Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
Editor's Note: I wrote this review a long time ago. I think it needs some polish. I still agree with everything I said, however the review itself isn't that well written. I still think I bring out some good points though, so the review can still be helpful to those seeking advise.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is another game in the very popular Harvest Moon series. Though it might be shunned by those looking for a more violent game, those who give it a shot and enjoy running the farm will see why this series is so special. Unfortunately, after everyone sees this, both Harvest Moon veterans and newcomers alike, will start to notice flaws that hold this entry in the series back.
In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, your goal is run a farm and raise a family successfully. Running the farm is pretty easy. Just take care of all of your animals, which include cattle, horses, sheep, chickens, and goats. Loving and caring for your animal is crucial, so you can get higher quality milk from your cows, better eggs from your chickens, and you need to clean your sheep's wool, so it's nice and clean, and good quality when you sheer it. If you don't, your animals make lackluster products for you to sell and you make less money. You can also make crops if you want. Except, they're not quite worth your time, because they require too much work and come off as little profit, so it's just a feature to the game that feels tacked on.
You can also raise a family in Harvest Moon. In the first year of the game you have a choice of 3 different girls, which whom you can marry. The year after that you and your wife have a son. Who you befriend in the village, decides what career your son will decide to take. Raising a family isn't really crucial to the gameplay, but it is a nice addition that most people will enjoy.
Well, what can we do after that? That leads to one of Harvest's Moon's main faults. There are some other things you can do after tending to the farm, but not really all that much. You can fish, you can go to the dig and search for fossils, and you can talk to the villagers, but that's about it. Fishing and fossil digging is fun, but only for too long, and the villagers tend to say lots of the same things after a while, which makes the game really repetitive. Things only really change after the end of a chapter, but you'll quickly realize that there's hardly a difference to the gameplay.
Harvest Moon is a beautiful looking game that is full of detail. The game has a somewhat childish look to it that fits in with the feel of the game perfectly. The game has excellent lighting effects; objects that should have shadows do and those go onto to characters underneath them, you can have a person that is half covered by a shadow and the other half being appropriately colored as well. It's little details like this that suck you into the game, making you feel as though it's the real thing.
The audio in the game is nothing really spectacular. The music you'll be hearing most of time is okay, and might be what most people call "elevator music", but it's not too huge of a problem since most of time you'll be sucked into the main gameplay. The sound effects are also decent. The animal sound effects are particularly good, and sound like the real thing. There does feel like there was a missed opportunity to include voice acting, but the audio is decent.
Harvest Moon is a fun game, that a select group of people will enjoy. It has a distinct personality not commonly seen in more modern video games, and its beautiful graphics will suck players into this game leaving those who enjoy the game hopelessly addicted. A Wonderful Life is a good game, but the lack of goals and things to do keep it from meeting its full potential.
