How do you think Harvest Moon has changed? Options

[Charmy]

Even though this series may not be the most popular, it has been around since I was born, 1996, and has spanned many titles, and many generations of gaming.

One pet peeve of mine is that the newer games, from what I've heard generally, don't let you kick into the game straight away. You have to sit through a tutorial, that lasts forever, and they try to stretch the game by making features unlocked later on, or introducing new candidates. I think that if a player breezes through the game, that they should be able, otherwise it makes the game strenuous! D:

So what things do you like or dislike compared to the older games, and so on?

[Gear]

I'd like to stomp on the blasted save the town before you get characters as it really sucks the fun of the game out of me. DX Make it at least optional but as a requirement to get married...nope.

I'm glad that there's no "villager leaves town if you don't talk to them" like in magical melody anymore. Countering that though is the ability to become good friends with all the villagers and see different events. ^^

Knowing me I have more but can't remember anything else at the moment.

[Charmy]

I don't mind so much if the tasks are easy and the characters come very quickly, like half way through the year is a decent length for me, but they'll make you wait for a whole year or longer, don't they?

Haha, or the character leaves permanently! Cliff, yadayada.

[Daniella]

Well, all the characters are pretty much the same now in personality. Lots of jerk bachelors and lots of bachelorettes who love food but can't cook.

I like the ability to now make the way your character looks, in A New Beginning and the whatever the new one's going to be called.
And to go along with looks, I like that the handhelds no longer have jellybean people like the Island ones, Grand Bazaar and Twin Villages.

[Charmy]

Haha, I think the jellybeans are cute! X]
The graphics have been coming along though, definitely. I really like their appearance in the Sugar Valley titles, Save the Homeland and Hero of Leaf Valley.

I haven't played a game with customisation yet! Well, Tree of Tranquility does have it, actually, but not on a level like New Beginning. The newest game looks good so far, I'm looking forward to it in that!

[Marie]

I like the jellybean-looking people as well. =P I like the character styles in ANB too, though. And the character customisation~!

I think they have kind of exhausted themselves when it comes to character creation. It seems that their formula for most new characters follows one of these two patterns:

1: Take one bowl filled with slips of paper naming each of the various types/roles of characters we've seen. Take another bowl with slips of paper listing each personality trait that has been used over and over. Take one piece of paper from the character type bowl and a couple from the personality trait bowl, and voila--new character!!

2: Take a character from a previous game, copy him/her and completely redesign the character while making only minor personality changes. Voila! New character!!

This isn't necessarily a complaint, mind you--I always manage to find at least one or two marriage candidate characters I adore in each game. And the more dialogue the game has, the better--more dialogue usually means more character development. But they do rely heavily on recycling old characters.

I also like the fusion of Japanese and Western culture featured in the game. Since the games are made in Japan, Japanese culture is always going to have a heavy influence on the games, but I think they manage a nice fusion using primarily European-looking characters, featuring a lot of Japanese food, and portraying Japanese styles of dress and buildings as "exotic." I've always loved that! Every game has featured this fusion in some way or another!

[Charmy]

Haha, yes! When I started to learn more about Japan, I noticed this fusion while studying it for school (I chose to analyse Harvest Moon for one of my assignments). I saw it mostly in the festivals, for example, the food again, but also the Firefly festival and some other things. It's nice, I never really took notice of this mix when I was younger. :)

[Lenyo]

You guys all hit the nail on the head, really. I couldn't stand how ToT and AP felt like broken machines I was fixing rather than games I was progressing in. (What with having to go through x, y and z to accomplish anything whatsoever taking hours.) I also think the formula got a bit repetitive throughout each installment.

I actually haven't had enough time in my life to play some of the more recent games (I tried New Beginning for a bit, but it was too slow for me to get into.) But I've always been faithful and played every Rune Factory game as they came out. I would find time for those suckers whenever I could. I'd play when I was getting my oil changed, when I had a night off from rehearsals or schoolwork and so on. Each Rune Factory game has felt like the next logical step from the previous one, and I've enjoyed all six games immensely (six, right? The four handhelds, Frontier and Tides.)
Rune Factory sprouted into a series that has all the mechanics of Harvest Moon (except Tides of Destiny) and I believe it adds in the new dynamic of dungeon crawling quite well. Whereas every new Harvest Moon game doesn't seem to improve much on the last, every Rune Factory game feels like something really fresh. I've always liked the protagonists once I got to know them, I really enjoy the series' overarching plot (The Sechs Empire is the devil basically) and I hope the dudes who primarily work on Rune Factory keep it up, and don't fall into the same pitfall Harvest Moon seems to have fallen into lately.

Then again, maybe I also need to give New Beginning a chance again...?

[Mizukithepanda]

Honestly, Lenyo, I felt like A New Beginning was ToT/AP for handheld. You're basically just fixing shit that's broken again. That doesn't mean that the mechanics themselves aren't fun, but the plot? Yeah, fuck no. I will never touch ANB again. If Tsunagaru Shintenchi ends up being anything like ANB in terms of plot/progression, I'm gonna be seriously disappointed.

[Hasfusel]

I just want my HM64 characters back ;w;

[Darth-Paper-Boy]

For the better: Customization. Honestly, the ability to shuffle the town around is more useful and better implemented than even Animal Crossing New Leaf's, where town customization is the biggest new feature and the biggest chore in that game. From the looks of it, they're really working this angle and are building on it with each iteration so far. This feels like the answer to the long standing question that ends up with every other HM game where you just run out of things to work towards.

For the worse: There's a lot less focus on being in a living, breathing country town and more on weird magic shit. I want more interaction among the people and less magic bells and sprites and other mystical beings. By focusing more on the people, even the boring, re-used archetypes the characters have become can begin to be different by having more interactions with not only the player, but each other. That stronger focus on stuff happening between characters is the primary reason people fondly remember the old games like HM64 so much.

[Peter]

Likes:
- Better plots and dialogue.
- Customization, as stated above.
- Expansiveness of content with each new iteration.
- The move back to very mature looking characters (portrait wise; I could care less what the sprites look like).

Dislikes:
- Personality swaps of the same sprites (I've noted on several occasions that I hate the swap from HM64 to BTN, and they KEEP DOING IT).
- Mining. Gosh, do I hate mining for ore.
- Villagers that leave; seems counterproductive to the plot of restore the ranch/village back to its former glory.

If I think of more, I'll edit this post.