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ranchstoryblog · 7 days

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Ranch Story Community Q&A Volume 3: Igusa Matsuyama Returns!

Igusa Matsuyama, the legendary artist behind the Story of Seasons series since the original 1996 game has once again agreed to a Q&A featuring questions from fans from around the world! A big thank you to all the members of the community who helped make this possible.

Some aspects of the text have been altered to match localization people are familiar with. (Japanese names to English names, for example: Bokujou Monogatari (牧場物語) was formerly localized as Harvest Moon and is now localized as Story of Seasons, etc). Images were not part of the original text and have been added as a visual aid. Though we translated as many questions as we could, we did not include questions involving personal information or regarding unannounced releases. Please understand.

If you would like to read our original correspondence (in Japanese), that will be provided in a separate post.

Additional cosplay photo provided by Foxface from our community Discord.

Translations: @artycharmy (correspondence, outline) Editing and Clean-up: Jerome, @artycharmy, and @regularcelery

——— Anonymous asks: What is the relationship between Jamie and the Harvest Goddess?

Igusa Matsuyama: Jamie was treated as a fairy or spirit. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if there's any points that link them and the Goddess.

Editor's note: the term Matsuyama uses is "妖精."

Tomato asks: I would like to ask about what their inspiration was for the outfits designs in the original release of harvest moon another wonderful life. Since I got reminded of the girl clothing brand Mezzo Piano when looking at the I love Kuma/I love bears outfit.

Igusa Matsuyama: I remember the only thing I thought of was using Spring-like colours! (All designs were made with seasonal colours In mind) When I knew that Daachan, who was planned to be used in a lot of events, wouldn't actually play a big role in the game, I put him on the T-Shirt so he could at least get some attention as a mascot-like existence.

Pansy asks: If you were able to create your own game for the Story of Seasons franchise, with no rules or limitations whatsoever, what do you think it might look like?

Igusa Mastuyama: Since I love dogs, I'd like to try making a Story of Seasons that's set in a world just full of dogs. Though that dream of mine probably won't come true.

Anonymous asks: The look of Story of Seasons has changed a lot over the years! What would you say is more challenging to create - simple designs, where you have to work with very little space, or complicated designs, where you have to consider many little details?

Igusa Matsuyama: A long time ago there were a lot of things you weren't able to replicate in video games. There were constraints for things like the number of colours and patterns for hair styles and clothes. It was difficult to work around those constraints, but at the same time a lot of fun. Nowadays, it's the complete opposite. Now we can design anything with hardly any constraints. And unlike a long time ago, now I'm asked to make more complicated designs, like patterns and decorations. However, if it's a big request, sometimes I run into quite a lot of trouble when designing. They each have had their own difficulties.

Anonymous asks: Hello, Matsuyama! Thank you for bringing the worlds of Bokujou Monogatari to life for many years. Your art has had a huge influence on me!

One of my favorite candidates is “Rock” from “A Wonderful Life.” I’d love to know any particular influences for his character design from 21 years ago, and his new design for the remake.

Igusa Matsuyama: I was told that he was a young, wannabe playboy, so I somehow ended up with that sort of design. For the remake, I made his clothes a little looser without changing his design, so he'd look even more playful. I, too, wanted to avoid changing him as much as I could as there are other people among the staff that also like the original for his “Rockness”. So, he got that makeover after everybody shared and checked their opinions with each other.

Jerome asks: On page 130 of the "Special Comic" manga there's artwork of Super Famicom characters that have never been printed anywhere else. Do you or Marvelous still have these? It would be great to see them in more detail in the future some time.

Igusa Matsuyama: They're all characters that appeared in the SNES version of "Harvest Moon." Nina's parents, Ellen's mother, Ann's father, Maria's parents (The mayor couple). I'm sorry. My SNES illustrations have gone missing...

Raven Bloom, Ryan, and Moth ask: How did you feel when your designs for the men in A Wonderful Life were repurposed to be bachelors? What do you think of the changes made to the bachelors in the remake of A Wonderful Life? I miss the “Bruce Campbell” look Matthew used to have.

