Good solid game that started a brilliant series
Essentially the game puts you in the role of a young farmer who has to find success with an old abandoned farm. You succeed by working hard to plow the land, plant seeds, and get a good harvest. It's not all work though. You'll find plenty of time to meet you neighbors at the nearby town, fishing, and maybe a little romance. The game is not just a farming simulator, but also a life simulator and was really one of the first American audiences ever saw.
The graphics are good for the SNES, but not great. Character sprites are plain but cleanly done and look good. The same could be said for the town, farm, and other surrounding areas. The way the look of your surroundings changes during the seasons is nicely done. The music is also very good. The songs are catchy and you'll probably be humming them in your head after you've tuned off the game.
The game's biggest weakness is the repetition. You find yourself doing the same thing, day in and out. Take care of the animals, water the crops, visit the town, go to bed. The duties change a bit each month, but not too much. There are a few side stories and a festival to go to each season, but they don't come often enough. For some the repetition is easily dealt with as the chores just become automatic for you, but others find it just too tedious and give up on the game.
There's a suprising amount of replay value in this game too. The harder you work, the better your ending scenes will be, and there are about 9 different endings for gamers to reach. However, due to the long hours required to put in, it's difficult to ever see more than 2 or 3 of them unless you're an extremely dedicated Harvest Moon fan.
Overall though the game is quite fun, just because it's so different than the typical games on the SNES. The Harvest Moon formula has been refined and newer games play a bit better than this one, thanks to more community interaction and different jobs to break up the repetition, but the original is still a treat to play. The game is a simple pleasure and quite charming, and worth trying to track down.