The pinnacle of the Harvest Moon series.
That said, I truly believe this to be the best game in the series. This version has the largest selection of potential mates than any other, and the town continues to grow introducing more and more people to befriend and woo.
Magical Melody follows the same line of events as all the other games; you're new to the town, you acquire a plot of land, and your goal is to create a successful farm with produce and livestock, as well as make friends with the villagers and find someone to marry. In this version, the story goes that the Harvest Goddess has turned to stone because the people have forsaken her and forgotten about the land. She will stay that way until someone can prove that they care and will work hard to bring life back to the town. This is accomplished by collecting music notes to create the "magical melody" that will awaken her.
The freedom that this game gives you is what sets it apart. When you start, you don't immediately have a barn; you just have a house and a dog. When the mayor greets you at the start he gives you the option of three different spots in town to live. They all have an advantage over the other, so it's really just your preference. One plot has more land, better for a barn, one plot has the best soil, better for produce, and one plot is very tiny but is in the center of town, best for visiting villagers.
This choice of living space doesn't seem like options at first, but really it lets you play the game how you want. Did you always hate tending livestock? Then you don't have to have a barn. Can't stand watering plants? Then you don't have to! Would you prefer to forage off the land in order to make money? Go ahead! There's also fishing and mining if you like the sound of that.
Of course, if you choose not to have a livestock then you miss out on a rather integral part of the game, the music notes. This is another feature that sets this apart from its previous entries. Certain goals that you accomplish will award you with a music note, which will be added to your collection. Once you collect 50 you will awaken the Harvest Goddess.
The menu system is very improved and gives you quick access to all you need to know about how you're doing on money, on the farm, your music note collection, and how the townspeople feel about you. Previous versions were setup so that you only knew how the potential mates felt about you, indicated by a heart on the dialogue screen. In Magical Melody, every character has an affection meter for you, and gaining hearts will lead to more music notes, new items, recipes, and special cut scenes. There's an advantage to befriending everyone!
While there are many improvements over the other version, Magical Melody is not without fault. When there are too many characters on one screen the system has some rather bad screen stuttering and slow-down. It's also a little too easy to have your dog be unhappy with you because he'll walk next to you while you're using the watering can and then he gets sprayed when you let go of the button. Harvest Moon could use a "deactivate" button, where you don't follow through with the motion of the watering can or sickle, etc. That way wandering animals don't feel the need to get in the way. They also have issues with walking next to the shipping box and eating the produce that you're attempting to put it in, which can be a real pain.
Another gripe of mine is that your character cannot walk through the crops. This was a nice addition in Save the Homeland for PS2 and I was sad to see it taken out in Magical Melody.
Compared to how much I love this game, my complaints are few and far between. I feel that it has a great amount of replay value because of the amount of potential brides/grooms combined with the different places that you can choose to live. It would be fun to go through this game having only produce, or only livestock, or to have your only source of income be from fishing, mining and foraging.
I'm greatly looking forward to Tree of Tranquility, but Magical Melody is great for the time being. I recommend it to anyone who loves the series, is interested in the series, or who doesn't yet have a Wii.
Happy farming!