Literally.
Harvest Moon is an interesting title. On one hand, it represents a long-running, solid entry in the realm of simulation games that aim to turn tedious tasks into something interesting. Tasks such as, well, living. Or working, or building a city, or in this case, farming. On the other hand, it appears to be entrenched in a way of thinking that doesn’t mesh well with today’s ideals of immersion and suspension of disbelief.
By their nature, simulation games require suspension of disbelief. Moreso than with any other genre, they must immerse the player and tread lightly around their consciousness to maintain the illusion that living a second life as a farmer is something worth investing a few tens of hours into. It’s the only way to make reality interesting. Without this degree of immersion, games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing are just single-player RPGs with a bizarre premise.
And that’s exactly the feeling I got from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, an old GBA game that I forgot I had bought. The first few hours are promising: like the rest of its ilk, Mineral Town gives you more tasks than time, forcing a sense of urgency onto the player. It’s exciting. Like finding the airship in classic JRPGs, the world expands around you, revealing seemingly infinite possibilities. Tediousness isn’t an issue, surprisingly (or at least it’s less of an issue than other more pressing problems). While the game does get repetitive after the first couple of seasons, the feeling that you’re a poor farmer years away from your lifelong goal persists. There’s much to do and no time to do it, so you toil away. It sounds harsh, but the concept of accomplishing tasks to unlock new tasks forms the basis of RPGs in general. People like filling bars.
The issue is that the game is soulless, for lack of a better word. Interaction with the townsfolk is kept to a minimum, NPCs repeat the same dialogue day after day, town festivals are nothing but boring minigames, and time passes without giving the player anything to reflect about. I knew I had to drop the game when I finished the first year and was greeted with nothing but the same waking-up animation that introduced every other day. There was no indication that a year had passed, no opportunity to talk with the locals at New Years’ festival and reminisce about your experiences. You got some free flour, I think, but that’s it.
In other words, Harvest Moon follows more in the tradition of RPGs than simulation games and dating sims. This was probably intentional but I’m disappointed nonetheless. I can see why some people would want to play a “collect-’em-all” Pokemon or Animal Crossing style RPG with a fresh coat of paint but this comes at the loss of great potential. The franchise could be interesting if it stressed its simulation aspects, creating dialogue branches and an affection system that requires more than daily gifts, but at present it’s no different from any other game about leveling up to buy a new sword which you’ll use to kill enemies and level up again.