#223: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (2004, GCN)

I am simultaneously compelled towards and repulsed by the entire Harvest Moon series. The premise is something that I, having a deep love for the goofy and off-the-wall, am greatly compelled towards, while the actual style of gameplay contained within is largely antithetic to how I like to play video games. So with each new Harvest Moon, I become excited at the idea of running a farm, get the game, then quickly lose interest as I realize, again, that the series simply isn't for me.

I like being able to take my time - to explore and experiment with my limits at my own leisure. I don't like it when I feel that I need to compartmentalize my time in some fashion. Nowhere is this tact better represented than by my feelings towards the two Pikmin titles. In the first, the player has a time limit within which they must collect all 30 ship parts. The 30 days given are, I know, more than enough to complete this task, yet the mere knowledge that there was this deadline looming in the background was enough to pretty much turn me off to the game entirely. So despite the fact that there is more than enough time to explore at my leisure, I never felt comfortable enough to do so - it felt as if the game discouraged this behavior. Contrast that with Pikmin 2 - with the time limit stripped away I suddenly encouraged to take my time and to unearth every stone. With this weight off of my mind I suddenly found myself having a total blast.

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is a tremendous success for the series in that it is the first entry to actually feature a very compelling world well worth exploring. Part of this comes from the series finally properly embracing 3D (Save the Homeland for the PS2 apparently did as well, but I never played it) by providing an interesting environment, and part comes from a long list of interesting things to do. It aids its case by de-emphasizing farming which is made to be more about quality of crops - developed through hybridization, cross-breeding, &c. - than through the seer volume emphasized in earlier titles. Character interactions are also dramatically improved, proving more dynamic and more rewarding.

The rub then comes from these things being so compelling - one wants very much to experience pretty much all of them, but time rears its head. The days in the game simply aren't nearly long enough to do everything one wants to do and thus leads to the player (or at least, this player) feeling compelled to compartmentalize and schedule his time in his zeal to have it all. As such, the compelling to explore world suddenly becomes useless - even worse, because, for example going down a lush pathway to a locale may take some 30 to 45 minutes of game time one finds himself resenting the fact that there is so much to explore and see as it gets in the way of the schedule.


Video from Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life - identical to this game, but that the main character is female.

It also has something of a bad case of "you're doing it wrong" - the hybridization feature, for example, is so vast and so poorly explained in the game that it simply becomes utterly off-putting - devoting time to it may make it rewarding, but, the players time is already tied up in trying to juggle some 30 relationships with townspeople, handling livestock, and running errands or making trips around town. In short, these features when coupled with the litany of other things to do simply becomes overwhelming. For people who don't mind missing things or don't mind just sort of playing it by ear, I can certainly see how it could be appealing.

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
Publisher: Natsume
Developer: Marvelous Interactive
Released: 3/16/2004
Obtained: March 2004 (Gift)

7.5/10