I babble about Harvest Moon
So, I got two Harvest Moon games the other day! One is Animal Parade, and I keep redoing the beginning day because I'm a moron. Also I will be marrying Chase because he is cute.
However I'm at the end of my first Spring in my other game, A New Beginning on the 3DS, and so I shall rant about it!
Okay firstly this game is SO MUCH EASIER than Tale of Two Towns. Oh my god, so much. It keeps a lot of the same game mechanics - star quality, bug catching and jumping, etc. - but it has made them infinitely easier. It's also very fun to play, so I fully recommend it, but if you were looking for something more challenging than Two Towns you won't be getting it. Still, if you have a 3DS, you won't go wrong buying it.
The first easy step is that there is no freshness system, thank you god. You can keep that damn potato in your rucksack for five years and it will be as fresh as the day it was picked. Which seems cheap and not as realistic compared to Two Towns, but it's also infinitely easier and less frustrating. So much of my rage with that game was because I could never get the fresh ingredients or gifts I needed on time. It was ARRRGHBLIBBLE levels of frustrating to have your cooking ingredients rot right out of your storage in the early game before you could get any permanent storage. This also means that I can stock up on gifts for the rest of the year for the townspeople and my victim Intended Spouse without having to forage/buy/make new ones every seven days or less.
Second, the Star rating system is back, but it is much more reasonable this time. For one, it's only on producible items, like flowers and crops and shit. In Two Towns fucking weeds had a Star ranking and that was just stupid (especially stupid since the request system would up the star requirements for their requests each year and why do you need 5-star weeds Ayame, really.) It's still kind of frustrating raising crop stars with the one fertilizer a day thing, but since you don't have to worry about freshness you can just keep your carefully-raised crops until you do have the Seed Maker, which is a plus.
The third thing making this easier is that the fucking bug catching is just "run up to bug and press A". No more bugs flying off from trees, no more butterflies flapping off in two seconds when approached, no more jumping around like a moronic spaz trying to catch them. Sure, less realistic, but I am five years into Two Towns and I haven't caught one of the more rare butterflies. Fuckers just flap off as soon as I look at them. So, that's easy and I've gotten my "Super Catcher" title already, ahaha.
Money is also mildly easier, mostly because bugs reappear in the foraging area so you can ship a steady stream of them all day long. I'm loosing money right now but that's because I need a fuckton of copper and iron from Rebecca to build shit ahaha. So much copper. Money is also easier in the sense that cows are extremely easy to keep fed. Grass grows back like every day I swear, and it takes five cows to eat one piece of grass in one day, so my field of 8 grass is like over-powered. Of course you can have a lot more cows in this game (apparently like up to 100 how the fuck would anyone take care of 100 cows!?) so easier fodder is a good choice.
The last "OMG YES" is that indoor shops do not close when it is rainy. Neil closes because his shop is outside and that makes sense, and the people safe indoors keep selling because that also makes sense, unlike Two Towns strange dimension warp where Cam stood out in the rain and sold his flowers like a boss but the indoor shops immediately locked up all their wares if the forecast happened to be overcast all day as if they're afraid you'd drip on them. More proof that it was maybe a programming error and it was supposed to be the opposite, but that is a pretty big error and I don't want to know who let it pass. Jesus, that was fucking incomprehensible.
"Save Anywhere" is also back, yay! Sure, I save right before I go to bed out of habit, lol, but it's nice to have the option.
Not that A New Beginning is without flaws, of course. For one, your stamina meter is...bad. Just....bad. It's trying to encourage you to cook, yeah, I get that, but...I shouldn't be halfway out of stamina just from WATERING MY CROPS IN THE MORNING. Thankfully cooking is easier this runthrough, in Two Towns it was like pulling teeth, but this is actually pretty easy. Mostly due to the forever fresh thing meaning I always have ingredients, but also because a lot of the recipes were simplified and you don't seem to have to buy things to upgrade your kitchen except the recipes themselves. Herb Soup is now just "an herb" and not "chamomile + onion in a pot". So much easier!
Another thing is that the villagers fucking teleport. At least in Two Towns they had to walk to where they were going. No, here you change screens and suddenly your intended gift recipient is up the fucking mountain. Really? What the fuck?
Also, Neil, I love you and my character is going to marry you since you are the cute tsundere animal keeper that actually has a fashion sense in this game so you're not dressed in those fucking overalls and hat because I Ldespise overalls (although your semi-hard-rocker outfit is a little impractical for a rancher), but really, I know your shop opens at 10 am. I know. You told me. All the shops open at 10 am so far. I do not need a minute-long cutscene every day when you're opening and closing if I happen to be in town from 10:00 to 10:10 or 6:00 to 6:10. That is the most annoying thing ever.
Also related to Neil - why does going to a field with my cows and standing there staring at said cows or at Neil make me so tired as to immediately go to bed when I go back? What the hell. Although at least Neil puts my cows in my barn when we go back, so that makes it almost worth it to go every day I can so I don't have to waste time pushing my cows back into the barn, because I swear my cows bathe in butter every morning because my character will NOT stand behind a cow and push it straight no matter what I do, she always slowly glides off one side or the other like a cow is a fucking slip'n'slide and it just makes pushing these cows a phenomenal pain in the ass. I can't wait until I have enough copper to make the fucking animal bell so I don't have to push these motherfuckers anymore.
Lastly - GET OUT OF MY WAY MOTHERFUCKING PINE SAPLINGS OH MY GOD.