Igusa Matsuyama: Matthew (マシュー) is Masshu (マッシュ) in the Japanese A Wonderful Life (Editors note: Charmy made a careless mistake when translating the questions, sorry Matsuyama san 🫣) When I first heard this name, the first thing that came to mind was Evil Dead's protagonist, Ash. You're right. I designed him after Bruce Campbell. I still love Bruce Campbell today. When Wonderful Life was under production, I had heard they weren't going to make a girl version, so I designed him not as a love interest, but as a quirky character. Knowing that he'd appear in the remake as a marriage candidate, I redesigned him as a character that would be liked by many. I hope you can enjoy the game for its nostalgia, as well as for being a shiny, brand new release.

Salmon Axe and Anonymous ask: I personally adore Doraemon x SOS game. Are you interested in working directly with or collaborating with other franchises in the future? And is there a series outside Story of Seasons you would like to work with now as a guest artist? (Could it be Pokemon?)

Igusa Matsuyama: I've loved Doraemon manga since I was a kid! Working as a guest artist? Hmm, I'm happier being the main illustrator, so nothing in particular comes to mind. I enjoy a lot of games in my free time, such as Fallout, Far Cry and Border Lands.

Anonymous asks: Even though we never see his face, was there ever a concept of how Woofio would look without his costume?

Igusa Matsuyama: I designed Woofio as the being that is Woofio, so there's no design of him without his costume.

Idris asks: Your style has upgraded a lot over the time to match the trends. Do you think you will ever go for an old school look (early HM) for a SoS game again? What do you think is the secret to your art’s charm?

Igusa Matsuyama: What I'm particular about when designing for Story of Seasons is making characters with head/body proportions and an atmosphere that go well with that release. First, I listen to the client's request then think of a design according to that. These days, game visuals have gotten fancier and fancier, so there's not many opportunities for characters with short proportions to make an appearance. To me, what's important when designing is "playfulness." More so than "pretty" or "cool" and such, I get attached to the character, have fun making the character. I find joy in character creation itself.

MacGyver asks: Yasuhiro Wada has shared some interesting stories about how chaotic the original game's development was. Is there anything interesting you remember from around that time?

Igusa Matsuyama: Now it's a memory I can look back on and laugh about, but I'm not sure how much I can talk about it so please forgive me. If Wada hadn't been there back then, then "Harvest Moon" wouldn't have become a thing.

Toyberb and Anonymous ask: There’s a lot of different cow designs now, which is your favorite to draw?

Igusa Matsuyama: I've loved drawing animals since I was a kid, so I love all of the cows. Although the easiest one to draw is the cow with the big nose.

Anonymous asks: Were there any games where you made designs for protagonists of genders that did not end up available to play as? (Like a girl protagonist for Save the Homeland/Hero of Leaf Valley or a nonbinary protagonist for any game before A Wonderful Life)

Igusa Matsuyama: There's so many designs that got scrapped, but as far as I recall, there's not really many where that character's setting itself was scrapped. (Excluding Thumbelina, mentioned below)

Koharu asks: Were there ever any character designs made for other older SNES characters like Ellen for 64? Some magazines had Marie with blue hair, like the SNES character, so it made me wonder if she (SNES Maria) was meant to also be there at some point.

Igusa Matsuyama: I'm not in the position to make settings or scenarios where characters from other games appear, so I can't say, but I like the idea of older characters making an appearance!

Amina/k0iisu asks: Hello! I really love Hiro’s design specifically. Could you tell me a few facts about him/his design that might not be well known information? Thank you so much! I love your art :D

Igusa Matsuyama: Thank you very much! Hiro is a future doctor, so I tried to make them look as much like a doctor as I could. Also, to make him look friendlier, I designed him as your average everyday boy you'd see in the neighbourhood. He doesn't have a flashy face or hairstyle, but he's one of my favourite designs, too. I wrote this in the guidebook too, but what I like about him is the Asian flair I added to his clothes and the spot of colour around his feet.

Bunbun asks: I'm excited for the Nendoroid that was announced of Claire! I hope there will be ones of HM64 designs too. Since you have a lot of figures on your blog, how does it feel to be able to add one of your own characters to your collection? Are there any of your other characters you hope will get figures of?

Igusa Matsuyama: A nendoroid of Claire! I'm looking forward to it too, but when is it going to be released? If it's possible, I'd like one of Woofio.

Editor's note: Preorders are open for Nendoroid Claire now!

Chickee asks: A purple-haired princess character was rumored to have existed in Harvest Moon 64, but she didn't make it to the published game. Did you create a design for this character?

