If the 'Uncanny Valley' is the term for something being almost-human-but-not-quite, then Harvest Moon: Winds of Anthos is in the Uncanny Stardew Valley. It's so close to being a really good farming sim game, but doesn't quite manage to hit the mark. However, for the first time in the turbulent and confusing history of Natsume's Harvest Moon games, it's actually... fun.
The story is the same old, same old: the Harvest Goddess disappears after some catastrophic geographical event, and it's up to us to restore her and the world through the power of farming. The twist here is that a volcano erupted, and Ms. Goddess decided to build a bunch of walls around all the villages, thus both protecting them and isolating them in one fell swoop. You'll have to dismantle the walls, befriend the Sprites living inside them, and revitalise the towns within, mostly by completing various fetch quests. The story doesn't make a lot of sense — everyone is very chill about getting separated from their families for a decade — but it's good enough to get started with.
If you've played the previous games, then you might be excited or disappointed to hear that the mutated and seasonal crops are back, as well as the need to collect seeds from Harvest Wisps hidden in the world. Somehow, in Winds of Anthos, this previously tedious busywork is actually an enticing reason to explore the gigantic map — and it's been improved, too, with map tags and markers for specific seeds making them much easier to find. You'll also discover rare crops, fish, tree fruits, and tameable animals through exploration, as well as mines, each one providing unique metals and ores that you'll need to complete quests and unlock upgrades.
Mining is pretty surface-level in Winds of Anthos — hit rocks and dig soil to find stuff — but dowsing with the 'B' button gives you a highlighted radius of where the good stuff is. Smaller circles mean rarer ores, and medium-sized circles could be anything from ore, to a ladder, to a hole that'll drop you a few floors at the cost of stamina. The grind is just about interesting enough to make up for the dull and repetitive mine interiors, and with hundreds of floors to get through (plus a checkpoint on every 10th floor), it'll take you a while to get to the bottom of each one.
Compared to mining and exploration, farming and animal husbandry take quite a backseat. Most of the story quests require materials found in the mines, with the occasional onion or turnip here and there, so you would be forgiven for thinking that crop-growing was all about making money. Nope! The crops sell for a pittance, and fishing is vastly more lucrative. So, cooking, then? Well, the stamina meter in the game empties pretty quickly, it's true, but the food recipes don't really get good until the mid game, so you're better off just scarfing 20 apples instead of cooking something.
So, what is the point in farming, then — especially when the game offers a frankly overwhelming selection of highly specific crops? We can accept the difference between onions and red onions, but why on earth are carrots and baby carrots separate? They're the same thing! Ditto with crops like celery and spicy celery, or wheat and "tall wheat". Seriously? This is feeling dangerously like busywork again, Natsume.
We have yet to really find a compelling reason to farm, but with sprinklers and fences to protect our crops from storms, it hasn't really been too much work to just do it anyway — especially when several of the farms on the map (which you can switch between at any point) are locked into a specific season, letting you easily grow seasonal crop mutations.
That overwhelming variety also applies to animals, too. You can tame horses (boring), or you can ride zebras, camels, and dinosaurs; you can get a cat as a pet, or tame a wild ferret instead. Chickens are dull, why not get an Araucana, or ditch all your cows for a Bengal Tiger? It helps that all the animal designs are actually cute, too — more in line with the bubble cows of the past than the uncomfortably realistic designs of past games. And that's what we all want, isn't it?
Oh, and the NPCs are cute, too. Suffering from a case of same-face syndrome here and there, to be sure, but we'd still marry them... if we had any time. The huge map and the plethora of things to do make marriage a less enticing prospect — like we're going to keep burning precious daylight schlepping back to Judy or Neil to give them a single apple when we could be doing something else that makes us money? Nah. We're single farmers for life.
In the late game, things get both easier and much, much harder. Unlocking new animals and areas, as well as fast-travel points, gives both a reason for and a method to travel around the world. Later areas are hard to get to, and sometimes even require special items to survive the heat/cold, but it keeps the challenge going.
