1. nottomato

   10

   Best handheld Harvest Moon since Friends of Mineral Town.
   
   This Harvest Moon is fantastic, they fixed almost every aspect that sucked in Tale of Two Towns. Freshness levels are gone, you can have multiple greenhouses, there's tons of livestock, an area that auto-waters after beating part of the game. Every feature has been streamlined and made less annoying, except for cutscenes. For example, no more clicking two buttons to put a item away, all items are automatically put into the rucksack. Tons of great characters, many of which are completely new. Framerate has been improved dramatically, and if you played Tale of Two Towns on 3DS, then you'll know the pain of bad Harvest Moon framerates.
   
   Pacing is good after the first month, many people will complain about the slow pacing, maybe they didn't make it past the first month. To a Harvest Moon veteran, one month will feel like nothing. This game becomes extremely fun as soon as you finish the tutorial.
   
   Crops:
   Crops can be watered twice a day, 10 hours between, this can be mildly annoying until you unlock the auto-water land area. They are about the same as Tale of Two Towns in mechanics, besides the removed freshness rating, crops will last forever in this game! You get your seedmaker pretty early compared to most Harvest Moon games, I got mine within the first year which makes fertilizing crops worth it. Crop festivals are held once a month one the 30th and have three levels of entry, beginning, intermediate and advance - making it possible to participate every single month if you please.
   
   Animals:
   Livestock are a little more simple than Tale of Two Towns, making them less annoying. Petting game has been removed. They have continued the treat system, you get eight different species of livestock and two types of chickens. Your barn and coop can both hold 10 livestock each.
   
   Pets have been made more useful early one, they will herd (at least) five animals from your barn or coop with zero hearts (you must assign work to them in game). Pets will continually unlock much like Tale of Two Towns, but now you can sell pets if you please, meaning you aren't stuck with certain styles of pets.
   
   Farm:
   You get three different areas as the game progresses, one implied to be a crop area (auto-water area), and one for animals (flat area) and one for your house and other buildings (first area you get). The auto water area allows you to have 11 4x2 crop spaces that will be watered by moving a boulder everyday. Beehives and mushroom logs are in this game, along with the "paddy" crop. Each building, field and other objects can be moved and customized to wherever you please.
   
   Town/Wilderness:
   Your town has two plots of land, one of which is unlocked early in the game and three wilderness areas. You will decide where villager houses go, along with deciding what town decorations will be. Along with town building, you will also be able to unlock certain forest areas, gifts and blueprints with "Musical Stumps", which will be introduced to you early on during Spring of Year 1. Almost all villagers are completely new, except for Amir (I think he's in Grand Bazaar) and the Witch Princess. There are many benefits to befriending villagers and wild animals, including free blueprints, gifts and even a certain villager moving in if you befriend his wife, Hana.
   
   Love Interest:
   The bachelors and bachelorettes are equally wonderful and interesting in this game, you are allowed to save slots meaning you can make a boy and girl character if you wish. This game also allows cross dressing (although your character will not change sex), the first time appearing in the Harvest Moon US series along with customization. They've added a feature where you can "date" your love interest before proposing to them with a Blue Feather, which is nice because you can also break up with your love interest if you want.
   
   Festivals:
   Each festival you win or participate in will give about 1000 friendship points with every villager, making festivals very much worth participating in. They are pretty easy to win (especially beginner class), meaning you'll enjoy participating in almost every festival (except the Gardening Festival).
   
   Cons:
   The repeated cutscenes. Which happen FOUR times a day if you have pets and Neil/Rod unlocked. There are two unskippable cutscenes that occur and the only way to avoid them is to hide inside a building or run off the map they occur on when they are suppose to happen. It's not a big deal but it does cause your schedule to adjust around it (unless you don't care about the cutscenes.
   