Igusa Matsuyama: That's probably Princess Thumbelina. Wasn't she Incredibly small? What I designed didn't end up being used. Speaking of HM64 characters, I pushed for them to include a pet turtle, but in the end it only appeared as an ornament. For A Wonderful Life, I asked for a turtle to be included again and designed a tortoise with a scarf, but it didn't make it as a pet and appeared only as a wild turtle that walks around the pond. I'm waiting for the day they finally include a pet turtle in the game.

emery flower147 asks: omg I saw the pics where the AWL girls are in a team and Muffy has a shotgun and stuff? Do you think any other characters would work in a cool team like that?

Igusa Matsuyama: For the Friends of Mineral Town guide book, I had the five girls, Popuri, Marie, Ran, Elly and Karen work hard as Harvest Sprites. Also, for the guide books, I drew Pete (The old male protagonist), Sarah (The GB version female protagonist), and Claire doing whatever I wanted them to. I don't know if you can call it cool or not, but it was fun being in charge of that.

Ixur asks: A lot of the PoOT character designs for the regular villagers seem more popular than the marriage candidates in my region. Is that something that's been noticed by you/Marvelous in Japan? Lars, Clemens, Beth, and Misaki for example.

Igusa Matsuyama: Marvelous doesn't really talk about that sort of thing so I'm not sure if they're aware of it or not. I don't do social media so I'm also not sure which characters are popular. I'm happy as long as the characters are liked. The design on Lars’s shirt is modeled after my beloved dog, so I’d be especially happy if you like his shirt too.

Anonymous asks: What do you think about people cosplaying your designs?

Igusa Matsuyama: It makes me very happy! I'm no good at sewing, so I really admire people who can make their own clothes. It's an honour having the designs I made be made into real clothes, and I think it's great to have fun acting out the characters.

Afro Fae asks: When creating designs for characters, how do you settle on a specific color palette? Do you take color meanings into account with a character's personality or do you go purely off of feeling?

Igusa Matsuyama: I keep in mind the overall colours the client asked for while designing. Sometimes I propose a new colour when I think there's one that fits better. I'm also careful when choosing colours and everyone's traits to make sure it's easy to tell which character is which when seen from a distance. However, in the cases of families and such, I do the opposite and give them all a common colour to give them a sense of kinship.

———

From all of us at Ranch Story, we'd like to thank Matsuyama from the bottom of our hearts for answering our questions again! Whether a fan has only just discovered the series or has grown up alongside it, so many people have loved these characters and worlds that Igusa Matsuyama brings to life, so it feels truly special to be able to have this opportunity. We'll end this article with Matsuyama's own words, as well as a parting gift.

Igusa Matsuyama: I'm so glad I could answer your questions again. I'm the one that should be saying thank you. It means the world to me knowing that everyone enjoys my illustrations! I added an illustration as thanks. I'll keep up the hard work!

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stemmmm · 2 months

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Stem's Thoughts on Harvest Moon 64

(that other title's too long so i'm cutting it down now)

Harvest Moon 64 opens on a scene of your character walking around the street, speaking to everyone in the village who’s come to the event. You quickly piece together that this event in question is actually your grandfather’s funeral, the same grandfather who’s farm you’re about to take over. This little scene beautifully sets up both the tone of the game, and immediately shows the player that this iteration is far more focused on the story and characters. HM64 tells a story about the lives of many people in a small, dying town. It is a story about life, and it is a story about death.

A short disclaimer before we dig in: I played this game before the idea to write these essays cropped up, and have not replayed it since then, so this will be mostly vibes. I will try to do my research to make sure I’m not straight up lying though. (Also all of the images in this one are from google because I don't have a means of getting images from my N64 other than photographing the tv screen and I'm not doing that.)

What’s new!

HM64, also called Harvest Moon 2 by HMGB2 and nothing else I’ve ever seen, is the direct sequel to HM SNES. It’s not a sequel in the usual way sequels are, where you’re continuing where you left off with the same character, but in that every main character is the descendant of their equivalent in the previous game. It’s not important to the story, in fact if you don’t already know this, you probably wouldn’t notice anything past some similarities. I played this game before I tried out SNES and it still took me a minute, plus having it directly pointed out to me to get it. Maybe I’m oblivious, who knows.

