#like nooo i promise it's not character hate. however i do think this aspect of this character understandably gets lost a lot in fanworks

[marshmellowtea]

ngl i do hate this post and i think it's a byproduct of fandom's obnoxious lean toward this idea that in order to be a true fan of anything you have to be ~critical~ of it which is a sentiment that pisses me off immensely. that being said this is a little bit how i feel whenever i point out chris's conservative leaning as a result of his parents on this website ghlkajfd

[flute-fields]

Ooh nooo I did put animal crossing! I feel so dumb now I meant harvest moon. Sorry about that!

that’s fine! considering your mom wants one for her DS, i’m going to list the DS games available for Harvest Moon and offer my two cents on them since the DS games are the ones i have the most experience with lol so you’re in luck

to add another note, keep in mind that Harvest Moon has rebranded as Story of Seasons, so SoS is the same HM we all know and love; Natsume took the Harvest Moon title and released a bunch of horrible games to catch peoples’ interest with the familiar title, so the title shifts in this list. i only used the name Harvest Moon when discussing the games out of familiarity/force of habit; later on down this list, the title changes. i’m also adding the 3DS games.

i’ll link you to the games as well so you can go over them yourself/she can check them out herself to see what she’d prefer. i wrote a lot but not nearly enough to cover the controls/functions/story line/overall goal/townspeople in each game.

1) Harvest Moon DS/Harvest Moon DS Cute. considering one of your mom’s favorite HM games are AnWL, i think she’ll like this the best; the game is set in Forget-Me-Not-Valley with a huge amount of characters from AnWL! in DS, you can only play as Jack/Pete. in DS Cute, you can choose to play as either Claire or Pony/Jill. DS/DS Cute is probably one of my favorite title games because it’s so similar to AWL/AnWL, so i think she’d really enjoy this one. i don’t have much to say on the story/goal of the game since it’s basically AWL/AnWL for a DS. out of all the games i go over here, i think she’ll like this one the best.

2) Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness/Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands. these two are very similar to Tree of Tranquility/Animal Parade because they’re essentially the same game with major differences. in IoH, the player character is washed up on a new island during a horrible shipwreck after a violent storm/lightning strike and sea and never makes whatever their original destination was; those who survived the crash make a new life on the island they washed up on (it sounds bleak but i promise it’s not).

however, in SI, the MC sails to SI for a new life and all of the villagers have an established life there. the two games have different goals and slightly tweaked characters, but are functionally relatively the same, with SI adding in more marriage candidates. this series is also one of my favorites, but one thing to add is that the art is very chibi-fied. not sure if your mom will mind it, but it kind of bugged me at times. i personally prefer SI.

3) Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. this was one of my first HM games, and it’s very cute and charming; the art, however, is more cutesy than the previous titles, so at times it kind of feels like everyone is a baby lol. the game is a little different from usual - there’s no shipping bin, because the goal is to sell everything you produce at a bazaar that’s held once a week (or at a shop in town if you don’t want to wait that long). you don’t mine in this game either, since you buy ore in shops or find them in rocks during winter. overall, it’s a cute game, but maybe not the most memorable? i remember enjoying it a lot, but i can’t remember that much about it. >_> it’s one of the more cutesy games as opposed to the little bits of realism/somberness in AWL/AnWL

i’m skipping Puzzle de Harvest Moon/Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming because neither of them are farming simulators, they’re puzzle/matching games

4) Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns. one of my favorite games! you play as a farmer starting in one of two towns situated on either side of a mountain, with a blocked tunnel connecting them. your goal is to bring the two towns together again through cooking festivals, which will unblock the tunnel; until then, you travel between the towns by climbing the mountain, which is great for foraging but eats up some time in your day. one town is focused on farming crops, the other is focused on farming livestock; you can do both in either town, but your farm will be devoted more to main export of either town. for example, in Konohana has a lot of fields for crops and a small barn. it’s the opposite in Bluebell.

your residency in one town isn’t permanent, though; i think at the end of every season you can choose if you want to move to the other town and you can keep doing that indefinitely. another addition to the game is dating, where you go on dates with marriage candidates rather than just leveling hearts and proposing! it brings a tiny bit more realism into the romance lol. this game is available for 3DS as well.

