ATTENTION: THIS IS NOT HARVEST MOON (please read)

[Purrz]

Too many people do not know this and I hate seeing people get nostalgia baited by shady/scummy business practices. This is quite literally NOT the Harvest Moon you grew up on.

About 10-11 years ago, Marvelous (the Japanese developers of Harvest Moon) cut business ties with their localization company (Natsume). However, Natsume CONTINUED to develop and manufacture games using the "Harvest Moon" name. I am not entirely sure why this is, I think it may have to do with legal loopholes with how the title was translated over from its original Japanese name (Bokujou Monogatari "Story of Seasons").

Marvelous has continued to develop the "Harvest Moon" games we know as "Story of Seasons" in English localizations.

All "Harvest Moon" games made after Harvest Moon: A New Beginning are developed by Natsume, and the reviews reflect this; most are critical failures garnering a lot of negative reviews.

Of course, personal opinions about whether or not the games manufactured by Natsume are good or not are subjective matters and Im not here to argue with anyone who enjoys them. One thing is for certain, Natsume is a very scummy company that tricks people into thinking they are playing an original Harvest Moon game, when in fact they are not. They abused legal loopholes in order to develop a game that doesn't even belong to them.

[ingosupercute]

Ah, so that's how it is. Thank you for posting this. I was about to open an own topic asking if this was the real Harvest Moon because I had never seen Nintendo games make it to Steam before and was really confused.

[Purrz]

Originally posted by ingosupercute:

Ah, so that's how it is. Thank you for posting this. I was about to open an own topic asking if this was the real Harvest Moon because I had never seen Nintendo games make it to Steam before and was really confused.

Well tbf either company could get their games to pc because they arent Nintendo licensed exclusives

[Metr0]

Natsume is scummy? Marvelous is the one that wrote them off and natsume is the scummy one lol ok. just because they were legally allowed to keep the harvest moon name is not scummy thinking so makes zero sense what so ever. it is not their fault that nobody did their research and knew the difference between story of seasons and harvest moon nor was it their obligation to educate people on that fact. god i hate how silly this community is man if anything their past titles were most likely review bombed by angry *fans* that are clueless. Natsume if anything is a victim of ignorance here. game looks amazing and ill be supporting them.

[Schutzengel]

Well ... people dont touch stuff named Harvest Moon for good reasons. Theyd be better off using a new name; "Harvest Moon" is sullied.

I disagree that this game isnt Harvest Moon. Its precisely what Harvest Moon is about, meaning everything bad a farming game can be.

[littlemelphina]

The first Story of Seasons was really good on DS , So I dont know how this one will be .I hope it is decent or good .

[Metr0]

Originally posted by Schutzengel:

Well ... people dont touch stuff named Harvest Moon for good reasons. Theyd be better off using a new name; "Harvest Moon" is sullied.

I disagree that this game isnt Harvest Moon. Its precisely what Harvest Moon is about, meaning everything bad a farming game can be.

you are either a troll or have no idea dude

[Waifu4Life]

Originally posted by θραύση:

Natsume is scummy? Marvelous is the one that wrote them off and natsume is the scummy one lol ok. just because they were legally allowed to keep the harvest moon name is not scummy thinking so makes zero sense what so ever. it is not their fault that nobody did their research and knew the difference between story of seasons and harvest moon nor was it their obligation to educate people on that fact. god i hate how silly this community is man if anything their past titles were most likely review bombed by angry *fans* that are clueless. Natsume if anything is a victim of ignorance here. game looks amazing and ill be supporting them.

Damn right! My favorite one is the Marvelous/Xseed fanboys who keep dunking on NISA because they're now the ones translating and publishing the Falcom RPG games, not knowing that it was Marvelous' deal with Tencent (who purchased 20% of their stock) that made Falcom cut ties with them in the first place.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Purrz:

I am not entirely sure why this is, I think it may have to do with legal loopholes

As pretty much every publisher does they trademarked the Harvest Moon name when they translated the first game. As a result, the Harvest Moon name belongs to them.

All "Harvest Moon" games made after Harvest Moon: A New Beginning are developed by Natsume, and the reviews reflect this; most are critical failures garnering a lot of negative reviews.

Story of Seasons tends to focus a bit more on the farm / life sim area while Harvest Moon tends to focus a bit more on storyline. As a result, Story of Seasons kind of sucks because it's largely aimless and tends to become repetitive after a while, unless hugging cows is your thing. Harvest Moon has the opposite problem in that you usually have a story which will insist on getting in the way of actually farming. Both keep trying and failing to innovate on their core gameplay (recently by leaning towards Rune Factory or Stardew Valley, which let's be honest are far better spin offs than HM or SoS these days).

