Finally a good harvest moon?

[Alonso7770]

Is it good? How good is it comparing it with stardew valley?

[archonsod]

For Harvest Moon yes. Compared to Stardew Valley? I'd put it on about a par, but I'm not a huge fan of Stardew to begin with.

[Revolver]

Originally posted by archonsod:

For Harvest Moon yes. Compared to Stardew Valley? I'd put it on about a par, but I'm not a huge fan of Stardew to begin with.

I am glad Im not the only one who feels that way about stardew lol

[Rambone]

It's good, very good. The game could use some further quality of life updates from the developer to aid with better traversal of the land. One such update would be to allow us to vault over fences and slide down hills, as for now, or at least where I am at in the game, there is no way to scale up/down hills, even very very small bumps, so some hills can become a maze as you are blocked/prevented from going over edges. Having a horse helps a lot to navigate some of the more maze like ones. It's not a deal breaker or anything but I'm spoiled as hell from playing games like Zelda. I suspect based on the location of some harvest sprites that seem to be in the middle of a pond or isolated that the developer probably intends for some kind of advanced traversal later in the game, I just haven't gotten to that point yet.

The other thing I noticed is that there are no seasonal events in the game. Maybe its something I'm failing to unlock but it feels like the only events in this game that you unlock or see are with personal character milestones with NPC's you talk to. Talking to NPC's is about what you would expect from any Story of Seasons game, usually they only have a single line of dialog they like to say and repeat. So no festivals, no contests, no sense of community or reason to invest a whole lot in any of these towns beyond what the game asks of you.

This game simply does not have the charm or personality (or content) of Stardew, but it is clear that Harvest Moon tries to do a fresh take on the original formula of the game, what it does do is feeling fresh and I give it a thumbs up, I'm hooked.

[VR]

My largest complaint is that we can't jump up and down ledges. That's it. The rest of the gameplay loop for crops, animals, upgrades etc is extremely solid. It's not quite as fat on the individual character content as Stardew, but there's so much stuff to do that it's not that much of a problem.

[Alurith]

There are festivals. Just gotta unlock them.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Rambone:

Maybe its something I'm failing to unlock

It is. Finish the tutorial for Lectenbury (repair the inn, open the flower shop, repair the barn; not sure if you have to have a specific star level beyond that or not) and speak to the flower shop guy - he should give you a quest to unlock the flower festival (occurs 15 Spring IIRC). I'd assume the other festivals are the same - basically the final quest of the town's storyline.

[The_K00lDude]

Originally posted by Rambone:

It's good, very good. The game could use some further quality of life updates from the developer to aid with better traversal of the land. One such update would be to allow us to vault over fences and slide down hills, as for now, or at least where I am at in the game, there is no way to scale up/down hills, even very very small bumps, so some hills can become a maze as you are blocked/prevented from going over edges. Having a horse helps a lot to navigate some of the more maze like ones. It's not a deal breaker or anything but I'm spoiled as hell from playing games like Zelda. I suspect based on the location of some harvest sprites that seem to be in the middle of a pond or isolated that the developer probably intends for some kind of advanced traversal later in the game, I just haven't gotten to that point yet.

The other thing I noticed is that there are no seasonal events in the game. Maybe its something I'm failing to unlock but it feels like the only events in this game that you unlock or see are with personal character milestones with NPC's you talk to. Talking to NPC's is about what you would expect from any Story of Seasons game, usually they only have a single line of dialog they like to say and repeat. So no festivals, no contests, no sense of community or reason to invest a whole lot in any of these towns beyond what the game asks of you.

This game simply does not have the charm or personality (or content) of Stardew, but it is clear that Harvest Moon tries to do a fresh take on the original formula of the game, what it does do is feeling fresh and I give it a thumbs up, I'm hooked.

you unlock festivals through some side quest's. I'm currently working on unlocking the flower festival! you get the quest from the flower shop owner in the first town :). I think it is something you can easily miss if your not actively using the towns services.

on traversal, I can't say that there's a jump yet. but I have noticed sprites that are locked onto an island in the middle of water. so my guess is that we get something to get tho those areas later? so ease of traversal of the land could just be locked behind progression.

