Quick Look: Harvest Moon: One World

I'm most fond of the DS games, particularly HMDS and Sunshine Islands. I find the older games a little hard to go back to.

I like all the crazy ridiculous stuff in HMDS like how you can get a game over by poisoning the entire town with a level 99 poison mushroom. And the offbeat marriage candidates like the mermaid, the girl you can only talk to at the bottom of the mine, or the Harvest Goddess or Witch Princess. Goddess pretty much requires you to 100% the game and Witch requires you to do a bunch of negative stuff like have 100 animals die and litter 1000 times.

Sunshine Islands has my favorite gameplay in the series. The farming is so much more dynamic in this one than any other game. Plants require specific amounts of water and sunlight to get to be the highest quality. It's kind of micromanagey and you can get screwed over by bad weather but I find that a lot more engaging than mindlessly watering your plants once a day every day. The system for enhancing your tools is really customizable and you can make some really powerful tools. Getting the materials to do so isn't easy and makes a great long-term goal. I literally made spreadsheets and reference guides for this game. It's so satisfying.

The later games and SoS games aren't really my style. The farming was simplified, most of the new games don't even have proper mines in them, and a much bigger emphasis was placed on crafting items and decorating your ranch. (coincidentally those last two points are why I can't stand the new Animal Crossing game)

Whew, this looks rough.

God that horse animation is so fucking bad.

This game looks worse than the actual PS2; Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life.

story of seasons comment

(it's actually good, though)

@eribuster said:

The developer of the Rune Factory franchise did indeed go bankrupt, which is why we haven't seen a new one in eight years now. However, Marvelous, their publisher in Japan, hired most of the old dev team. Now the same people who made all the old RF games are making RF5. They also put out that Switch port of RF4.

I'll add that the footage of 5 we've seen seems promising and right in line with what you'd expect from an RF game. They released a new video showing it off last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im1z6RHiVoQ

"If you see some stuff in here that's not in your version of Harvest Moon: A) You shouldn't be playing this game."

This looks like it was developed for mobile rather than consoles. And that price is definitely not worth it for what I've seen from this.

i love that the first thing that happens when vinny touches the controller is an instant red flag to me: a ps4 game in 2021 using the default save management UI

Something feels very classic GB watching Vinny and Alex play this game hahaha

I found sakuna: of rice and ruin to be an interesting development on the HM/RF/SV farming formula. Instead of farming multiple crops, you are focused on one thing, namely rice. It also merges RPG elements with the farming really well.

Just play Stardew Valley. Harvest Moon hasn't been good since the Playstation.

This game looks to be cribbing a lot from Magical Melody on gamecube, which was... also not a particularly good Harvest Moon game. But I swear some of the farm-building and house assets are identical, and the idea of working various different plots of land, and all the sprites hidden throughout the world makes me think that was their inspiration. Some parts of that aren't terrible ideas but it seems like in both cases the execution is... wanting?

Wow, compared to Stardew, this looks just dreadful.

I thought this was Switch exclusive, which made seeing PS4 icons a strange thing.

@heavyduty32: Haha Bronze Ore! Now that you pointed that out, I can't think of anything else. Good eye!

This should be called Funky Barn. Except it's funky in the stinky way

I saw that "One World" font and a wave of dread fell over me.

Maaaaaan this game is an eyesore.

This looks like Natsume saw there was a new Story of Seasons game being made and rushed to beat it out the door at the last minute. This does not look like a product that was loved and cared for during development even though I'm sure there were lots of talented people who wanted to do something with it.

Alex was spot on when he said this looks like a PS2 game. It literally looks/plays like that era of game across the entire board. Incredible.