After Arkham City, Uncharted 3, Dark Souls and a little Saint's Row 2 I've grown tired of killing stuff in games. I played the first Harvest Moon around the time it came out and remember enjoying it, though I was like 10 or so at the time. I kind of want to play another game in the series since farming seems like the perfect way of cleansing my killing pallet for a short time.

If anyone has any suggestions that would be great. Platform does not matter.

A Wonderful Life is my favourite, granted I haven't played many. I really liked the whole thing of playing through the character's life. It's on PS2 and Gamecube I believe.

Harvest Moon 64 was my favorite. I enjoyed Magical Melody(GCN/Wii) as well, but I must admit I have not kept up with the series.

To my knowledge, a bunch came out for the DS, 3DS, PSP, and Wii but I haven't played any of those. I don't remember hearing anything bad about them in particular so if you want to play one on a current-ish system then well there you go. Rune Factory: Tides of Destiniy, which is essentially Harvest Moon by another name, just came out for PS3 and I heard that was pretty good as well even though it oddly enough has some combat in it.

To answer the hread title though, the best Harvest Moon is Back to Nature available for for purchase on PSN for the low-low price of $5.99. Buy it today!

What? I don't work for Sony...or do I?...

Harvest Moon 64 was my favorite also. I really liked the original SNES one too. It's great that you have a huge area where you can expand and grow crops. Unlike the latest ones where it's just a square. Only problem is that it's limited to 3 years.

I really liked Back to Nature. It came out for the original Playstation, but I believe you can get it on PSN.

The 64 one is great, but my favorite is the one that came out for the Gamecube. A Wonderful Life, I think it's called?

My favorite is Back to Nature on the PSOne. Though there was a gamestopping bug in it. After romancing my chosen girl for a year and a half of ingame time, expandig my crops, building an extension to my house, and earning the respect of the villagers, she finally agreed to marry Jack, the character. She walked her down the aisle, and they gave each other their "I do"'s. And then the screen went black. And the save game didn't work. And there was no way of progressing past that day.

I was livid, and I sat down and wrote a letter, a paper letter, because I felt an e-mail couldn't containg my ire, to the publisher Natsume. A few weeks later, I got a reply which basically said: "oh, yeah, we know about that bug. There is nothing that can be done. Send a proof of purchase to this adress, and you'll get your money back."

No, Natsume! I don't want your blood money, I want my wife back, you bastards!

Suffice to say, I dropped to my knees, and bellowed a NOOOOOO to the heavens that Darth Vader Himself would be proud of.

By the way, the Gentleman is right. A Wonderful Life is pretty good too. And has no wife-killing mechanics that I know of.

I can't give you a specific reason why, besides really loving the art style of this one, but my favourite version was "Back to Nature" on the Playstation.

If you go for the European version you should get the version with the Disc ID Code "SLES-02781#" to avoid the "Marriage Bug" which lead to a game freeze every time in the first release of the game with the Disc ID Code "SLES-02781" (The ID which is printed on the CD istself is the important one, on the spine of the case it's always "SLES-02781").

As far as I know you could sent your bugged version back to Ubi Soft to get the fixed version in return, but I highly doubt that this service is still available today.

Definitely A Wonderful Life for the GameCube/PS2. Seriously in my top 30 games all-time, an astonishingly charming and addictive game.

@HarlechQuinn: Thanks. Where were you ten years ago..? :P

From my experience the first one you play is your favorite. But i have to recomend Back to Nature

N64 one was my favorite. A Wonderful Life is also rad.

GBA one, Friends of Mineral is EASILY the biggest, baddest Harvest Moon game out there.

It's just packed with stuff that doesn't distract from farming (a lot of the newer ones have a lot of weird mechanics not directly relating to farming) and will last you hours and hours.

I haven't played any of the Harvest Moon games myself, but I've heard the most good things about the N64 version.

Also, this might be one of those series where your favourite game is whichever one you first played, because it set your personal standard for what the series IS, and then all subsequent games tweak the formula in their own way and they never quite compare to the first one you enjoyed. So expect a wire variety of answers, as I don't think there's any consensus on what the high point of the series is.