One thing is for certain, Natsume is a very scummy company that tricks people into thinking they are playing an original Harvest Moon game, when in fact they are not. They abused legal loopholes in order to develop a game that doesn't even belong to them.

That's like saying EA are abusing legal loopholes and tricking people because they had Visceral work on The Sims instead of Maxis.

[JohnCordent]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Originally posted by Purrz:

All "Harvest Moon" games made after Harvest Moon: A New Beginning are developed by Natsume, and the reviews reflect this; most are critical failures garnering a lot of negative reviews.

Story of Seasons tends to focus a bit more on the farm / life sim area while Harvest Moon tends to focus a bit more on storyline. As a result, Story of Seasons kind of sucks because it's largely aimless and tends to become repetitive after a while, unless hugging cows is your thing. Harvest Moon has the opposite problem in that you usually have a story which will insist on getting in the way of actually farming. Both keep trying and failing to innovate on their core gameplay (recently by leaning towards Rune Factory or Stardew Valley, which let's be honest are far better spin offs than HM or SoS these days).

Have you ever played the Harvest Moon games after the breakup? They are software rubbish that has been carelessly slapped together in terms of gameplay, story and technology.

Story of Season tried to take inspiration from Stardew Valley and the end product was Pioneers of Olive Town. One of the weakest entries in the series. Story of Seasons should keep the old gameplay and increase the difficulty.

Stardew Valley is a great game (especially thanks to modding) but is more comparable to Rune Factory (Fantasy Story of Seasons).

[Purrz]

Originally posted by θραύση:

Natsume is scummy? Marvelous is the one that wrote them off and natsume is the scummy one lol ok. just because they were legally allowed to keep the harvest moon name is not scummy thinking so makes zero sense what so ever. it is not their fault that nobody did their research and knew the difference between story of seasons and harvest moon nor was it their obligation to educate people on that fact. god i hate how silly this community is man if anything their past titles were most likely review bombed by angry *fans* that are clueless. Natsume if anything is a victim of ignorance here. game looks amazing and ill be supporting them.

Review bombed by angry fans that were clueless? Have you SEEN Harvest Moon One World? That game is a souless sin upon humanity. And yes, I do consider it scummy that Natsume knowingly used the Harvest Moon name into tricking fans that haven't played the series in a while. Also, just because something is legally allowed doesnt mean its right. You should look into information about it beyond this thread, because it explains it much better than I can. There is plenty of information that suggests Natsume knew what they were doing.

[Purrz]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Originally posted by Purrz:

I am not entirely sure why this is, I think it may have to do with legal loopholes

As pretty much every publisher does they trademarked the Harvest Moon name when they translated the first game. As a result, the Harvest Moon name belongs to them.

All "Harvest Moon" games made after Harvest Moon: A New Beginning are developed by Natsume, and the reviews reflect this; most are critical failures garnering a lot of negative reviews.

Story of Seasons tends to focus a bit more on the farm / life sim area while Harvest Moon tends to focus a bit more on storyline. As a result, Story of Seasons kind of sucks because it's largely aimless and tends to become repetitive after a while, unless hugging cows is your thing. Harvest Moon has the opposite problem in that you usually have a story which will insist on getting in the way of actually farming. Both keep trying and failing to innovate on their core gameplay (recently by leaning towards Rune Factory or Stardew Valley, which let's be honest are far better spin offs than HM or SoS these days).

One thing is for certain, Natsume is a very scummy company that tricks people into thinking they are playing an original Harvest Moon game, when in fact they are not. They abused legal loopholes in order to develop a game that doesn't even belong to them.

That's like saying EA are abusing legal loopholes and tricking people because they had Visceral work on The Sims instead of Maxis.

I do not know about this EA thing, as I stated to another commentor there is plenty of information that suggests Natsume knew exactly what they were doing in regards to tricking folks who have not played the series in a long time into playing their dumpster fire of titles. Many other long time fans I have spoken with know as well.

[Delight]

Originally posted by Purrz:

Originally posted by archonsod:

As pretty much every publisher does they trademarked the Harvest Moon name when they translated the first game. As a result, the Harvest Moon name belongs to them.

Story of Seasons tends to focus a bit more on the farm / life sim area while Harvest Moon tends to focus a bit more on storyline. As a result, Story of Seasons kind of sucks because it's largely aimless and tends to become repetitive after a while, unless hugging cows is your thing. Harvest Moon has the opposite problem in that you usually have a story which will insist on getting in the way of actually farming. Both keep trying and failing to innovate on their core gameplay (recently by leaning towards Rune Factory or Stardew Valley, which let's be honest are far better spin offs than HM or SoS these days).

