GENRE
	Simulation-RPG
	DEVELOPER
	Victor Interactive
	PUBLISHER
	Natsume
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	CONNECTIVITY
	Yes
	BUY NOW AT

The Harvest Moon series has established and maintained a hardcore niche following for the better part of decade. Quite a remarkable feat in an industry whose rapid growth in the same decade has caused most publishers to harness game content solidly to the lowest common denominator of mainstream society tastes.

More remarkable still is when that hardcore niche following is able to carry both its developer and publisher all on its own. And in the case of third party games exclusively published on a Nintendo console, achieving “sleeper hit” status amidst all of the quality first party software deserves more than a pat on the back. Oddly enough, Harvest Moon has attracted some of the most defensive, rabid, and proud fanboys and girls of any third party... to a simulation role-playing game about farming.

There’s a pretty solid chance if you’re reading this that you clicked this link because you’ve already played one or multiple Harvest Moon iterations and are interested to see whether the latest GBA offering by Victor Interactive and Natsume holds up to previous titles in the series’ lineage. Alternatively, perhaps you’re a virgin to the series who secretly clicked the link to this review with an innocent curiosity as to whether a game whose gameplay features include “milking cows” and “wooing women” in the same breath can manage to be fun.

If you’ll allow a brief note before either group of you gets to find out whether Friends of Mineral Town ended up being any good or not, I should probably confess my own convictions on the matter. I found myself completely and utterly addicted to the original Harvest Moon title on the SNES within days of its release in 1996. The series offered everything I wanted from a game for when I wasn’t in the mood for killing and maiming hordes of digital enemies: time constraints that resulted in “one more turn” gameplay, a slew of creative items and user interaction, events to keep me entertained and break the monotony found in most simulation games, and (perhaps most of all) the guilty pleasure of tricking one of the town’s maidens into falling in love with me and bearing my children. Call me old-fashioned.

visuals

Harvest Moon has never been (nor will it ever be) a staple series of the gaming industry that’s associated with jaw-dropping visuals. Both the SNES and N64 versions were released in the final stretch of each console’s cycle and neither had even average visuals at the time. With that in mind, the fact that Friends of Mineral Town holds its own against just about any other title competing for Game Boy players’ holiday cash in the visuals department is shocking.

FOMT not only offers players crisp sprites, good use of color, and a variety of animations, it succeeds in breaking its own curse of sub-par graphics in conjunction with much revered gameplay. While the game does nothing to really push the GBA’s computing power over the edge, the game is certainly aesthetically pleasing and it is clear that the graphical choices made in its design worked to better the overall gameplay experience.

audio

Overall good. The music manages to stay in the background where it belongs — especially in a game that’s going to get 60+ hours of play if you're hardcore. The sound effects are all in place, from the birds that chirp when you wake up to the sound of your axe knocking against a tree stump; I was surprised that they came through as clearly as they did on the GBA’s mono speaker. (One interesting note: when your player becomes exceedingly exhausted, he’ll turn blue. While he’s blue, any work done after that point puts him at risk of getting put in the hospital for the night. The closer you get to your breaking point, the music deteriorates and distorts more and more until both it and you wipe out, making for an impressive use of music interaction.)

gameplay

The game kicks off when you, a nameless male protagonist, walk onto the farm of an old man you met as a small boy. You were pen pals your whole life, but when the old man stopped writing, you left for the farm to find that he had passed away and left the entirety of his belongings to you. Using the tools provided, you’re tasked with clearing out and maintaining the farm, tilling it, and planting vegetables on it. Once you can afford them, you can also buy and raise livestock: chickens, sheep, and cows. You also have a dog and a horse to raise (which you can both use around the farm and race).

The year is broken up into the four seasons of thirty days, as it’s always been. During each season, three or four scheduled events normally occur in the town square. Every day, the town’s thirty-or-so inhabitants carry on with their normal lives in and around town, and each one is (as cutesy as this sounds) a potential friend. You can improve your relationship with the townsfolk by helping them out when they need it, talking to them, participating in events, and giving them gifts.

But giving gifts to strange men isn’t all you can do in the game world, as you’re encouraged to court and eventually marry one of five local young women. Of course, the courting process probably takes the same effort as actually farming, as a daily gift and chat are pretty much required to winning them over in any reasonable amount of time. Thankfully, the girls wear their hearts on their text boxes, so you have some vague idea as to how you’re doing. Ultimately, you can marry your love interest once your house (and bed, of course) are sufficiently big enough. And with marriage comes kids, which arrive on the scene after a two-season gestation period. As entirely kooky and morally ill-contrived as the dating/marriage aspect of the game might sound, it balances out the lonely and monotonous work on the farm incredibly well. After all, there’s nothing like impressing the local shop owner’s daughter Karen with a bottle of wine after 13 long hours of harvesting and watering crops.

For returning fans, there are myriad improvements to anticipate. Unlike previous games where your tools just magically improve with use, the six main tools can be upgraded four or more times with the right amount of money and the appropriate type of ore. Speaking of ore, the town has two multi-tiered mines on its outskirts where you can line your pockets with semi-precious metals (hence the “Mineral” in the title). Also new to the series is a cooking system that actually works: you can order a variety of kitchen equipment via the phone in the hotel after watching the home shopping network on your TV and use various ingredients to make your own food. Like Harvest Moon:64 you can accumulate recipes by befriending the townspeople.

multiplayer

Harvest Moon will probably always be a single-player game. But if you consider GCN connectivity a “multiplayer” option, FOMT does its part. If you throw a treat in the pond for the Harvest Goddess, you’ll be able to connect to the upcoming GCN title Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. Two different characters from that game are added to your village at that point. One of them goes so far as to set up a weekly shop in the hotel, where you can buy records of various music (including classics like various themes from the original SNES game) for play in your house’s record player. Of course, most gamers won’t be able to get their hands on the GCN game until March, as the North American version was recently delayed.

overall

As expected, Friends of Mineral Town definitely stands on the shoulders of the Harvest Moons before it, but it also emerges as a much more polished, balanced, visually enjoyable, and definitive gameplay experience than any title in the series before it. While most of the series’ fans are already playing it, anyone who’s a fan of open-ended gameplay situated in the real world could definitely find themselves helplessly addicted to HM:FOMT. The game is certainly worthy of any real gamer’s thirty bucks and 20 hours, unless you’ve already played and disliked the SNES or N64 versions.

8.7/10