Unfortunately, the difficulty ramps up significantly. Quests keep requiring obscure items like Platinum and High-Quality Lumber without telling you how, or where, or even when to find them (as many items are season-specific). The frequent frame drops whenever you're on your horse (or zebra, or unicorn) are bad on their own, but when they start happening IN A HORSE RACE, making you lose first place, you'll want to make a call to the glue factory. Not being able to walk over small ledges is an outdated design decision, and most of the map exploration will revolve around trying to find the on-ramp to a bit of land without the map, because you can't unlock the map without first entering the area. And once you get to the volcano area, you'll curse whoever came up with the idea of building a maze that's darker than the inside of your eyelids and twistier than a pirouetting Flump.
All in all, despite the issues, Winds of Anthos is easily Natsume's best effort yet. It deserves to be counted amongst the plethora of pretty decent farming games. But Natsume can't hope to reach the heights of Friends of Mineral Town or Stardew Valley until it develops its own unique style further and irons out a few of the wrinkles that make the game a slog. It's so close, though, for the first time in ages... and that's truly worth something.
Conclusion
You most likely know that Harvest Moon has been pants for a while now, and Story of Seasons hasn't been much better. For those of us who've been burned before by Natsume's underbaked offerings, we weren't expecting greatness from Winds of Anthos. But for once, this newest game is a step in the right direction, establishing Natsume's voice at last in a crowded market. Here's hoping the next Harvest Moon goes even harder.
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Comments 27
I've been hearing pretty good things about it past the opening few hours. Seen it compared to Magical Melody which is a pretty ringing endorsement for me. Kind of planning to pick it up whenever it's on sale.
"Natsume actually made a good Harvest Moon" this sounds so wrong, yet right, and yet so wrong all at the same time, every time for a different reason
I might want to check this game out though, Fae Farm is pretty much 100% at this point
Everything about this game sounded great to me until i heard about a movable farm and the fact you have to move it...just a static farm with a nice open world, that would have been it for me. With that movable farm its just too much of a hassle for me to play a chilled relaxed game. Guess i get the wonderful life remake instead.
I'm intrigued. I can never quite find the right 3d farming sim (excluding craftopia, which is. . . Something else entirely).
Maybe I'll try this one.
Harvest Moon: The Quest for a Good Title
@HotGoomba Harvest Moon: Harvesting on the Moon 🌙
It's good to know they're finally finding a good way for the series and I'm gonna show my support by buying it in the next few months!
Thought it was Winds of Anthros and was worried that my copyright had been infringed upon, but my Tony the Tiger farting simulator is safe for now.
@HotGoomba Harvest Moon: Neil Young Edition
I’m actually intrigued. It’s unlikely I’ll pick it up, but I’m happy there’s been a change of pace in the series lately.
Story of Seasons has always been good tho
@HotGoomba
Harvest Moon: Wind Beneath My Wings
The huge open world just looks way too empty to me, judging from the game play I've watched. Those eyes freak me out, too.
Got burned by One World; this looks too similar.
I've got the game on PS5 so I don't have any problems with frame drops, also can't say the stormy nights are too dark to me, I'd say it's a 8.5/10 so far and definitely the best harvest moon game to date.
@k8sMum
I personally give it a try for Winds of Anthos.
One World was really decent and basic, this game Winds of Anthos was really a huge improvement.
And also, yay... Same gender marriage.
“Twistier than a pirouetting Flump“
And they said poetry was dead.
Probably too late to patch in “Harvest Moon: Twist of the Pirouetting Flump” as the official title but they can hold onto it for the next game.
Glad to hear it's taking steps in the right direction.
Might grab this if it goes on sale. $50 feels just a tad too steep for me.
@NorthwestEagle sounds right.
Just have the dude who made Stardew take over the franchise.
Frame rate issue means its a PS version buy for me.
Actually sounds really good if rough around the edges if you know what I mean. Cheers for the review. I'd previously ignored this as it was another Natsume Harvest Moon, but now maybe a discount purchase down the line.
It looks more fun than Coral Island. You want something that plays like Stardew Valley that is it.