Gameplay-wise, this iteration is home of a few series firsts: For one, your house can be upgraded to have a kitchen! You can't cook though, only collect recipes. You can also get a greenhouse where you can grow crops year-round. Sheep are introduced as barn animals that produce wool. You receive a fishing rod you can use whenever you want, but as far as I understand, the timing is nigh impossible unless you’re playing on a CRT (I am not, and never managed to catch a single fish). There’s a mine you can access in winter for something to do while you can’t grow crops (there are fall crops, but not winter) where you can find about two key items and garbage otherwise. Tool upgrades are no longer done by magic, but by leveling them up through use! Which I think is very neat and feels very natural, like you’ve just become more proficient with them as a farmer through practice. Characters can now come to visit you on the farm at random times, for either special story events or just to say hi! Your farmer can get sick from working too hard in bad weather, just like your animals, and there’s now medicine for that, just like your animals. And there’s inventory menus that I'll discuss at better length later.

What’s the same is… Most things in a basic sense. You’re on a farm with a dog, planting crops, raising livestock. You can make friends with folks in town by talking to them and giving them gifts. The livestock mechanics, as far as I could see and as far as I’ve been able to understand from online forums, are exactly the same as they were in SNES, the exception being there’s no wild beasts that can kill your animals but they’ll still get sick if they aren’t fenced overnight– and they’re not going to eat any grass unless they’re out overnight anyways.

As for your farm, you’re set up with the usual: a small house, a barn, coop, and fodder silo, a wood bin to store debris cleared off your farm, and a big messy field that you have to clean up before you can properly use it. It starts with three new additions though; a doghouse, a bowl that you can feed your dog with by putting edible items in there, and a mailbox that you’ll occasionally receive letters and notices in! They’re small additions, but very, very charming. The one thing that’s been removed is the toolshed, now replaced by a tiny toolbox by your house.

The world outside your farm is like an enhanced version of the SNES map. Imagine the town and forest now have one or two extra sections tacked onto them, one in the town for some extra housing, and a couple in the forest to let you explore the mountain more and get you deeper into the woods. The mountain still has a cave in it (this time with Harvest Sprites, who have been removed from your farm) and a summit you can climb to for certain events, but it has been upgraded with little wild animals that wander around and can be picked up and shown to people for a few friendship points, if they like the animal. (This applies to your dog too, there’s a well known exploit to max out Karen’s friendship in one day by repeatedly showing it to her in the bar where time is stopped.) The crossroads zone is also expanded by having three new areas you can travel to– the ranch that you buy animals at, a vineyard that’s more of a story-area, and a beach that mostly comes into play for a couple of summer festivals!

On the visual side, this game is the series’ first venture into the new frontier of 3d graphics… kind of. The artstyle is made of isometric 3D models that are rendered into flat sprites and then projected onto the TV as if that’s not what’s happening. The game even lets you turn your farm around in 3D to face different directions, but it’s locked to only let you play in specific angles. Changing the direction made me forget where everything was and get lost on my own tiny farm, so I never touched that mechanic.

Due to the dramatic artstyle shift– not only being in 3D but also presented at a 45 degree angle, the game becomes a fair bit harder to play than either of its 2D predecessors. The controls are just a little clunky, and the bizarre shape of the N64 controller really doesn’t help. This makes the tedium of farming a little irritating to do, since it requires pretty precise inputs done over and over for every extra thing you’re trying to grow. Fortunately, you're not on the hook to ship everything before 5PM comes around like in SNES, so you get to move a little bit slower. The fickle farming experience also gets a little help from the new inventory menu that can be accessed anywhere and any time. It has multiple inventory slots for both tools and items, each type having a dedicated section so there’s no need to prioritize carrying tools versus turnips. Unfortunately, this actually ends up being a little more cumbersome than useful, as the menu takes a little longer than is comfortable to open and is pretty clunky to use. I mostly avoided it unless I was bringing gifts to people. But the addition of an inventory opens up the opportunity for something else which defines this entire game...

Key items– a set of unique, unsellable items –are most frequently found in random, secret places around the farm and town, and they give you a reason to scour every inch of the place. They can also be given to you by NPCs when you gain relationships with them, which is convenient because their entire purpose is to help you get even better relationships with each of them, and maybe even unlock little stories with characters. For example, there’s a music box you can dig up in your field that can be given to any of the girls for a decently sized relationship bump. There’s also an old weathervane in the shape of a chicken that you can find in the little mine. If you give it to Rick, he’ll tell you that it was a precious thing that belonged to his grandmother as a cute scene to deepen the town’s lore and connect it to the first game. Key items quickly become the most important and sought after things in the game because they act as a vessel to deliver that which the game is all about: stories.

