What can be said about this game... How about 'Why?'.
This game is anouther addition to the Harvest Moon series, a series which has taken the hum drum life of a farmer and made it into a fun past time. This game in paticular is supposed to be a port of a game of the same name on the Game cube, which supported LOTS of features, including an aging character, changing town, ability to have children, and lots of seeds and items to aquire. This was a much improved version of the original game for the PS2, which offered less then half of what the Game cube version had to offer and only let you play a year before the game started over.
In this game you have to farm to survive, growing seeds into produce which you then sell. You also aquire farm animals which you can use to earn cash, like chickens making eggs to sell, Cows making milk, and so forth. You can make friends and have relationships with the towns folk, and can even get a love interest and get married, which can yield a child that you can raise. You can also fish and sell the fish, or go digging at a research site and find ore and treasure to sell or make into better tools.
There are a few problems... ok, the entire game is a big problem. For one, whoever was in charge of porting this game needs to be beaten about the legs until he cannot walk anymore. The game not only looks HORRIBLE compared to the game cube version (I know the game cube has better graphics, but this is insane) but everything moves SO SLOW, its like walking around in a giant fat kid. Walking from point A to point B takes forever and makes simple movement become tedious. Also, the bad movement couples with the shoddy positioning of your character. For some reason, putting your character in front of a square of land to till is a trial in futility as he will often miss a spot right in front of him when trying to grab or farm or anything. The game has ambigious directions for some things as well, for example, you have to have feed for your animals and you make it by cutting grass, but the game does not explain where you get the grass, as it simply says 'when the grass is tall enough, cut it'. This would be good if you knew where to cut, because I could not find grass seeds to plant and the pasture which LOOKS like it is full of grass is apprently not because you can cut all you want, you dont get squat. This aside, the movement can be even more agrivating when you are going around town. Everything is SO FAR from your farm, and time seems to move fast while you move slow, so getting from your farm to a shop before it closes requires you skipping farming that day and leaving first thing in the morning just to make it there in time.
Over all, this game is just not fun. The other harvest moon games make farming in a game a fun experience, but this one makes it out to what it is in real life, a tedious chore that will give you a headache. You are better off getting the other versions for systems like the Game cube or the Gameboy advanced, or just not bothering at all.
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