/svidya/ - Strictly Vidya Games

>>20018

Why is this fucking shit holding an axe while he's planting? He looks like he's going to chop someone up and then fuck all the individual pieces. Is this meant to make me want to play a comfy farm game or never sleep again?

>>20014

>>20017

That's you job now, /bestvidya/ - to think of another day-job that isn't actually rustic and charming and comfy, but can be made to feel so through this genre.

Get to it.

>>20014

Wish I got into harvest moon early on, but some of them are way to expensive now

Does Recettear count as one?

>>20055

It looks like it might actually. I should give that a spin sometime.

>>20195

Don't the poisonous kind make you sick? They'll also good for strategically pissing people off at you. If you become too good friends with one of the bachelors but not the girl for example they'll try to marry them.

i had always hoped minecraft would go in that direction. but you know

>>20055

On second look it seems like this is more of a traditional RPG since you go into dungeons and fight monsters but maybe I just don't get it. Kinda like those Rune Factory games I guess.

>>20243

I can see a mod where PETA invades your farm to free battery hens, and you have to fight them off with shotguns and pesticides.

>>20244

Knowing PETA, it'd just be another crazy flash game.

So whats the best version of Harvest Moon to play?

I found a SNES copy a local store, but they're selling it for $100 and not sure if I want to throw that much money down on one game

>>20314

Harvest Moon 64 is the pinnacle of the series in my opinion. SNES game is already but kind of simple and shallow. 64 is the sequel to the SNES original and it's kind of astonishing how it not only improves on it so much but somehow hasn't yet been surpassed.

I'm convinced the stars aligned and it was a fluke because Marvelous Interactive just seems to have had no fucking clue about what made it so good over the years.

>>20315

SNES game is all right*

>>20315

>>20316

>SNES game is all right* but kind of simple and shallow

Thats kind of disappointing to hear, was hoping to get some more use out of my SNES, and didnt want to have to dig my N64 out of my closet.

Isn't there also one on the Gamecube and PS2?

>>20326

There's several. Magical Melodies is the best from that generation but it still has a lot of its own issues.

>>20326

A Wonderful Life was my favorite from the gcn era.

>>20466

>What made the N64 version superior?

The N64 game has a better assortment of goals and tasks to accomplish and I think the days have better pacing with the things you can do in a given overall. Also the controls on Harvest Moon 64 aren't complete garbage so that's a big plus.

Also it's a mistake to call them "versions" of each other. While they share a ton of assets (because Victor Interactive was in financial difficulty and they decided to whore out/outsource the game out to TOSE), they're really not all that similar beyond that.

>>20468

May get the N64 version soon, is there any Harvest Moon that is actually bad or should avoid?

>>20472

Tons, the real question is which of the few are actually worth playing. Rented Tree of Tranquility a while back and sure found it to be absolute crap though.

Plenty of RPGs offer all that they do plus the RPG portion. Especially in japan where the first person dungeon run subgenre is especially a lot like it.

Harvest Moon is a lot like playing Etrian Odyssey with only one dungeon over and over again.

>>20699

I don't want an RPG that revolves around combat and exploring like regular RPGs though. I want one where the character building is done through "task management" so to speak. It's so rewarding to build your farm up from scratch and become the most liked guy in town.

>>20700

Too bad for you that's nothing to do what was asked in the OP.

>>20702

What? I just described Harvest Moon for you.

>>20014

One of the things i notice with this genre is most of the games in it are pretty timeless, even the older ones are pretty playable still so new releases are still competing with peoples nostalgia for titles from the 90s for attention

>>20714

I think the real problem is that Marvelous seems to have no clue what made the older, better games in the series so good. I've been burned on too many newer Harvest Moons with a ton of critical flaws to get excited for new ones anymore. It's still agreed upon that HM64 is one of the best games in the series and yet they seem to make no effort to ever try to make another game in that style and build upon it.

>>20727

Wow that's a tough question.

To start with I think the problem with most later Harvest Moon games is one of design vision. While they always seem to have something different that they fuck up on, I would say that generally the problems seem to arise from approaching things without the proper mind set of a game designer. Too many Harvest Moon games have problems with tedious stuff that doesn't need to be tedious and things that are only there to slow the experience down. It's like the developers frequently forget to ask "is this fun?" rather than "is it realistic enough?" Harvest Moon 64 knows it wants to be a game first and foremost and not a simulator.

What sort of real farmer is able to water a 3x3 plot of land with a strong shake of a watering can? The philosophy of the Harvest Moon series should never have strayed from taking rural farm life and making it game-like and fun.

Personally I think that the absolute best aspect of Harvest Moon 64–the one that gives it lasting replayability–is playing it like a sort of strategy game where the player is tested to plan out all sorts of things in order to get the best evaluation at the end of the game. Basically, a high score. This is something I have never been able to enjoy to the same extent in other games in the series due to various crippling flaws.

One thing that quite a number of other games in the series screwed up on is making your farmer have really slow walking speed so that it takes forever to get around the world. In contrast, Harvest Moon 64 has a very compact village and your farmer moves around it quickly. Holding a direction and waiting to arrive at your destination is the kind of task that should be minimized whenever possible.

Another thing that is absolutely baffling to me is how in a lot of the games your character has these long drawn out animations when using tools or moving items in and out of your rucksack. Why would you do that! Performing virtual work, whether it's pulling a weed out of the ground or eating something or chopping wood should be real short and simple. The player is going to be doing these tasks repetitively and they don't need to experience what kind of slow back-breaking labor on a farm is like in real life; that just isn't fun.

>>20732

>Another thing that is absolutely baffling to me is how in a lot of the games your character has these long drawn out animations when using tools or moving items in and out of your rucksack.

That's something that I disliked about Back to Nature (PSX), and I don't know how it compared to the other titles in the series. But it really seemed to drag things out, which made no sense, given that the entire point of the game was to pack as much stuff into each day as you could.

Another problem I think the later Harvest Moon games often have is an abundance of things that don’t really add anything to the experience and whose choice doesn’t affect how the player's skill tested at all. Some good examples are the marketplace system and the hybrid crop system in A Wonderful Life. These things have quite a lot of depth, but the problem is that their depth doesn’t really go anywhere. You don't make shit for money in the marketplace and it just eats up your time that you could be putting into other social interactions. Likewise with the hybrid crop system there are a huge amount of different crops you can create but in the end the meaningful choice just amounts to choosing the one that makes by far the most money.

Another thing a lot of games did is make the mining system absolutely egregiously deep and complex to the point that you really have to put a massive chunk of time into it to get everything out of it.

>>21236

Been checking this out now. It's definitely a Harvest Moon clones, and apparently of one of the good ones. I notice time passes while you're indoors, not sure if that's a good design choice.

Unfortunately, the game runs like complete ass on my hardware for some reason, and I even had to get this hack-y extra d3d9.dll just to make it run. The frame rate is horrible all around and it also replaces mouse acceleration with really low sensitivity. I hope they can get the game working better, just might buy it eventually if it runs well.