Lots of people in a little town

The narrative premise is exceedingly simple: you need to fix up your grandfather’s ruined farm and make a new life for yourself in this town within a certain amount of time, just like its predecessors. Except, this game is a lot bigger than either of them, and it didn’t fill all the extra space with new things to grow on your farm. In my entry on the SNES game, I mentioned that the introspective style of writing turned the repetitive farming gameplay into something more like meditation on things going on in the town. This game takes that idea and runs with it! The town in this game may only be slightly bigger than it was before, but it has a lot more people in it, and every single one of them has a lot more to say, more to do, more festivals to go to, and more story events to take part in. There's even a new photo album that fills in with images for reaching special events or succeeding at certain festivals! Your given goal may be to successfully revitalize your farm, but that rapidly stops being the reason why you want to play. Farming is only a means to further the narrative of the town.

Story events are no longer a reward for reaching the highest heart level with a girl, but instead something that happens naturally in the world as you make better friends with people, or if you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. The world doesn’t only consist of you living it and things happening to you. Instead, you end up being a fly on the wall to other people’s conversations and life events, and you get to see how those events change the people around you. People will begin to say different things, go different places, live different lives without your input at all– often much better lives, as everyone in the town is pretty deeply troubled, whether they seem like it or not.

There’s an added depth, too. While the characters in this series have always been defined by their conflicts (in the first game, every big cutscene with each girl was exclusively about their major life conflicts), this game takes it further in multiple ways. Characters have conflicts with their families: you as the player have a conflict with your parents who can take you home if you fail to farm well, Lillia and Basil have conflict over their marriage and the fact that Basil leaves for half the year, and Karen’s family situation is…. A lot. Then, there are characters at conflict with things much more nebulous, like the Mayor who tells you that the town is going to die out but he can’t find any way to save it, or like the young boy Kent who wants to be a farmer just like you, but through a series of events is forced to learn that life isn’t so simple, people can’t just do whatever they would like, and it takes very hard work to get to do the things you dream of. And then there are conflicts that aren’t even necessarily conflicts unless they run into your long-term plans.

Instead of only having a bunch of girls in town who exist only as your prospective marriage candidates, there are also five boys in the town who will marry those girls instead of you, if given the chance. Like in SNES, there are 5 levels of hearts that the girls can have for you. Unlike SNES, each one of these hearts has a corresponding event you can have with the girl where there’s a chance of her liking you more afterwards, if you say the right things. In addition to that though, there are just as many events coming from the other side of the story, rival events that trigger if you happen to be good friends with the boys.

My favorite story by far is that of Harris the mailman who falls in love with the librarian, Maria, from just seeing her handwriting on the outside of all the letters that she would write. I frequently saw him in the bar at the end of the day and he would tell me the woes of his love, saying that he just needed to work up the courage to finally speak to her. Then one day, I happened to be outside of the library when he and Maria met face to face and she handed over a letter addressed to him. No longer did he sit in the bar forlorn every night, instead all he would do was excitedly tell me about Maria, and then when I visited the library, Maria would tell me about Harris!

While I’m on the subject of these characters, I think it’s worth going in a little more depth on who these people are past the grandchildren of the characters from the last game. See, you may be familiar with names like Karen and Kai and Gray, etc., etc. from a little recently remade game called Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which is a modern version of Friends of Mineral Town on the GameBoy Advance, which is a port of Back to Nature on the PlayStation. These are not those characters. At all. While the basic elements of these characters are intact– Popuri is cute and childish, Ann is a workaholic, Maria is shy and a little oblivious –nothing else is the same. They all work different jobs and marry different people than they are paired with in later entries, and in my humble opinion, it all works WAY better in this game, probably because of the fact that these characters were designed for this specific context!

As an example, Popuri’s exasperated mother, Lillia, runs the flower shop and Popuri was named by her father, Basil, who loves plants. She’s childish and sweet and loves flowers, but can also be a complete brat. She eventually marries Gray, Ann’s brother, who lives on the ranch run by his father, Doug, who struggles to understand his children. Gray is an angry young man who seems to have a particular dislike for you, but you don’t learn why until you discover he was a promising young jockey until he got a bad injury and had to give up the sport.

Am I gushing a bit and letting the game design part fall to the wayside? Sure probably, but I can only gush because the game does a brilliant job of making a cast of characters who, while simple on their own, have interconnected lives that come together to give every one of them so much more depth than they would have otherwise. It all builds a narrative, and while narrative design is definitely something different than game design on its own, this game is far more about the narrative so it’s impossible to not focus on.

