Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility Wii Review
If you loved all the rest, this is a must have. If you never have played before but like sim type games you should defiantly check it out. In this version you move to an island that was once thriving with life but is no more. Your job is to bring it back to the beauty it once held by saving the Harvest Goddess. You start off sailing to the island, but rocky waters cause you to pass out after answering a few questions from the captain containing your name and the likes. You awake in the inn meeting a cast of characters and the mayor who gives you a tour. There is a beginning tutorial on a local farm to help you learn the ropes and then you get to choose one of three locations to be your farm. Later in the game you can buy the other locations if you like plus a new one.
In this version you do not start off with any animals like past versions. Just a plot of land and some seeds from the farm you helped. A hint I can give is that one bag of seeds fills 6 spaces, something I didn’t know which cost me a bit more in seeds. Starting off you will farm the land and do part time jobsfor people. Meeting more and more people will help you along by giving you tools to help farm and gather items. As you go on you can buy upgrades to your home and buildings for the animals.
This version allows you to choose the gender of your character, which if I’m not mistaken is only the second game to do so, the other being Island of Happiness for the DS. By choosing your Gender it affects who you will marry. Obviously if you are a girl you marry a good choice of guys and if you are a boy you have a good choice of girls to marry. Sorry no same sex couples. IMPORTANT: you must be warned. I haven’t experienced this, but there is a glitch if you decided to court Calvin. After you get 5 stars with him there is a cut scene to be initiated on the 10th floor of the mines. It freezes your game. If you are a girl, don’t bring him up to that 5th star.
But don’t forget to help the Goddess, which you have periodical dreams about. By helping her you get access to new places on the map. The map is huge this time which then brings in loading screens, which to say there is a lot. It slows down game play, but is the only drawback I’ve seen so far besides the glitch, which again I haven’t experienced. It is a hassle because whenever you journey to a new part of the map or go indoors it appears. You do this a lot. Also by helping the Goddess via her elves you unlock new people who come to visit the island. The Taylor being the first.
This game is full of game play and well worth the asking price. So far I’ve played for about 15 hours and am a third of my way through fall of the first year. Though some of that time is for the loading screens. Which you start off in spring and each season has 28 days. There is no limit of years to play, or none that I’ve heard of, so you can take it at your own pace.
So glitches and loading times aside I give this game 4 out of 5 yoshies.