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Is farming crops, raising animals and courting your virtual love still fun? Full review inside.
April 20, 2006 | 1:05 PM PSTby: Phillip Levin
Natsume’s Harvest Moon franchise has been around a long time. The first game in the series was for the Super Nintendo, and it has been almost ten years since its release. Since then, we’ve seen a number of installments in the popular farming sim. There have been upwards of fifteen Harvest Moon games over the last decade – being released on mostly Nintendo platforms but also on consoles, such as the PlayStation 2.
While the games have never been outrageously popular, they’ve always had somewhat of a cult following. Each entry in the franchise has featured something new or different from its predecessors. However, for the most part, the games have remained generally the same. But is this a good or a bad thing? It’s hard to say, really. On one hand, Natsume has a working formula – one that is addicting and satisfying. But on another, we feel some mechanics in the franchise have a lot of room for growth.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody – the latest title in the franchise, for GameCube – in some ways sparks the battle between these two opinions of the series. In many ways, it’s the best Harvest Moon simply because it has so much more than any other Harvest Moon before it. That noted, in other ways, it feels a little tired (is the franchise aging after all?). When all is said and done, though, we’re left with a Harvest Moon game that fans will love and newcomers to the franchise will equally love.
The latest Harvest Moon starts out offering you a choice between three different locations in your town for your house and farm. This is a totally new element in the franchise – and something we really like. You have a choice between building your farm in the market area of the town, next to the river or on the beach.
Each location offers more than just aesthetics, though. For instance, the market location has the most fertile soil, allowing you to quickly grow quality crops right out of the gate. It is also very close to the village’s shops. This location, however, doesn’t have much room for farm animals. The river location, meanwhile, has a medium-size amount of land for harvesting crops and raising farm life. It’s also next to a river, meaning easy fishing and equally easy food supply. On the downside, it’s far from the town’s shops, meaning you’ll have to go out of your way to pick up any groceries or items you need. Lastly, there is the beach location, which has the most amount of physical land size. This location is ideal for raising farm animals, as they love the fresh air and being next to the ocean. The problem? The land is the least soil of any area in your village. That means growing crops is slow and challenging.
Just five minutes into Magical Melody, and the game already offers bigger and more important choices than any Harvest Moon before it. The options and choices continue. You have a choice of playing either a boy or girl. Depending on which gender character you ultimately choose, obviously, the game experience ahead of you differs slightly. The biggest different in regards to playing as either a boy or girl is the selection of characters you can choose from to marry. All together, there are twenty different characters that you can marry – ten boys and ten girls. This huge number of possible characters to marry is just the beginning of both the number of options you have throughout Magical Melody and the depth within the game.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
There are essentially two different kinds of lives you can live in Magical Melody: raising crops or raising farm animals. Of course, you can always do a bit of both, but these are the two major sources of income for you and your family in the game. Like in previous Harvest Moon titles, there are four different seasons in one year – spring, summer, fall and winter. There are different types of seeds and vegetables you can purchase and harvest in each season. At the end of each season, all your current crops die, meaning you must purchase new seeds for new kinds of crops and replant them for the forthcoming season. For instance, carrots only grow in fall, along with pumpkins. Meanwhile, you can only grow tomatoes during the spring. This requires careful management of buying seeds, planting them and so forth.
The planting system is, for the most part, unchanged this time around. You plant a seed and water it over a period of days, then pick it and sell it when it grows into a vegetable or plant. Nothing too complicated. However, Natsume has implemented one very useful feature in Magical Melody – targeting. Don’t laugh just yet. You won’t be targeting any NPCs in the game, but you can target land, making it much easier to see which square of land you’re watering, hoeing and whatnot when on the farm. This makes the crop-growing side of Harvest Moon all the more enjoyable. And what’s more, you’re able to upgrade your tools – watering can, hoe, axe, hammer, etc. – by using them often and getting experience points in them and eventually being able to purchase an upgrade to said tool. These upgrades are all pretty standard but still essential. For instance, your starting watering can only waters one square at a time. The first upgrade to it allows you to water three squares at a time. The next is nine and so on.