   You will most likely be able to beat the game before the end of Year 2, making the game not too dramatically long, but good for most Harvest Moon players. One year will zoom by pretty fast as soon as the tutorial ends for you because the gameplay is so much fun compared to most handheld Harvest Moons.… Expand

   • Helpful? 5 of 5 users said Yes.
2. Trustyweasel

   9

   This is probably the best Harvest Moon I have played in a very long time. It brings back the memories I had of the original, which I missed in every subsequent release in the series. While the tutorials are a little in your face, cut scenes become a nuisance (I will seriously stand around waiting until ten minutes after 10am and 6pm on Neil's shop days before heading into the town area) and let's not really quibble over the waste of the touch screen, this installment is indeed a new beginning for the series. I had almost given up on reigniting the spark I felt for this series after Island of Happiness. The edit feature is a godsend for the series. The fact that I don't have to throw my crops into the collection bin, amazing. The art style is gorgeous and the 3D makes it pop. Honestly with most 3DS games, I end up playing with the feature turned off. Here, as with Ocarina, you really miss out on the quality of the graphics without it turned on. The depth of the gameplay, is terrific. You could spend your entire time just playing with the crops but there's so much more to do. As much as I want to punch that cowboy hobo mayor in the face every time he barges into my house, I really feel invested in his mission of revitalizing the town. There's more appeal for growing and expanding the town than I felt in Island of Happiness. Hunting down new blueprints, recipes, and music sheets is a terrific diversion. Sometimes though, the rewards from the Sprites for expanding the town are a bit underwhelming. The additional fact that they have to be unlocked in sequential order -- for instance I built the clinic before the cottage but I didn't get the clinic's music sheet unlocked until after I unlocked the sheet from the cottage -- is a tad annoying but not so much that it detracts from the game. Despite the slow start of the first month, you're constantly compelled to be doing something: foraging, fishing, flirting, building. This game is great.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.
3. twizbuck

   9

   I find this installment to be a nice step forward. Almost all of the HM games on DS have failed to hold my interest for one reason or another, but A New Beginning kept me interested from the start, even if the first month is just as everyone says: slow. But being able to re-create the town as you want with the edit feature, as well as your farm that expands three areas by the end, is a great addition, and the character models are very refreshing. I didn't enjoy the almost kid-like appearance and sound of previous HM DS games. If you enjoy HM, you owe it to yourself to give this game a shot. If you don't usually like HM games, this one might change your feelings on them.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
4. Kahnqueror

   8

   TONS of fun and extremely addicting! So much content! If you like Harvest Moon, you are going to love this game. I've logged 62 hours of gameplay on it and only JUST got through the first year, and while I'm burned out on it for the time being, I know for sure that I'll pick it up again in the future and continue on with my game. As one of the critics pointed out, yes, it does start off pretty slowly (but doesn't every Harvest Moon game?) but if you stick with it, you'll find it difficult to put it down. The only other criticism I have of the game is that sometimes, if you're playing without looking at any guides, you're going to end up screwing yourself over but not wanting to start over since it's such a time investment. For example, I lost the Spring crop festival - I could be mistaken, but nowhere in the game did it tell me to only water fertilized crops once a day! I had to find that out the hard way. Another way I screwed myself over was selling all the honeycomb I collected in the Spring when I was hard up for cash, only to later find out that you NEED the honeycomb to build beehives and collect honey at one point to progress the game, but found this out during a season when honeycomb isn't available, and had to wait for the season to change, thus significantly delaying my progress in the game. Another criticism is that depending on when you get certain things, some of the festivals are poorly timed and are pretty much setting you up for failure. "Oh, you just got a Llama? We're going to have a Llama festival in 3 weeks." That's not nearly enough time for you to increase your animal's friendship to the point where you'd be able to win the beginner class without grinding it through multiplayer. I also screwed myself over by impregnating my first cow pretty early on, which meant that I would have lost the Cow Festival if I hadn't grinded friendship for the cow on multiplayer which was tedious. A note on multiplayer: It's a great idea, but it feels almost like cheating. You can get a TON of money in this way which may feel cheap and like cheating. My final criticism is that things in the game get a bit tedious when there is just so much to do, and you can't do it in the quickest, most efficient way possible. If you have lots of animals and crops growing that you have to fully care for every day (treats, brush, talk, feed, harvest, fertilize, water, etc.) you will do it all and then barely have any time left in the day to do anything else productive. This is what led me to get a bit burnt out on it. Still, I had TONS of fun with it, and I know I'll pick it up again. If you already know you like Harvest Moon games, get this game! You'll love it! If you've never played a Harvest Moon game but you enjoy "simulation" games and want to try a farming sim, I'd say give it a try! It's fun!… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.

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