Customer Reviews

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

5 star:		(184)
4 star:		(78)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

If Animal Crossing was good, this is great!

It's so nice to find a game that's human-scaled, cute and friendly. And the game arc goes on for virtual years. Compared to a Star Wars game, this is a MUCH greater value.

Water your crops, feed and brush your animals. Find a wife. Raise a child. Grow prize melons, create new hybrids.

This is such a unique game that you've really got to try it out for yourself. My kids (5 and 9) love the game. Some reading ability is necessary to play the game.

I am an "old woman" according to my children (I'm 40).

I have been playing Harvest Moon FOMT on my Gameboy Advance (yes, I have one of my own), and I love it! My husband always laughs at me because I play it all the time. He doesn't mind though, because he just bought the GameCube version for me a couple days ago.

This new game is very intriguing. I love the graphics and the music. The cow already seems to love me, so I guess I'm on the right track. It's a little more complicated than the GBA version, so I'm still learning how to play. What I've seen so far is really cool. I think I've found a new favorite game. Up until now, I have concentrated on Animal Crossing on my GameCube. It's nice to have another fun game for my GameCube system.

Hey,
I just starting playing this game (jp version) for two weeks now. I just want to give more informations to those HM fans who are still not sure how does this game works.

(+) I think the graphic is pretty good. You even can change the music by putting different "music cds" in to the music machine in your house. You now have more spaces in your farm. I think it is very convenient to have a bell in the barn where you can just press it to tell your animate (horse, cow, sheep, ect) to go in/outside. Also, you can get milk from your cow twice a day (2 or more bottles). You can sell your own stuffs in the tree next to the inn, however, sometimes it is very hard to get a customer to buy your stuffs. Most of the time, they want to buy things that you dont want to sell (ex: your farming tools).
I like the way that you can order most of the items in the storage room area (by using the notebook).
Also, you can carry lots of stuffs in your pocket.

(-) On the other hand, you have to feed the cow twice/day, and also, you have to water your crops twice/three times a day. If it gets too dry, it will died immediately.
The day is kind of short, and you get hungry easily at the beginning because the farming tools you have are at the lowest level, where you need to buy a better one later on. The life could be very difficult at the beginning... you need to earn money and also you need to date the girl you like. IF you dont get marry by the end of the 1st year, then you cannot go on to the 2nd chapter... you will stay in the FREE-PLAY mode, instead of the STORY mode.
Moreover, the weather is not stable sometimes, it can rain in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. Sometimes, I leave my animate out and go on for fishing... then suddenly it rains and so I need to work all the way back to call them back.

*** Overall, I think the game is worth to play. ^WORKING HARD & HAVE FUN^ are the whole concept to this game!! I'm highly recommanded you to buy the US version when it comes out in Jan 2004. It is somewhat stressful to play in the JP version.. >.< ...unless your Japanese is very good (which isn't me).

Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life,HM:AWL continues the Harvest Moon tradition. It focuses on non-violent, and unbelievably addictive gameplay. For Harvest Moon fans, this is a must buy. For those parents or who have parents who worry about game violence etc., and still desire an enjoyable game, this is simply a treasure. The only way you won't enjoy this game is if you're one of those people whose life is 1st person shooters, M rated games or something else like that. As for the specifics on this jewel, observe:

Story:9/10 This is a very non-linear story. The game spans 6 chapters covering 30years. Your father wanted to build a farm. After he died he left his friend Takakura to give it to you. Thus begins chapter 1. During chapter 1 you must get married. As in all HM (harvest moon) you have a choice of marrying one of a few girls. Although most HM games have 5 girls, this game has 3: Muffy, Nami, or (my sweetheart) Celia. However it's only because of the immersive stories revolving around each girl. Each girl has many cutscenes advancing your relationship with the girl. Following marriage, you'll have a kid(don't worry parents, the part about the s-e-x is skipped) and depending on how you treat him (sorry, you can't have a girl) and where you take him as a baby, you'll influence your child's character as a teen and adult. You will even eventuall live to see what he decides to do with his life.

Graphics:10/10 The best garphics in an HM game so far. There is now transparent and reflecting water,as well as gorgious sunsets, and realistic shadows. Of course those are just the highlights, the garphics are better in mainly everything.