Raising farm life is also a big part of Magical Melody and the series in general. As you make money from growing crops and selling them, you’ll be able to build barnyards and chicken coops. With those, you’ll have the option of buying cows, sheep, chickens and horses. All animals purchased start off as infants, though, so they won’t bring in any dough immeaditely. You’ll have to care and love for them for them to grow into full, healthy adults. For instance, when you purchase a calf, it’ll take about a full season before it’s an adult. During that period, you must feed it, talk to it and brush it for it to grow happily. By doing so, when it’s an adult it will give milk. If you continue to take good care of it as an adult cow, the milk it gives will improve with time. The same is true for any other animal you raise in Magical Melody too.
As with many past Harvest Moons, you’re able to upgrade your house overtime and add-on to it. More exciting, perhaps, you can now purchase land in your village. This is an excellent and much-liked addition to the franchise. For example, if you start off with land near the town’s shops for ease of location and quality soil and want to raise animals later in the game, you can buy land at the beach, letting you do just that.
While Harvest Moon: Magical Melody has more choices than its many predecessors, we can’t help but feel disappointed with it in other regards. Take, for instance, the interaction with the game’s NPCs. It is pretty repetitive. Characters will repeat themselves, saying the same line of text for weeks, months and even years. At times, it feels like there’s no point talking to most the game’s NPCs. Even interacting with your wife or husband-to-be is pretty bland. Occasionally, they have something new to say, but for the most part, they simply repeat the same statements over and over. The way in which you get them to fall in love with you, too, is just as repetitive. You figure out what kind of item they like and shower them with the same gifts over and over until they’re in love with you. It doesn’t feel very meaningful or rewarding, even if it is just like real-life. Just kidding.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
We do have to say, though, that great addition to the town system in Magical Melody is the fact that over time new NPCs will move into town and bring with them shops. This, quite frankly, is great.
Natsume has also implemented a stamina bar with Magical Melody. In some ways, this is a nice addition, as you can see when you’re about to collapse, meaning there is actually a point to using the game’s pleasant cooking system. But, on another, it feels like you don’t have a whole lot of stamina to spare. It’d be nice if you could go throughout the day, carrying out your chores and duties, with a little more stamina at hand.
Final Word
In many ways, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is the best in the franchise. Why? Because it offers so many more options and choices than any previous title in it. If this is your first Harvest Moon game, I think you’re going to enjoy it quite a bit. That said, Harvest Moon veterans might find themselves wishing some of the series’ mechanics would evolve a little more – primarily the game’s NPC interaction system, which is basic and repetitive at best. With all these things said, Magical Melody is still a fun and addictive GameCube title that is definitely worth playing for fans of the franchise and anybody else interested in Harvest Moon.
While the games have never been outrageously popular, they’ve always had somewhat of a cult following. Each entry in the franchise has featured something new or different from its predecessors. However, for the most part, the games have remained generally the same. But is this a good or a bad thing? It’s hard to say, really. On one hand, Natsume has a working formula – one that is addicting and satisfying. But on another, we feel some mechanics in the franchise have a lot of room for growth.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody – the latest title in the franchise, for GameCube – in some ways sparks the battle between these two opinions of the series. In many ways, it’s the best Harvest Moon simply because it has so much more than any other Harvest Moon before it. That noted, in other ways, it feels a little tired (is the franchise aging after all?). When all is said and done, though, we’re left with a Harvest Moon game that fans will love and newcomers to the franchise will equally love.
The latest Harvest Moon starts out offering you a choice between three different locations in your town for your house and farm. This is a totally new element in the franchise – and something we really like. You have a choice between building your farm in the market area of the town, next to the river or on the beach.
Each location offers more than just aesthetics, though. For instance, the market location has the most fertile soil, allowing you to quickly grow quality crops right out of the gate. It is also very close to the village’s shops. This location, however, doesn’t have much room for farm animals. The river location, meanwhile, has a medium-size amount of land for harvesting crops and raising farm life. It’s also next to a river, meaning easy fishing and equally easy food supply. On the downside, it’s far from the town’s shops, meaning you’ll have to go out of your way to pick up any groceries or items you need. Lastly, there is the beach location, which has the most amount of physical land size. This location is ideal for raising farm animals, as they love the fresh air and being next to the ocean. The problem? The land is the least soil of any area in your village. That means growing crops is slow and challenging.
