New Review Posted: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Tera Kirk spends some time with Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, and comes awawy thinking:

"For some strange reason, we gamers want our virtual worlds to be more like our real ones. We clamor for more player choice in storylines and for graphics so lush we forget that they're just pixels on a screen. As we offer golden calves to the god of realism, it's nice to know that someone hears our prayers. Someone who's not afraid to take us literally-to give us a unique, "realistic" game that we didn't expect to be so much fun."

You can check the rest out here:http://www.gamecritics.com/review/harvest/main.php

[EnduroGamer]

Don't know who this guest critic is, but this is one of the best written reviews that's appeared on this site in quite a while. And that is not a slap in the face of the other reviewers, as most everything on this site is usually of a very high quality.

I'm just saying that this was a really good piece. Get this Guest Critic some more games to review!

[Zanbatou]

Very good review indeed.

It prompts some question though..

My six year old sister has fallen in love with the original Harvest Moon, which she plays for hours every day on a SNES emulator on one of our computers. She has expanded to actual farming, planting more and more pumpkins in our back yard and saving her quarters so that she can buy a real cow (so cute ^_^). Anyway, I want to buy her a more recent Harvest Moon game, but am unsure which one would be most suitable. I was leaning towards A Wonderful Life, but this review seems to imply that it is a much more complicated and frustrating game than she's used to. Is this a game that a six year old can handle? The review also hinted at the possibility of going broke... is it possible to actually lose the farm/game?

Is there another Harvest Moon game out there, for any system, that you would recommend above it (both for young children and just in general)?

All Harvest Moon fans may feel free to answer, not just the reviewer. Thanks.

[Tera Kirk]

Hi!

You can't lose the farm in A Wonderful Life. Sorry if my review gave that impression.

You could always try renting AWL for your sister and see if she likes it. (Our Blockbuster has it, which surprised me). If she's planting pumpkins and saving up for her own cow (aww! ), she may like that AWL is more like a "real" farm.

But if she wants something more like the SNES version, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA is pretty good. It's got the same overhead perspective as the original, and a lot of the same systems for fishing, growing crops and taking care of animals. In fact, I think it's easier to tell how much the animals like you in FoMT. There's a screen with a series of hearts by each of the animals' names. Plus, there's sheep

There's also Harvest Moon 64, which is good but rare. I found a used copy at a flea market for $40.

Hopefully other HM fans will climb out of the woodwork and offer suggestions.

Tera

[Andrew Fletcher]

Just a quick message to echo the other comments on this review: It was great.

Bravo Tera.