In short - if you have a 3DS, buy A New Beginning! It's really enjoyable!
However I'm at the end of my first Spring in my other game, A New Beginning on the 3DS, and so I shall rant about it!
Okay firstly this game is SO MUCH EASIER than Tale of Two Towns. Oh my god, so much. It keeps a lot of the same game mechanics - star quality, bug catching and jumping, etc. - but it has made them infinitely easier. It's also very fun to play, so I fully recommend it, but if you were looking for something more challenging than Two Towns you won't be getting it. Still, if you have a 3DS, you won't go wrong buying it.
The first easy step is that there is no freshness system, thank you god. You can keep that damn potato in your rucksack for five years and it will be as fresh as the day it was picked. Which seems cheap and not as realistic compared to Two Towns, but it's also infinitely easier and less frustrating. So much of my rage with that game was because I could never get the fresh ingredients or gifts I needed on time. It was ARRRGHBLIBBLE levels of frustrating to have your cooking ingredients rot right out of your storage in the early game before you could get any permanent storage. This also means that I can stock up on gifts for the rest of the year for the townspeople and my victim Intended Spouse without having to forage/buy/make new ones every seven days or less.
Second, the Star rating system is back, but it is much more reasonable this time. For one, it's only on producible items, like flowers and crops and shit. In Two Towns fucking weeds had a Star ranking and that was just stupid (especially stupid since the request system would up the star requirements for their requests each year and why do you need 5-star weeds Ayame, really.) It's still kind of frustrating raising crop stars with the one fertilizer a day thing, but since you don't have to worry about freshness you can just keep your carefully-raised crops until you do have the Seed Maker, which is a plus.
The third thing making this easier is that the fucking bug catching is just "run up to bug and press A". No more bugs flying off from trees, no more butterflies flapping off in two seconds when approached, no more jumping around like a moronic spaz trying to catch them. Sure, less realistic, but I am five years into Two Towns and I haven't caught one of the more rare butterflies. Fuckers just flap off as soon as I look at them. So, that's easy and I've gotten my "Super Catcher" title already, ahaha.
Money is also mildly easier, mostly because bugs reappear in the foraging area so you can ship a steady stream of them all day long. I'm loosing money right now but that's because I need a fuckton of copper and iron from Rebecca to build shit ahaha. So much copper. Money is also easier in the sense that cows are extremely easy to keep fed. Grass grows back like every day I swear, and it takes five cows to eat one piece of grass in one day, so my field of 8 grass is like over-powered. Of course you can have a lot more cows in this game (apparently like up to 100 how the fuck would anyone take care of 100 cows!?) so easier fodder is a good choice.
The last "OMG YES" is that indoor shops do not close when it is rainy. Neil closes because his shop is outside and that makes sense, and the people safe indoors keep selling because that also makes sense, unlike Two Towns strange dimension warp where Cam stood out in the rain and sold his flowers like a boss but the indoor shops immediately locked up all their wares if the forecast happened to be overcast all day as if they're afraid you'd drip on them. More proof that it was maybe a programming error and it was supposed to be the opposite, but that is a pretty big error and I don't want to know who let it pass. Jesus, that was fucking incomprehensible.
"Save Anywhere" is also back, yay! Sure, I save right before I go to bed out of habit, lol, but it's nice to have the option.
Not that A New Beginning is without flaws, of course. For one, your stamina meter is...bad. Just....bad. It's trying to encourage you to cook, yeah, I get that, but...I shouldn't be halfway out of stamina just from WATERING MY CROPS IN THE MORNING. Thankfully cooking is easier this runthrough, in Two Towns it was like pulling teeth, but this is actually pretty easy. Mostly due to the forever fresh thing meaning I always have ingredients, but also because a lot of the recipes were simplified and you don't seem to have to buy things to upgrade your kitchen except the recipes themselves. Herb Soup is now just "an herb" and not "chamomile + onion in a pot". So much easier!
Another thing is that the villagers fucking teleport. At least in Two Towns they had to walk to where they were going. No, here you change screens and suddenly your intended gift recipient is up the fucking mountain. Really? What the fuck?
Also, Neil, I love you and my character is going to marry you since you are the cute tsundere animal keeper that actually has a fashion sense in this game so you're not dressed in those fucking overalls and hat because I Ldespise overalls (although your semi-hard-rocker outfit is a little impractical for a rancher), but really, I know your shop opens at 10 am. I know. You told me. All the shops open at 10 am so far. I do not need a minute-long cutscene every day when you're opening and closing if I happen to be in town from 10:00 to 10:10 or 6:00 to 6:10. That is the most annoying thing ever.
Also related to Neil - why does going to a field with my cows and standing there staring at said cows or at Neil make me so tired as to immediately go to bed when I go back? What the hell. Although at least Neil puts my cows in my barn when we go back, so that makes it almost worth it to go every day I can so I don't have to waste time pushing my cows back into the barn, because I swear my cows bathe in butter every morning because my character will NOT stand behind a cow and push it straight no matter what I do, she always slowly glides off one side or the other like a cow is a fucking slip'n'slide and it just makes pushing these cows a phenomenal pain in the ass. I can't wait until I have enough copper to make the fucking animal bell so I don't have to push these motherfuckers anymore.
Lastly - GET OUT OF MY WAY MOTHERFUCKING PINE SAPLINGS OH MY GOD.
In short - if you have a 3DS, buy A New Beginning! It's really enjoyable!