whats the difference between animal crossing and harvest moon?

Animal Crossing is Harvest Moon without the events, marriage, farming, etc.

Having played every Harvest Moon game since the SNES one and every Animal Crossing game so far, I find Harvest Moon better, there is more to do, the game is more involving. Animal Crossing is addicting for a while, but you mostly spend time fishing, collecting fossils, decorating your home, and doing tasks for towns people (which are usually take an item from one person to another)

so animal crossing is the more open ended one? but harvest moon actually gives you things to do...i know i'm going to get one of these eventually. i guess i got enough time to figure this outtwitch25

Yeah pretty much. I'd say rent like magical melody or a wonderful life on gamecube to try harvest moon and animal crossing on DS or Gamecube to try that as well, they won't change the entire game too much I imagine, so you can decide that way.

Why not have a mix of the two with:

Rune Factory Frontier

I actually would only advise looking at Harvest Moon: A Wondeful Life for a look at graphics; the new Harvest Moon looks similar to me. Much more realistic than cartoony. The gameplay sounds a lot more like Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, though.

HM: AWL is actually a departure from the normal formula of the series, and took some hard reviews for it. HM: MM is more of a back to the normal HM formula type of game.