Topic: Is Harvest Moon SNES fun?

I was watching a Youtuber named PeanutButterGamer, and he was talking about Harvest Moon, and I thought it looked pretty cool. The next day I say a Harvest Moon game on the SNES Virtual Console on the Wii U, and I was wondering if it is fun and if you do anything besides farm.

Edit: I meant does farming take up all of your time or do you have time to do other activities, and if so what exactly can you do?

NL staff seemed to like it.

Farming will take up most of your time, but there are light roleplaying elements too. You can explore nearby caves and stuff, visit town to shop, talk to people, etc. But yeah, make no mistake, it's a farm sim.

Do you have to farm or can you play through without or doing very little farming? I wanted to know because I fear the farming might get a bit repetitive if I do it for to long.

In the SNES-version, farming takes almost all of the time (Which also means winters are devoid of much to do), there's farming, handling cattle (Cows and chickens, nothing more) and gathering items, but there's no backpack yet, so you can carry one item at a time...

"Harvest Moon" for the SNES was a great game for its time, but TBH i'm having a hard time recommending it nowadays, it's pretty rough around the edges and lacks all of the additions that make it more fun to play in the recent "Harvest moon"-games...

The series is one of those "hate it or love it" things. You kinda have to try it for yourself.

You definitely have to farm and ranch if you want to beat the game.

Keep in mind, however, that unlike modern Harvest Moons, the SNES one has an ending and you can't continue paying that file afterwards.

Yes the game is still a ton of fun. Since it was my first I do go back and play from time to time.

This will be my first Harvest Moon game do you think it is a good place to start the series?

Well, it is the first game in the series, and it's also retro-cluncky.

Every game after that one was (most of the time) better and improved. For someone who started with the other games, this one will seem boring and old.

So I guess you'll be fine?

Okay thanks you guys!

I recommend the Gamecube version (Harvest Moon - A Wonderful Life). The SNES version is cute but also irritatingly slow but the Cube version gets everything right IMHO.

That's funny when you consider that that GC Harvest Moon is infamous for being irritatingly slow. (And the snes game is actually pretty quick).

Don't get me wrong, I love it, but to be honest I have never gotten past the third chapter in that one.

Now that I think of it, it's also one of the games that ends forever. The girl version and the PS2 rerelease do let you continue though.

If that worries you you might want to look into the spin off series Rune Factory. Or something like Animal Crossing or Fantasy Life.

I have Animal Crossing New Leaf. Is farming sorta like doing quests for the animals?

Not at all.

Both games are usually compared, but they're really not that similar.

I haven't played a Harvest Moon game in 15 years - is the SNES one the one where you have to give the kappa a cucumber and then you enslave the forest sprites? That was pretty fun, but I guess the later HM have more events, more stuff to do, and AFAIK the newer ones have a dating system that adds another layer to the farming thing. If you don't mind repetition for the sake of it, they are worth your time. My best friend has beeing playing Tale of Two Towns non-stop since 2011 - she must have played it for more than 1.000 hours, but then again, she loves repetition in games.
However, these are games that I would never play on a home system. Maybe you could play on the GamePad right before sleeping, but I think you'll get the best out of those games on a portable machine - they are of the "20 minutes a day" variety.

Took me ages to find the one person I hadn't spoken to during the intro of the SNES game to move on to the next scene.

@spizzaparozzi: that would be the PS1/GBA one.

And yeah, ToTT is one of the best recent HMs, I like it a lot.

A tip:

Nights last forever.

So you can use that time to water your plants.

The only thing you need to do during the day is ship your crops since they rot away if you leave them in the bin overnight.

Another tip, organize your crops so that they don't produce all at the same time. It'll be easier to ship the smaller amounts, and you can have crops to ship every day.

@Morpheel how would the Lost Valley compare to Tales of Two Towns?! It is bound to be released in Europe in a couple of weeks and I think it would make a nice present for my friend. The only thing that stops me from getting it is that it looks like it's in pure 3D (as opposed to the fake 3D of ToTT I think), which my friend hates with a passion (don't ask me - girl stuff!)

Both ToTT and TLV were considered flawed by most people, but I still enjoyed them quite a lot.

Yes, TLV is full 3D and with customizable terrain elevation (and sometimes the automatic camera movements can get in the way of field work). So if your friend hates 3D harvest moons, I don't think she might enjoy this one too much.

Other than that, TLV has way worse rep than it deserves because of the situation of its creation. It's still a completely playable and enjoyable game on its own.