The problems

The trouble with these events is that I nearly missed the chance to see that letter be exchanged. You have some control over the progression of the events, because you have to be decent friends with the boys in order for them to trigger at all, but unlike the girls who have a handy visual signal of how much they like you, the boys have no such thing, so you can’t really know if a new event is ready to fire off. There’s no way of knowing where or when they’ll happen either unless you look it up, and even then you have to get lucky because sometimes they just don’t trigger when you want them to. I had a lovely moment in my game where I managed to accidentally catch a cold from working too hard in the snow and lost a day to being bedridden, followed by the New Years celebration which takes a day away from you, then followed by Kai and Karen’s wedding– something that I had missed multiple events for and therefore had no idea was coming, which also took a day from me. After that three day chain of no work, I think I was extremely lucky my animals didn’t get sick and die.

This chain of events led directly to me never speaking to Gray again, even though he was the boy I was most interested in, because I wanted to marry Popuri and there was too much risk of him getting to her before I could. The reason why I didn’t go into more detail about the relationship between those two when I was talking about them earlier is because I straight up don’t know it, I couldn’t risk giving them a chance to get together.

The thing is, even if I hadn’t forced Gray and Popuri’s cutscenes to stop, I still wouldn’t actually know what their relationship is like, because I have not beaten this game. I know what the ending entails and I can reasonably expect I probably would not have gotten an excellent one, but I’m sure it still would have been fine. I stopped playing the game entirely before I even managed to get married. Why? Because I couldn’t get any of Popuri’s heart events to trigger. I had her hearts maxed out and had a blue feather ready to go in my pocket, so I could turn on the game and marry her right away anytime I wanted to. But I wanted to trigger the little events, even if they’re just a couple seconds of some pixels talking to me on a screen. They’re cute. And it made me sad that I couldn’t see them for some imperceptible reason. So I stopped playing and didn’t pick the game back up.

I don’t remember how close I was to the end of the game, I know I was at least in year 2, but I don’t even remember how much longer the game is after that. Probably a good amount. I had definitely gotten most of the events you could get at this point, since multiple other characters had gotten married, and the farming wasn’t something I really enjoyed so I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little bored by this point, but I wasn’t frustrated with the general mechanics of the game. The days were long enough, but not too long, that I had just enough time to go anywhere I wanted and do what I needed before night came. I could still talk to characters and go to festivals and play minigames. But I didn’t want to, because the game wasn’t doing what it seemed like it was supposed to for some arbitrary reason and that frustrated me enough to make me stop. When the fun of a game is found more in experiencing special events rather than anything else, the player feels cheated out of their good time when those events are too hard to find or can be missed outright, and that’s exactly what I experienced.

Parting Thoughts

The ending, according to what I've read, is very similar to the SNES endings, in that you’ll get different results based on all of the different things you’ve done. Whether you’re married, how many crops you shipped, how many animals you have, how well liked you are by the town… I imagine it’s not quite the victory lap that SNES’s ending was with its little cutscenes, since apparently all you get are comments on how well you performed by various people in the town, but it still seems nice and rewarding! At least like more of a reward than whatever the hell GB1 was trying to do. It seems like a perfectly good ending that it would be nice to see myself someday.

Despite all my troubles with this game, I believe HM64 is still the best one out there– at least that I’ve played yet. The events are plentiful and the content is meaty. The repetitive day to day dialogue still has the simple breath of life that SNES did, that manages to make the most out of a small amount. Don’t get me wrong, this game came out in 1999, I’m giving it a lot of praise but the characters still repeat the same line to you every day, and they still freeze in place until you leave the room. It’s revolutionary, but this is comparing it to a game on the literal Super Nintendo. Absolutely pick up this game to try it out, but keep those expectations tempered. That said, I never picked up this game nor knew a thing about it until I was well into my 20’s, but the moment I started playing, it hit me with a wave of nostalgia as if I’d known this game my whole life. At least to me, the look and feel of the game were like coming home to a childhood I never had.

Will I pick up this game again with the intent to beat it? Maybe! Hard to say for sure when I’m trying to play decades worth of games and write about them at a comprehensive level. What I do know is that this is exactly what I want more farming games to be. It’s a game that has thoughts about life, and about death, both good and bad. And I think this is the perfect context to share those thoughts.

#hm posting #harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon 64 #hm64 #m.txt

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