@NinjaHamsterSaki Technically you don’t have to move, you could just increase town ranks by completing requests, and there are plenty of fast-travel points already including one in each town, and you can still use the farming plots without having your farm there.
I think the most surprising part for me has been how much the HM subreddit has been enjoying it considering their… feelings towards Natsume’s games. It’s nice being able to talk about WoA and how much fun I’ve been having without getting called a Natsume shill :,)
@StardusterEX That sounds not too bad then. That makes me actually consider the purchase! Thank you very much for that information!
@NinjaHamsterSaki No problem!
Continue,
🧑🏽🦳🎮☕️ hello 👋🏼 good afternoon!
I love all my harvest moon & story of seasons games, but I draw the line with harvest moon winds of Anthos! Everything was ok until you help the villagers get their buildings repaired and restored, then they tell you we’re open, they give you a fishing rod to fish with with that’s ok, but when you need bait to use to make fishing a little easier, they won’t sell to you but their stores are open? In one world when dock came to you n said come with me I have something for you, you got a house a barn and a large enough plot to grow your crops on, that was a 5***** rating in my book, but the only thing you can buy from the villagers is soup at $1500 coins and the bread $360 no 5 *** star 🌟 there they get a flat out 0 because the game is set up to where the villages are using the new person who came to mak a home and settle down, but instead they’re being used to to fix their buildings, but they won’t help you fix your building? No game gets a 0 in that part of the game, when you get a to go to the lite Greek or Dutch village, all the players should have been given a chance to have that plot outside that village where they can set up their houses and their farm, then go check out the village, and the villagers, and how to help.
Don’t get my started on the mines!
No.1. You get beat up by falling rocks,
2. You don’t have enough time in the day or afternoon hours to go
Mining
3.you will never make it to floor 11 to start getting the silver ore nodes to fix your barn!
3 the brands and feeds were made From very hard wood and stone, the upgrades later is where you need the iron or silver or cooper, not in the beginning of starting out, you have a wooden and stone materials to fix up your barn,
4.your windmill makes your feed for your animals, makes your flower, corn meal & sugar! The game don’t get no star they get a 0
6.in those mines, like in several othe games similar to this in the mines your pic ax hit the ore nodes n give you the ore n the pic ax if you hit the ground you find the ladders 🪜 or ladder ropes to go to the lower floors, or you might step on a hole and down you go,
Um like Stardew Valley you take a sword with you while you’re mining to fight off the blobs the bones and the bats! As players we shouldn’t have to be knocked out by rocks because we ne some ore to fix up something.
7. When you help your neighbor villagers to fix up their buildings, they should help you In return for helping by giving you some ore from the mines, the mining gig gets a big fat zero 0
Continue,
Lastly but certainly not least, the timing for the chores around your farming homestead doesn’t even match up with real time if you get up 6am water the crops n thread on down to the mines when you get to floor level 4 or five the elevator should be activated to use the next day, so when you come up out of the mine and check to see, you should see the elevator sitting on floor 4 or 5, and shouldn’t be passing out before lunch or bef dinner! You didn’t set the energy level right! Your timing for going to the mines at 9am in the morning is so far of all my fellow players of this game would or have fallen off the cleft!
Things to fix
The characters energy
Day timing leading into the minds give the players til at least 5am when they’re looking for their ores nodes that is neede.
Fix the boxing of the stones every time they hit the floor or a rock!
Just put the or nodes scattered thru out each floor.
And fix them villagers, give them enough respect that if someone comes to the village to live and build up their farm, but you want them to put their farm n homestead aside to fix up your buildings, the least the villagers can or could do is give them something from the mines that they know you’ll need!
Next if you gonna put us players in a village that use people then make sure that barn is in working order, to be used from the jump, or give us the ability to choose where we want to settle down in!
I grew up around people who take but give very little back, and there was those who would look at you as if you did do anything, that’s hou the villager’s do you the one gotta mak friends, you the one that’s gotta do the giving for the birthdays, please
Fix up this mess of a game because right now the game only gets 1🌟 from me until the items is fixed
Like the game
Your gamer
Laetittia
🧑🏽🦳🎮😢
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