Just five minutes into Magical Melody, and the game already offers bigger and more important choices than any Harvest Moon before it. The options and choices continue. You have a choice of playing either a boy or girl. Depending on which gender character you ultimately choose, obviously, the game experience ahead of you differs slightly. The biggest different in regards to playing as either a boy or girl is the selection of characters you can choose from to marry. All together, there are twenty different characters that you can marry – ten boys and ten girls. This huge number of possible characters to marry is just the beginning of both the number of options you have throughout Magical Melody and the depth within the game.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
There are essentially two different kinds of lives you can live in Magical Melody: raising crops or raising farm animals. Of course, you can always do a bit of both, but these are the two major sources of income for you and your family in the game. Like in previous Harvest Moon titles, there are four different seasons in one year – spring, summer, fall and winter. There are different types of seeds and vegetables you can purchase and harvest in each season. At the end of each season, all your current crops die, meaning you must purchase new seeds for new kinds of crops and replant them for the forthcoming season. For instance, carrots only grow in fall, along with pumpkins. Meanwhile, you can only grow tomatoes during the spring. This requires careful management of buying seeds, planting them and so forth.
The planting system is, for the most part, unchanged this time around. You plant a seed and water it over a period of days, then pick it and sell it when it grows into a vegetable or plant. Nothing too complicated. However, Natsume has implemented one very useful feature in Magical Melody – targeting. Don’t laugh just yet. You won’t be targeting any NPCs in the game, but you can target land, making it much easier to see which square of land you’re watering, hoeing and whatnot when on the farm. This makes the crop-growing side of Harvest Moon all the more enjoyable. And what’s more, you’re able to upgrade your tools – watering can, hoe, axe, hammer, etc. – by using them often and getting experience points in them and eventually being able to purchase an upgrade to said tool. These upgrades are all pretty standard but still essential. For instance, your starting watering can only waters one square at a time. The first upgrade to it allows you to water three squares at a time. The next is nine and so on.
Raising farm life is also a big part of Magical Melody and the series in general. As you make money from growing crops and selling them, you’ll be able to build barnyards and chicken coops. With those, you’ll have the option of buying cows, sheep, chickens and horses. All animals purchased start off as infants, though, so they won’t bring in any dough immeaditely. You’ll have to care and love for them for them to grow into full, healthy adults. For instance, when you purchase a calf, it’ll take about a full season before it’s an adult. During that period, you must feed it, talk to it and brush it for it to grow happily. By doing so, when it’s an adult it will give milk. If you continue to take good care of it as an adult cow, the milk it gives will improve with time. The same is true for any other animal you raise in Magical Melody too.
As with many past Harvest Moons, you’re able to upgrade your house overtime and add-on to it. More exciting, perhaps, you can now purchase land in your village. This is an excellent and much-liked addition to the franchise. For example, if you start off with land near the town’s shops for ease of location and quality soil and want to raise animals later in the game, you can buy land at the beach, letting you do just that.
While Harvest Moon: Magical Melody has more choices than its many predecessors, we can’t help but feel disappointed with it in other regards. Take, for instance, the interaction with the game’s NPCs. It is pretty repetitive. Characters will repeat themselves, saying the same line of text for weeks, months and even years. At times, it feels like there’s no point talking to most the game’s NPCs. Even interacting with your wife or husband-to-be is pretty bland. Occasionally, they have something new to say, but for the most part, they simply repeat the same statements over and over. The way in which you get them to fall in love with you, too, is just as repetitive. You figure out what kind of item they like and shower them with the same gifts over and over until they’re in love with you. It doesn’t feel very meaningful or rewarding, even if it is just like real-life. Just kidding.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
We do have to say, though, that great addition to the town system in Magical Melody is the fact that over time new NPCs will move into town and bring with them shops. This, quite frankly, is great.
Natsume has also implemented a stamina bar with Magical Melody. In some ways, this is a nice addition, as you can see when you’re about to collapse, meaning there is actually a point to using the game’s pleasant cooking system. But, on another, it feels like you don’t have a whole lot of stamina to spare. It’d be nice if you could go throughout the day, carrying out your chores and duties, with a little more stamina at hand.
Final Word
In many ways, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is the best in the franchise. Why? Because it offers so many more options and choices than any previous title in it. If this is your first Harvest Moon game, I think you’re going to enjoy it quite a bit. That said, Harvest Moon veterans might find themselves wishing some of the series’ mechanics would evolve a little more – primarily the game’s NPC interaction system, which is basic and repetitive at best. With all these things said, Magical Melody is still a fun and addictive GameCube title that is definitely worth playing for fans of the franchise and anybody else interested in Harvest Moon.
February 8, 2010