That's like saying EA are abusing legal loopholes and tricking people because they had Visceral work on The Sims instead of Maxis.

I do not know about this EA thing, as I stated to another commentor there is plenty of information that suggests Natsume knew exactly what they were doing in regards to tricking folks who have not played the series in a long time into playing their dumpster fire of titles. Many other long time fans I have spoken with know as well.

"Tricking people into playing their games..." bait from OP. and I'm falling for it. Natsume OWNS harvest moon end of story. There is no shady practicing going on bc they OWN the freakin' title. they are still making games. They may not be good games in your opinion, but that's a YOU issue. Do you even listen to yourself? They have no obligation to say 'we just aren't the same guys since we made the split' NO! hilarious, bait and troll.

[Anfia /s]

If you say Natsume is scummy, sorry to say but the truth IS NOT.
Instead, Marvelous is the entire mastermind circus clown for these fiasco regardless Natsume output is 🤡. Well played clown.
Those happen after the TRUE CREATOR move out from Victor Inc. (now Marvelous) after Animal Parade done (several moment before the split happen on 2014). The credits list on the games itself is already a kinda solid proof enough what the fiasco is.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/585900/discussions/0/1694922345929389214/

If Natsume is scummy IN YOUR EYES and your illiterate gamer, then why Marvelous decide to split after the true creator move out after Animal Parade several years later? or why didn't sue it? or alternative, not absorb it?

How many times Marvelous fanboys and illiterate gamer still blinded with those misinformation for about 10 years IN A ROW 🤣
Heck even Story of Season also having stagnant quality and didn't evolve enough. They just remaking the old game and make the new game with the same graphic style and barely minimum graphic improvement over and over again. The RF also same except RF5 with minimum effort with it.

[Reven]

Marvelous are not scummy because they kept the series going after Wada left. That would mean Square is scummy for continuing Final Fantasy since Sakaguchi is gone, or Nintendo continuing Zelda even though Miyamoto hasn't led a dev team for that in years. Just because an original creator left doesn't mean the series can't continue, if that were the case the entire comic book industry would be different (though who knows, might be better since new characters would need to be created more often...)

I don't consider Natsume scummy for continuing to make games with the "Harvest Moon" title. In fact I think it's great overall, as the title is catchy and I don't want so see it fade away completely. I just want to see Natsume make a GOOD Harvest Moon game. So far they haven't been able to do that. The best post-split Harvest Moon game is still worse than the worst Story of Seasons game in my opinion, and that says something. I really do hope that Natsume is able to get the right team setup to make Harvest Moon a good series again, I think they do have the potential for it, they just need to put more effort into it.

Honestly the fact that Winds of Anthos is not only a thing but dropping on PC later TODAY as I type this, having never even heard about it anywhere, makes me wonder on it, as I have Stardew Valley, and regularly look at the Farming game genre, so only NOW it pops up in my recommended list? I don't hide the Harvest Moon titles, I've actually visited the steam page of each one that came out. Yet since it was revealed apparently in March, I've never even heard of it until just now. That could just be a problem with Steam's marketing code, but I've never seen anything elsewhere about it either, so it kind of feels like Natsume has done nothing to advertise this.

For me the only thing I'd even possibly CONSIDER scummy when it comes to the situation of the Marvelous/Natsume split is back when it first happened, and Lost Valley was coming out (and a few games after that, but word spread fast so it wasn't as effective), Natsume did nothing to make it clear that Lost Valley wasn't made by the original bokujou team (You had to dig into blogs to learn). Which honestly to me feels odd, like was Natsume really that proud of Lost Valley? If I was, the fact it was the first Harvest Moon game developed entirely by Natsume would be a big selling point in my marketing. "The first original spin on the beloved series, developed entirely by Natsume for the first time!" or something like that. Instead they just rode on the legacy of the series with being "the latest installment of Harvest Moon you've enjoyed for 15 years!" Now that statement isn't -technically- wrong, but it was a lie by omission that it wasn't from the same team as the games that came before it.

I'm not mad at Natsume, I'm just disappointed, I want to see them do better, and I know they can if they really tried. And the new, non-remake Story of Seasons games need to do be better also, so Marvelous has room to improve as well.

[2d0x]

Originally posted by Reven:

...I don't consider Natsume scummy for continuing to make games with the "Harvest Moon" title...

Nobody would talk bad about them if they made GOOD games with the "Harvest Moon" title.