Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life

by Natsume, Inc.

Product Features

• ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
• Role playing game

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0008JILTU
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: July 27, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,929 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

In Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, you get the classic play of the Harvest Moon series with a slight twist: Your character is a girl now. You'll still have to start a little farm and turn it into a success, while pursuing romance. Seek out the right boy in different periods of your life, while getting the chores done and making money from your hard work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Game!, December 29, 2006

By 

Christi "DoggiesRule95" (Pennslyvania) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life (Video Game)

This is such a fun game for girls! You start out in the farm all alone. The whole 1st chapter you try to get one of the 3 bachelors to like you by giving them presents and talking to them. In the second chapter you get married to the guy who likes you the most. Here are your choices:
Rock: 22 in the beginning. A young dude who has no life virtues. He cares only for his looks and having fun. Rock is the easiest to marry, but trust me, don't!
Gustafa: 28. A smooth, happy musical guy. He's sort of a hippie. I would suggest him over Rock.
Marlin: 33. I married him and I suggest you would too! In the game he compliments my child and teaches him life-lessons. Marry him!

Whoever you marry you'll have a child. Depending on whom you marry is how he'll act and look. When they're babies they are SO cute! Then in the next chapter they're toddlers, then children, then a teenager! Love him buy giving him things he likes and talking to him often.

Back to you: You spend your 24 minute days by taking care of your *adorable* cows and chickens and goats or sheep. Taking care refers to:
1. Feeding them
2. Talking and petting them daily
3. If cows or goats; milking them

Your chickens and roosters are easier to care for. Just take their eggs and feed them! LOL

You also have an adorable dog you get in the beginning. You can if you want feed him but you don't have to.

Another thing you do during the day is taking care of plants! Plant them and water them. Typical. You can plant anything from potatoes to strawberries. You buy the seeds from another farm in town. Once the plants are grown you can give them away to people in the village, cook with them, sell them or just eat them plain. Yum.

Money: You make money but selling crops, fruits, milk, sheep fur, cheese, butter, rocks and gems found in the digsite, flowers found around the town and mushrooms also found around the town. Twice a month (Harvest moon months witch takes about 1 or 2 hours) a fat rich man named Van (what a wonderful name) comes to town and sells and buys with you. You can sell pretty much anything to him and buy furniture and clothes and whatnot from him.

What to spend your $ on: livestock and buildings them mostly. You can buy clothes and medicines from Van too. Money luckily isn't something you NEED witch I think is great. It's just nice to have.

Pros:
You don't NEED money
You live in a cute, peaceful town with a beach, houses, streams and ponds called Forget-Me-Not Valley
Really nice townspeople who each have different personalities
Pretty good graphics. Beautiful scenery.
The game doesn't take too long and doesn't end too quickly (I've been playing for more than 1 year)
I love the animals! Who would've known how fun it is to farm!
Great storyboard that doesn't get old.
You have a family! It's so much fun to be a mom and wife. ^^

Cons:
Here and there there are small typos (witch really doesn't matter at all)
ummm...... I think that's it!

Ending/Overall/Recap: You start on your own on your fathers farm, you get married have a kid, be a great mom, have fun farming, be friends with other people, fish, cook, and ride your hoarse! Yay that is so much fun =) Throughout the game there are happy suprises. This game is for anyone who is interested in life simulations. Because this is way better than sims+ animal crossing any other life simulation!
RATING: 100% * * * * * five stars most definitely =) plus five more * * * * * buy this game! Yep yep yep good game ^^

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth buying if you are a Harvest Moon fan, August 22, 2005

By 

Glory Questor (Somerset, PA USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life (Video Game)

One of my favorite experiences with a Harvest Moon game was with Harvest Moon 3 for the Gameboy. On that game, you could choose to be a boy or girl, and have a choice of animal (cat or dog). Since that game, though, Natsume split the girl and boy stories into two separate games for future releases -- a disappointing turn, since it's nice to have the option to play both genders.

So, the question on most people's minds would be, "What would make me buy this game for $30 and not A Wonderful Life for $20?" (or, "Why should I buy this when I already have A Wonderful Life?")