Concept:8/10 It's the classic stuff. Run a farm. However, as addicting as it was in the previous games, now you must raise afamily and live your life(hence tilte:A Wonderful Life). This makes the game a tiny bit less linear than its procedors. Plus there is a point where the story ends.In some of its precedors, you could go on farming forever. Saddly, here you age and well, travel to the land where your father lies. And of course the concept run a farm is a tiny bit repetitive.

Controls:7/10 This is the one drawback. The controls seam standard at first, but you'll find they used the "action button technique"where one button does a lot of different things. What you do depends on if you have anything equipted and where you stand. And it can get VERY ANNOYING when you for example: milk the cow when you want to talk to it, or examine the sickle instead of using it etc.

Sound effects/music:8/10 To describe the sound effects, I can simply say: standard. Not bad, not that good. The music is mainly bright and cheerful. An interesting feature is that you have a rercord player in your house. You can put records in it and they play in the area near your farm. The insides of buildings usually have music too. One annoying part however is that in many outdoor areas you won't hear any music at all, and it falls to the sound effects. Sure it's natural, and many people easily got sick of hearing the same music over, and over, and over again in the earlier HM games, but it just doesn't feel right to have so many places without music...

Overall:8/10 Sure it has its drawbacks, and whatever, but what you've read here is only the tip of the iceberg. For contrast to HM fans like me, its better than all the Gameboy HMs and STH (Save the Homeland) however, it's worse than BTN(Back to Nature)and 64 (Harvest Moon 64). So this is Nick Dobkin of somewhere in CA,USA saying: Harvest the fruits of fun,its more than worth its cheap (for videogames)...,so BUY THIS GAME!

You will either really love this game, or you will find it rather boring.

GAMEPLAY: MEDIOCRE
The gameplay in Harvest Moon revolves around two tasks: managing your farm, and developing relationships with AI characters. I found these two aspects to be tolerable and disappointing, respectively.

Maintaining the farm will take up most of your time. Crops must be watered, animals must be given TLC, and some of those animals must be milked. Taking care of these tasks, particularly if you focus on growing crops, will eat up most of the game 'day'. However, these tasks are EXTREMELY repetitive, and game 'time' goes by so quickly that you might spend an entire 'day' at them. This often leaves little time for exploring the surrounding world, which is good, because there's not much of the surrounding world to see. I found watering crops to be particularly frustrating, particularly since the game's "Weather Channel" has slightly less competent forecasters than the real world. I can, however, imagine that other people might find this to be more fun than I did.

I did enjoy the economic aspects of running the farm; choosing which crops to grow and how many; adjusting livestock populations to maximize profit, and how to best allocate time to make the most money. However, the chores ultimately obscured the more interesting economic problems.

The relationship aspect of the game was, I felt, sadly underdeveloped. The major way in which you build relationships with game characters is by giving them things, which is no sin in most games. However, since it's supposed to be such a major part of this one, this should have been made deeper. As it was, I just found it boring.

Another impediment to my enjoying the game was that (in the early releases anyway) it suffered from a very shoddy localization job. Some words were still in Japanese, some dialog did not make sense, and in one menu 'yes' and 'no' were switched. That does not make for a very enjoyable gaming experience.

The controls were not difficult, but they were twitchy enough to make watering even more of a hassle than it should have been.

STORY: MEDIOCRE
The story is basically that of someone's life, played out over every day of almost every year. As such, there's no plot or anything, no development of tension or conflict. This game could have used some.

GRAPHICS: SUPERB
The game looks wonderful. The landscape, characters, and lighting effects are all very nice. However, the scope of the world is very small, and you end up looking at the same characters and vistas endlessly. They're very nice to look at, but there's not enough to see.

AUDIO: AVERAGE
Music and sound effects are clean, but highly repetitive, particularly if you don't have "Friends of Mineral Town" to link to. If the music and sounds were really interesting, this wouldn't matter, but they're bland and insufficient.

REPLAY: EXCELLENT
To the extent that it CAN be different (given the highly repetitive nature of the farmwork), the game plays out differently each time through. You can choose different friends, a different wife, and different ways to set up your farm.

OVERALL: AVERAGE (64%)
This game looks nice, and it can be some fun. As a nonviolent RPG that focuses on family-building and fiscal responsibility, this is a game that parents can buy their children without regrets. However, whether this game will be provide any enjoyment will depend greatly on the character of the child involved: primarily, how much they like farm animals or the idea of farming.

