Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town

Ok. If you remember my other Harvest Moon review, the one for the SNES, you'll see that I gave it a generally good review. However, like I said the game is freakin' repetitive. To come out with a game almost identical to it is worthless. They've done this many times. As far as I know there are 3 GameBoy Color Harvest Moons, 1 GBA, 1 for the N64, one for the PS1, on for the PS2, and one for the SNES. Now, how can this series being doing so well? The only one that I've seen do well was the N64 game (Harvest Moon 64, which I like) and all the rest don't interest me.

This game, Friends of Mineral Town, is basically the SNES game with small differences. One, the person who dies was a 'friend', not your grandfather. Two, instead of chopping up stumps you start with sticks and work you're way up when you go to the blacksmith. In HM64, the more you used an item the better it got. I liked that system better than having to get a crapload of money and upgrading each tool. Three, Graphics a bit difference. There are more colors in this one as opposed to the SNES one, but are we gonna buy a game based on how many colors there are?



Once again we find ourselves in this annoying music thing. The music for Harvest Moon was ok, mainly because it wasn't looped too much as you were constantly on the move. In this game, the town music is VERY annoying and obnoxious. It sounds too MIDI style for me and the way it keeps looping even when in a new level makes me go insane. I can handle a song if it starts up every new level OR if there is somewhat different music at least for shops and stuff. Not the case. The music just keeps rambling on.

In this game, the town plays a big role. People are at certain places at certain times. Not just the shops, regularl people. If you wanna talk to someone, tough luck trying to find him. You can be searching in town and he'll be at some freakin' field far away talking with squirells. This is fine if you're very devoted, but as I used to a game where people are (usually) in the same spot the majority of the time, I'm happy.

In HM64, different girls and people were at different places during each day. Each DAY is fine, cause you have that day to find the person. If it's a specific time, if you find the place where the guy was at 2:00, it's 3:00 now and he's at his house quietly enjoying his evening of wondering where the hell all the elf sounds are coming from.



The animals concept is basically the same. You have to feed 'em, talk to 'em, and brush 'em everyday and they're generally pretty happy until they grow up and can give oh so pretty items such as wool (sheep) and milk (not sheep) from cows.

The graphics like I mentioned earlier are just basically the same as the SNES game except with 'more shading' and less 'one colorness'. I see no reason to buy this game based on its graphics, as you'll be pretty bored with 'em before you can actually move your character. I say this because the introduction story takes a bit and it takes a bit.

Overall I give this game one star. I don't give it mushroom as there is some hope for this game. The people who are very meticulous and really like the whole 'complicated' aspects of games would probably enjoy this game. I however am not one of those people. It's a game you could buy, it's nice to have on the run and probably makes for good long car ride play. I just couldn't see myself playing this in my own free time.

1 star(s) out of 5

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