[Bluegrass74]

Originally posted by VR:

My largest complaint is that we can't jump up and down ledges. That's it. The rest of the gameplay loop for crops, animals, upgrades etc is extremely solid. It's not quite as fat on the individual character content as Stardew, but there's so much stuff to do that it's not that much of a problem.

Agreed. I'm no programmer but there has to be some way to get a middle ground between "I can scale the Cliffs of Insanity using only my arms carrying 3 people" and "A 4-inch ledge completely stymies my forward progress towards that apple tree."

[Wolf]

Not being able to jump fences, climb up or down hills and daytime goes by so quickly

[Steve]

Originally posted by Bluegrass74:

Originally posted by VR:

My largest complaint is that we can't jump up and down ledges. That's it. The rest of the gameplay loop for crops, animals, upgrades etc is extremely solid. It's not quite as fat on the individual character content as Stardew, but there's so much stuff to do that it's not that much of a problem.

Agreed. I'm no programmer but there has to be some way to get a middle ground between "I can scale the Cliffs of Insanity using only my arms carrying 3 people" and "A 4-inch ledge completely stymies my forward progress towards that apple tree."

^^ This

[rebecca]

I hesitated to buy it because of the price point and because IMO One World was frankly bad. Just from a couple hours of play already can tell this is FAR better. Very cute game, fun to play, huge map it looks like, nice characters, beautiful music. They clearly cribbed a bunch off the last two Zelda games but it works well!

(I'm playing on Xbox so won't show in my games)

[Coffee Addict]

Originally posted by Alonso7770:

How good is it comparing it with stardew valley?

i doubt harvest moon or SoS will ever come close to stardew it set the standards very high and it only costs a fraction of these games

[Alonso7770]

I agree Niki, specially with the endless updates

[Rambone]

Originally posted by The_K00lDude:

Originally posted by Rambone:

It's good, very good. The game could use some further quality of life updates from the developer to aid with better traversal of the land. One such update would be to allow us to vault over fences and slide down hills, as for now, or at least where I am at in the game, there is no way to scale up/down hills, even very very small bumps, so some hills can become a maze as you are blocked/prevented from going over edges. Having a horse helps a lot to navigate some of the more maze like ones. It's not a deal breaker or anything but I'm spoiled as hell from playing games like Zelda. I suspect based on the location of some harvest sprites that seem to be in the middle of a pond or isolated that the developer probably intends for some kind of advanced traversal later in the game, I just haven't gotten to that point yet.

The other thing I noticed is that there are no seasonal events in the game. Maybe its something I'm failing to unlock but it feels like the only events in this game that you unlock or see are with personal character milestones with NPC's you talk to. Talking to NPC's is about what you would expect from any Story of Seasons game, usually they only have a single line of dialog they like to say and repeat. So no festivals, no contests, no sense of community or reason to invest a whole lot in any of these towns beyond what the game asks of you.

This game simply does not have the charm or personality (or content) of Stardew, but it is clear that Harvest Moon tries to do a fresh take on the original formula of the game, what it does do is feeling fresh and I give it a thumbs up, I'm hooked.

you unlock festivals through some side quest's. I'm currently working on unlocking the flower festival! you get the quest from the flower shop owner in the first town :). I think it is something you can easily miss if your not actively using the towns services.

on traversal, I can't say that there's a jump yet. but I have noticed sprites that are locked onto an island in the middle of water. so my guess is that we get something to get tho those areas later? so ease of traversal of the land could just be locked behind progression.

I'm thinking you are right, each town has their own big festival. I still haven't seen any way to jump down hills or get to these seemingly out of reach places, but I'm seeing more and more that are obviously out of reach but it clearly looks like you are supposed to be able to reach them at some point. I'm definitely thinking later on Doc JR will probably have an invention to help out (jet pack? lol).

[koinzell]

personally this game is underwhelming.

what's with them trying to jump on this outdated open world idea? it looks so big & empty.