Well, Harvest Moon AWL is a wonderful game. Let me tell you what you can do: you buy sheep, horse, goat, cows(4 types), and chickens. Also, you will get ducks, a mouse, a lizard, a cat, a racoon, an owl, and that's about it.(these last ones are pets, along with your dog) you milk the cows, you shave the sheep, you milk the goat, you ride the horse, and you pick up eggs from ducks and chickens. Then comes seeds...You can plant and harvest several varieties of seeds, or you can make fabulous recipes to share with your friends of Forget-me-not-Valley or with your wife and son. To get a wife, you must talk to her and take things that she likes to her. When you get married, you get a baby son, which grows into a boy, then a teenager, and finnally an adult that ends up being married with either Kate, or Lumina (2 girls from the game). Your son can also choose a career. And other activities include: 3 mini-games,fishing, horse back riding, excavations, making hibrids, and making friends.

Harvest moon is a great game.It's very simple.Pretty much all you do is grow crops,raise animals,and start a family of your own.
Starting a family is my favorite part.
There's a secret though. If you want to have a baby girl insted of a boy.
You go to the harvest spirtes house.
On the right side of your room is little pots.
If you press them it with say something like go a way.KEEP ON PRESSING IT UNTIL IT SAYS"I will grant your wish and then it will ask you if you want a boy or a girl.(I would go for the girl).(:

This Harvest Moon for the Gamecube is quite a bit different than the Nintendo 64 version. Here is a list of what's new:

GRAPHICS: The graphics in this game is a big step up from N64. Your character lives in a small ocean town, so there are always beautiful vistas of the ocean. Also there is a very realistic river to fish in from many different spots. In the spring all the trees are in bloom with pink blossoms, it is very beautiful. You can always see a slight breeze blowing through the grass in your field on your farm. Your cows are very realistic looking. All in all great graphics.

START OUT: Remember in N64 how you had to pull a lot of weeds, break a bunch of rocks, and cut a bunch of stumps to get your farm set up? I was grateful to see I did not have to do any of these tediuos chores in this game. In fact there are never weeds to pull, rocks to crack or stumps to cut, and you don't have to run around cutting stumps to collect lumber for building extentions anymore, thank goodness. In Gamecube version, you get a nice green field of fodder that already has a fence and you get a normal cow that is already milking.

LIVESTOCK: There are several breeds of cow now, normal, brown, marble and star, with breeds getting more expensive the fancier they are. Star cows are the most expensive. Remember the good ole days of N64 when all cows are automatically female and they automatically give milk forever once they reach a certain age? Well now on GC version, animals can be male or female and it is necessary to have a male around to get a female pregnant, and a female will not milk unless she just gave birth. New babies can be male or female. I find myself really hoping for females when babies are born. (They are worth more, cost more and are productive) I did not have to have a bull to get my cows pregnant at first, I borrowed a neighboring cow for a price. Chickens can be male or female too. Must have rooster to fertilize eggs. I sold a lot of rooster babies as I was getting too many hatched.
Sheep are available too, and a goat, but I haven't bought those. There is only so much room in the barn. I got a horse for free and this time you can ride him all over town, not just in your farm.

DAILY CHORES: Now in GC version you must water your crops twice a day, milk cows twice a day, and brush and talk to animals twice a day. It keeps you busy. You can no longer upgrade your tools by using them over and over. You must buy better tools - and they do not make it so you can water or cut more squares at once like the good ole days of N64. They are just lighter tools so you do not get tired as easily. Also add cuddling your chickens to the list. You can cuddle your cows too.

DATING/MARRIAGE: I was disappointed. They really made dating and marriage even more boring in this version than in N64. Now there are only 3 girls to choose from, and you have no choice, you must marry, the game ends on you too soon if you don't. While you are dating your girl it is so boring. She never drops by your farm to say hi or bring a treat. She never does anything interesting with you like in N64. There was one scene where she decided to walk with me and that was it. Now that we are married it is even worse. She does absolutly nothing for the farm. I picked Ceilia, thinking since she likes crops she would help with something. In N64 version different girls did different chores for you, like gathering eggs. I wish they would of continued that. Instead I have a worse Stepford Wife than before.