Put simply, this isn't just "A Wonderful Life with a girl", like others will tell you -- it's an all new A Wonderful Life (which could be called "version 1.5") with all kinds of neat updates and changes from A Wonderful Life:

- First, you get a chance to play a girl, which was never really done outside of Japan since the aforementioned Harvest Moon 3. The storyline, while on the whole the same, really does change quite a bit to match your new gender (since females wouldn't treat you like the same character as in A Wonderful Life). The beginning, especially, changes for the girl character -- instead of being "given the farm" like the boy character was, the girl was bored with the hectic life in the city and decided to move out to the country (Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town also have these beginnings).

- In A Wonderful Life, you have three options when viewing the diary: "Sleep", "Diary", and "Status Book". In Another Wonderful Life, this menu has been reworded and expanded into a much better diary menu:
- "Save": works just like "Diary" did
- "Sleep": same as before
- "Assets": This is NOT the same Status Book as before. While you still have some of the same options, there are all-new lists to look at that really help plan your farm even more (such as Diary and Produce Income and Item Lists)
- "Look in the Mirror": A new item that apparently works just like the mirror you can buy in Friends of Mineral Town. The mirror allows you to see your personal status -- the more tired you get, the more your character will mention it and the more tired she will look in the mirror.

- A brand new feature of this game is the addition of training your dog, and this is one of the best updates to the original game. In A Wonderful Life, all you could really do with your dog was pick him up and carry him around to show your affection -- not very exciting. Now you can train your dog to Give Paw, Turn Around, Jump, and Stand Up.

- You must now buy and use Vesta's fertilizer on your grass field to make it grow.

- A subtle change to the game is slightly sharper and smaller graphics, and smaller, slimmer text.

- New minigame challenges have been added: Teritory Capture and Milk Drinking. (These I picked up from the Assets screen, and haven't yet had a chance to play. There might also be more minigames, too...)

Overall, while the goals are pretty much the same as before, there is so much that is new here that Harvest Moon fans should not hesitate to buy it. Forget-Me-Not Valley is one of the best environments to come along in the Harvest Moon universe since Mineral Town, and now there are all kinds of new challenges and features that make it worth going back to for another farming adventure.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slightly different from the original Gamecube version..., July 29, 2005

By 

K. McEvoy (Kansas) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life (Video Game)

The above product description provided by Amazon is fairly accurate except for the fact that there are only three (3) guys to pick as a possible husband in this female version of Harvest Moon. The main reason I gave the game four stars instead of five is for the choices of the possible husbands.

The opening is very similar to the original A Wonderful Life, with the same characters from the first Gamecube game. So far, no new people (I'm still in chapter 1). Your father owned the farm and you have been living in the city. He died a little while back and you have decided that you want to escape the pressures of the big city to settle down in a small village and work on a farm. If you wish to continue past the 1st chapter, you have to get married. I think the first game had better choices of who to marry, but in Another Wonderful Life your choices are the following: Marlin, Rock, and Gustafa (personally, I would have preferred Cody as a possible choice...oh well).

Just like A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life consists of four season per year and only 10 days per season. It consists if more real time action (especially in regards to the weather) than other Harvest Moons have allowed.

You'll be able to raise around four types of cows as well as horses, chickens, ducks, sheep, and even goats. Eventually you'll be able to make cheese and butter and improve the quality of your crops.

Despite the similarities, there are some new features to the game...and perhaps even more than I have found out.
Some of these changes include:


You can now sell your basic crops and seeds...not just your 2nd generational crops/seeds.

You have to fertilize your grass pasture before your animals (cows, sheep, horse) can graze on it. This is similar to the other Harvest Moon games where you had to buy and plant grass seeds (only cheaper). They do grow back after cutting the grass (just the same as the other games). Fortunately, you are provided with enough fodder to feed your beginning cow until then.

You now have a training feature for your dog.

Seeds from Vesta are now cheaper...you can get all 5 basic fruit trees with your starting money and still have change.

You can now see the affection and health levels of your animals.


I imagine that the rest of the story line is nearly a mirror image of the first Gamecube game, so if you have already played that and finished it this may not be too different - but it may also give new insight to some of the other characters that you thought you already knew.