Topic: Harvest Moon: Light of Hope

It seems Natsume is ready to move on to home consoles, with their next harvest moon being on the switch, ps4 and pc. It seems they'll likely go back to predefined landscapes, instead of customizable blocky environments.

As in all Harvest Moon games, Harvest Moon: Light of Hope begins with a young farmer establishing a homestead. A sea voyage gone wrong leads to our new rancher being trapped in a harbor town that has seen better days. It is up to us to establish a farm, raise animals, make the town more appealing again, restore a lighthouse, find love, and create a family. It is supposedly inspired by the original Super Nintendo game.

Read More

Making a game for an hd console won't be easy, and with the amount of hate they usually get... I wish them the best of luck.

Anyway, this would be the very first new game in the series, marvelous or not, to be in a home console since Animal Parade on the Wii.

I'm hoping for the best. I will wait on reviews however. Between SoS, SoS:ToT and stardew I'm sorta booked for farming sims.

I haven't looked it up yet, but why do they get a lot of hate?

It's because of the idea that they stole the harvest moon name with nefarious intentions (the old dev of the series ended their partnership, and Natsume kept the harvest moon name {it was an odd partnership even before the split}).

And the fact that their last few games have odd art styles. The games really aren't that bad, but they are kinda lazy in terms of details and characterization.

It's pretty much a new series under an old stablished name, which makes people iffy.

I might check this out as I have not played a harvest moon game to date ..hopefully there will be a demo so I can get a taste of the gameplay .. if not I might check out the review first , but I am interested none the less.

I doubt there will be a demo.

Even Story of Seasons goes without demos.

Can't say I'm interested in this. Ever since Natsume lost the actual localization rights and began making poor man's copies, they went under the radar for me, not that I was very interested in them to begin with.

I am at least a bit happy though that it sounds like they're going back to series roots with this, as opposed to another Minecraft clone. However, I have Stardew Valley for when I want that fix.

Harvest Moon started off very well on the SNES, N64 and then Playstation. But it only continued to be good on the handhelds.

While A Wonderful Life (Gamecube), Magical Melody (Gamecube/Wii) and Rune Factory (Wii) were still nice games, they already felt slower and sluggisher than their Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS counterparts.

Then Tree of Tranquility (Wii) and Animal Parade (Wii) came out, and they were unbearably slow. The graphics, in all terms, be it polygon count, texture quality, animations, details, framerate, is just not what you would expect from a series that really shines in 2D. You wouldn't expect those bland 3D graphics inside a Wii game, especially after you're exposed to something like Xenoblade Chronicles. Ok, Xeno is probably a bad example being one of the graphically best games on the system, the point is, the new Harvest Moon games look and play worse than the old ones and that is crap. Not to mention the sound in the new games seems to be equally bad, like MIDI played in mono. What I can't understand is that with such bland graphics and tech, how is it possible to have so many long loading times?
I hope they have taken Harvest Moon away from their current studio and make a good one now. I think they got some clues about Stardew Valley and how their 2D games are the better-working funnier ones, so I guess the Switch version (that is claimed to be 2D) can be a good Harvest Moon game again.

I really hold out hope that this is going to be the Harvest Moon game that revitalises the franchise. Its a great series with a great history it just needs a good mix of innovation and traditions gameplay. I don't think people care to much about graphics so long as it has some charm and good design.

Oh right, Natsume posted a short video showing the game on Facebook some days ago.

It's pretty much just a section of what seems to be the same demo they showed at E3 (since a video someone shared online after E3 shows pretty much the extact same sequence).

@Meowpheel
Dang it !
2D again ?!
Natsume is keep ruining Harvest Moon brand into Typical Cheap Mobile games.
RIP Natsume Harvest Moon games.
The Real (Bokujou Monogatari) still have a chance.

This suits my needs and wants, so I'm perfectly fine with 2D.

I plan to play this on a windows tablet. Which means I need it to be a reasonable size (in terms of storage), use simple inputs, and not drain my battery in 10 minutes.

If it controls well, and loads fast I've no problem with a Harvest Moon game looking like this, but in the last 10 years that was hardly the case, at least not on any home console. I'm not impressed by the new look but the gameplay looks to be similar to the earliest HM games and that's a good sign.

So....what's wrong with 2D again?

Some people will use anything they can to bash this particular game series, don't worry about it.

This game will be releasing on PC in about ten days via Steam. It seems it will be $30 dollars.

We can expect the switch release to be similar in pricing.

The steam page has a new trailer showing the game in more detail, but it's still kinda short. They also released a new spotlight video in facebook that confirms the marriage candidates are all the same from Skytree Village (dlc characters included) + Gareth and Tabitha, who where marriage candidates in Seeds of Memories, but not Skytree Village.

Just watched the trailer... ugh... what happened to such a wonderful franchise. Even the character movement looks like floaty, stiff, cheap mobile game fodder.

Back to Stardew Valley for me. Maybe Natsume will come around on the next one.

This garbage is Harvest Moon in name only. Story of Seasons is the real Harvest Moon. Don't encourage Natsume by purchasing this.

The REAL Harvest Moon died at Tales of Two Towns. Everything after is just chasing the image of a once great series.

I know this is old, but ToT was awesome, and all the 3D Harvest Moons suffered from load times and frequency. I still will prefer 3D Moon to 2D