A great balance of gameplay. As much a life sim as a farming sim. Very addictive with likable characters and activities.
While other entries in this series have flown past this one in terms of
graphics, music, controls, and content- somehow Harvest Moon 64 still reigns supreme in my eyes even after over a decade and several solid games later. Little features that jetison the gameplay up above the limitations of it's time.
While Harvest Moon is largely a farming sim, there have almost always been other little diversions in the gameplay that made it feel like a non-linear total life sim. Time goes by, each in-game day lasting anywhere from 4-7 minutes depending on how you spend your time (as there are indoor locations where the clock will stand still) each season is here,
Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter are 30 days each and with each change of the season comes a new variety of things to collect and very nice festivals to work your schedule around.
With people to befriend, events to trigger, and other hobbies to take up like fishing and mining- there is a sense of freedom but at the same time the humble beginnings of these games serve as any game should- like for example, a level 1 character in an rpg scouring through the vast overworld to some day grow and become indomitable against any problem that lies in his/her path, Harvest Moon has that sort of "blank slate waiting to be filled up" feel. Your farm has been long since abandoned and is now covered in debris and devoid of any growing vegetation or animals. You enter that
town as a stranger and depending on how much effort you want to put forth, you could make a little thing into something enormous. It usually starts off as a matter of foraging for cheap berries and herbs in the woods, selling those, and earning enough to buy seeds. Planting them and selling the fruits and vegetables that eventually bloom, then selling those and doing a combination of things in order to save up for a chicken.. then more expensive and demanding animals like cows and sheep. There is also your house, which starts off as a ratty little hut and can be rebuilt and added to in many ways if you have the money and lumber. To cut wood and
tend to crops, you have a small selection of tools. They have levels, with each level gained, the tool becomes more effective to use, making for lots of saved time and energy. Because in these games, you have
an amount of energy that is depeleted with the various work you do. You can slowly build up this limited supply by collecting power berries- well hidden edible little gems that you are rewarded with upon thorough gameplay. That was the selling point for me in this game (and the series in general) This is one of the only games where it is not possible to lose. It is possible to miss out on some nice events and items, but it's not possible to utterly fail because the days will keep plodding onward, your actions declaring whether they have been well spent or not.
This lack of risk makes this a game that can appeal to alot of gamers whether it be experts alike looking for something unique and ambitious, or perhaps entry-level gamers, as I was at the time, this being the series that successfully pulled me into the fray. ^^
Aside from working, celebrating, socializing, and exercising the various possibilities of this life simulator, there is one more thing that seals the deal. And that is the ability to get married and have a kid. In this game in particular, you play a male character and there 5 girls your own age in town. As you earn their affection with items and talk, and responding to an array of events that involve them, you get to know these girls and their families, along with everybody else in town. While this game is not particularly a marvel of ideal narrative, the lives, problems, and personalities of the characters are largely diverse- or at least enough to compliment this game further into the life simulation genre. The amount of events to trigger in this game that work to break up eventual monotony are admirable in number.
Aside from that, what makes Harvest Moon 64 my favorite of all the games in this series so far is the balance and near-perfect length. The game has a life of about 3 years, after that the game has a nice ending scene (you can keep playing afterward and into eternity though if you wish) but new events and things to earn become scarce.
But then you could always go through the game again and pick a different girl to be your wife, focus on different things in your gameplay, and acquire events and items you may have missed out on in your first play-through. And you WILL miss out on something. I refer mostly to the photo album. I loved the photo album. It serves as a visual testament to alot the effort you put into the game, from raising a horse and winning a race with it, to succeeding in mini-games and building friendships with characters.
But acquiring every picture is a challenge. I refer to the party picture in particular. After 5 play-throughs I still have not yet managed to get it. The party picture demands that you do everything there is to do in the game within those three years. Befriend every character, leave no stone unturned, jump-start your aims at success to a level you may not have thought was possible upon your first time through, basically it involves playing this game in a completely different and more careful manner.
Why this was a great thing is because it allows for a large scope. You could play through it and be satisfied with the most laidback experience, or you could maniacally challenge yourself by trying to get 100% of everything. It can tailor to what you want.
So as for surface as well as techincal aspects.. it doesn't look, sound, or control all that well. It isn't bad, but it isn't impressive either. This is obviously a game focused on gameplay. The graphics are simple sprites and repeated backdrops with small character portaits that give you an idea as to how a character looks outside of the primitive graphical engine. It does have a good range of color though. The sound effects fare a bit better, with a rainy day sounding exactly as it would in real life- so comforting -_-.. and the sound of insects and birds in the morning and bleak silence late at night give the game a further boost of realism. The background music changes every season- but for 30 in-game days you largely hear the same track over and over. This could seem like a nightmare, but the songs are okay. They don't become to grating and fall well into the background. It also helps that they are preempted by town and festival music now and then. But when I hear any song or sound effect from the game now I always like them with a sort of nostalgia that surpasses the actual average grade the music justly deserves.
Natsume didn't even spell their name right at the beginning of the game but surprisingly the translation is pretty easy to understand with little engrish. There is a nice tutorial near the beginning of the game, and the world is not very big so the learning curve is low. Now finally.. the controls. I'll get it out of the way right now, I hate the N64 controller. Any controller that forges a fissure into one's thumb needed more time in development. I understand that it was an important step up into the world of analog sticks, but having to form a callous on one's thumb is a weird price to pay. Aside from that automatic bias on my part, the controls are actually perfect- with the exception of one huge misstep that is impossible to overlook in this day and age. There is an inventory system in this game. You will come across hundreds of items. But to store and then use any of them includes having to go into the menu manually over and over again. After playing any other Harvest Moon game (and experiencing the perfect one-button-click to scroll through your inventory) it becomes painful to play this great game and know that so much time is wasted being forced to deal with the clunky menus. But since this is the first HM game I'd played.. heck the very third videogame I'd ever played in my life, this was a very minor issue at the time. In the end.. the controls.. not very good.
The game as a whole, unforgettable.