the same breakneck pace that it did in previous games or do you feel that it moves at a reasonable enough pace that you can get your chores done and do some exploring in a single day without driving your character to exhaustion?

If going by Animal Parade at all, which my wife played for almost half a year, you spend a lot of time in most of your days socializing and doing a billion random things compared to the older more simple games in the series. They are so iterative and chock full of things. She hasn't gotten to story of seasons yet, she was spending a lot of time on A New Beginning until Fantasy Life took over her real life.

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