YOUR SON: You automatically get a son after marrying in this game. No having to wait while you treat your wife nicely and make sure you get home on time. Your boy starts out already able to walk. You can buy toys for him and pick him up and cuddle him. He even goes outside sometimes (your wife never does). I hear the more friends you have, the more career choices your son will have.

PEOPLE/FRIENDS: There is a wide variety of friends to meet. No mailman and mail this time though! Different people like different gifts. Some will give you a weird item in return after awhile. You do not get recipes now from giving food. Instead you must look at people's kitchen's or other places, and you must memorize the recipe, it does not automatically show up in your kitchen.

EATING/CROPS: You must eat in this game or your stomach grumbles. You can eat your crops plain or fish or odd plants that grow around town and on your farm. But if you cook in your kitchen one meal lasts you all day. Use recipes you found. The simplest one I found was sweet potato soup with one sweet potato. I like how even though it is one item it lasts me all day. Back in the days when I was broke, I was making a lot of mistakes with odd plants yet they filled me up too.
There are many more crops in this game than N64 and you can grow even in the winter. You just have to pay attention to what season they grow. Months/Seasons (Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall) are only
10 days long each instead of the old 30 days. Remember when you could get several tomatoes on one vine? Now you get only one per seed. You can buy tomatoes, carrots, melons, watermelons, sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, strawberries, and several tree seeds too. Don't have to water trees!

MAKING MONEY: In this version you can no longer stick veggies, fruits and other plants in a crop box to make money, only dairy and eggs. Instead sell your stuff to a salesman named Vann who comes at least twice a month. What was most helpful to me in the beginning was cutting a lot of fodder and selling them to him for 10 gold each. It made more sense than growing lots of crops which tired me out, and then making little profit on them (sometimes only 5 gold!) It takes longer to save money in this game the N64 version, but when you save up 30000 it really pays to buy a food processing room to make cheese or butter, they are worth a lot more than milk. Now I am rich with money to blow. There is no longer a greenhouse to get. Fancier cows can make better grades of food, like a brown cow's milk makes better butter than a normal cow.

THE MINE: You can mine any time of the year now, not just winter. I have collected lots of weird stuff than I can either sell to Vann or give to picky friends who don't like flowers!

There are a lot of glitches in the game, words spelled wrong and such. Don't buy a food processing room when you have a cow expecting or have a calf in a hutch, it made my calf disappear and it took longer for her to come out of it.

You can carry a lot more in this game at one time than the other version which I love.

All in all the game is fun and there is more to think about than the N64 version. It keeps me busy.

this game is great!I loved it the minute I got it.It has to be one of my fav games on gamecube.I wish you could choose your gender(cause` I`m a girl)because it`s really hard choosing your wife cause` you dunno if she`s the right one!much easier for you to pick a guy.anyway,for a tip don`t pick the blond(I forget her name)I think it`s Muffy.here is another tip:

tomato:spring-fall
watermelon:spring-summer
melon:summer-fall
strawberry:fall-spring
turnip:summer-winter
potato:winter-spring
carrot:fall-winter
sweet potato:fall

and another thing:

watermelons,melons and sweet potatos make the most money so plant them in the big field.Turnips are a rip off.Don`t waste money on cows.(their milk runs out after a year or so)Buy sheep instead and take good care of em` so you can get gold wool.and let chickens run loose outside in your field rain or shine,you don`t have to care for them and you`ll get gold eggs.believe me,all of these tips helped me a lot in this game!

Ok, AWL is a game on Harvest Moon where a boy character wants to follow his dead father's footsteps, he becomes an adult when raising livestock, starting produce, but most of all, starting a family. You will be given the chance to woo 3 potential girls in town with different personalities, on the first day of summer you will be given a blue feather, you can propose to a girl you like with at least 3 hearts in her diary, to find her diary search where they live, anyways once you propose they can say yes or no, if you don't propose to anyone, at the end of the game the girl that likes you the most will marry you and you have a baby boy, when years go by more people move in, some villagers die, you become older, your son is older and new things happen around the village. it's a good game for RPGers and it's very fun. it teaches you the MEANING of LIFE. and most of all, how to become a farmer inside, you're a dad, farmer, husband, friend, and a lot more. So buy this game.