5) the Rune Factory games. i haven’t played a lot of RF (only 4 lol ._.) but they’re all titled as fantasy Harvest Moons, meaning you have a farm and farming is a major focus, but there’s also magic and elves and fighting monsters in dungeons to get good loot! RF title games for the DS are Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, and Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Rune Factory 4 is a 3DS title and the only one i’ve played but i liked it a lot and intend to play the other titles!

i don’t have too much to say on the series since i haven’t played a lot, but i really enjoyed RF4! the games are much more story driven than Harvest Moon, which i found really fun since it felt like i had more of a goal than just “farm for the town”. i will add though that i loved all of the bachelorettes(minus Amber)/bachelors up until gearing toward proposing, because a lot of their Marriage Events suddenly had like...weird stuff? i won’t spoil anything but suddenly things like possessiveness/jealousy/weird unhealthy relationship stuff came up and i was like WHOA WHAT WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM O_O because it was all SO drastically different from everything else up to that point. i didn’t romance any of the bachelors but it was there for the bachelorettes so idk if it’s the same.

there are more HM games, but these next ones are for 3DS. i’m not sure if your mom has a 3DS (i know u said DS but i call my 3DS a DS all the time so idk if it’s the same thing for you or not >_>), so i’m adding these next titles because i’m on a roll, but keep that in mind! i will also add that, with your mom’s preference in her favorite games, she’d probably enjoy the games i listed above waaaaaay more than these next ones, since that’s how i feel too.

1) Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning. this is the title where things feel... very different. i didn’t really enjoy it that much, if i’m being honest, because it brought in a weird focus away from farming where you reorganize the town and build new buildings and stuff. it felt a lot like the sims, minus making characters. this is the first title where you can customize the player character though! which i love! since your mom’s favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and MY favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and i didn’t enjoy this game much, she probably won’t either. the tutorial stage is also really, REALLY, horrifically long -- it stretches over a week in-game time of just basically doing nothing. most of the characters are REAL charming though imo, and they lose the cutesy chibi art which i was really happy about. the art and characters made me stick through the gameplay since i enjoyed them. they also brought in older characters and renewed their designs; i loooooved Witch Princess and Amir in this game so much i was so stoked to unlock them. but overall yeah one of my least favorite titles in the series since it brought so much focus away from farming to me and while characters/romance are nice, a huge draw TO the HM games is the farming

2) Story of Seasons. first game to be hit with the rebrand from Harvest Moon! any game after this was released (FEB 27 2014 in Japan) with the title of Harvest Moon is NOT Harvest Moon anymore! it’s Natsume up to their dirty tricks of using a great brand and stealing the name to release bad games.

anyway, SoS was... pleasant! i enjoyed it. it didn’t stick with me like the older games, though. but i loooved the art and the town, and the villagers were charming. you compete with other farmers in town for certain fields located in different places, all of which are best suited for certain kinds of crops. i liked the rival aspect, but it is very different from older HM titles. you can also select the difficulty to play in either Veteran mode or Seedling mode; i recommend Seedling mode, both because prices aren’t as high and because HM (to me) is a game to relax and have fun farming, and Veteran mode is just stressful.

3) Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. i love this one. (well, for the most part). this is the first game that introduces your family! you start off as a young adult still living at home with your mother, father, and younger sister, and decide to move out and become a farmer. your father is furious at this idea but you are eventually set to live in the same town as your Uncle Frank, who is a farmer, to measure your farming ability. if by the end of three years, you haven’t proven to your father than you have what it takes to be a farmer, you’re leaving the town forever. the bleakness reminded me a lot of AnWL, for some reason; i loved the aspect of your father being strict and hard on you since it felt a little bit more somber than the super cute, super peppy titles in the series of recent years.

that’s where the bleakness ends, tho. i will say that, despite loving this game and the characters, i really, REALLY hate the three-town system. you start off on your farm to three crossroads that lead to three different towns that all unlock by summer in your first year. and yes, it’s fun! the different towns yield different crops and resources. but it doesn’t feel at all like Harvest Moon to me. it feels way bigger and with way more things to do. it also makes days a LOT longer, since you run from all of the towns to complete errands in part-time jobs. it needs more of your focus than other games. i haven’t finished the game yet, and while i love it, i love it separately from other HM titles. it doesn’t hook me in the way the older titles did, which i think is because of the modernity of it with three different towns and being bigger and and having such consistently bright colors as opposed to one small town and muted color scheme of, for example, AWL. it feels, like ANB, very different from the vibe Harvest Moon usually gives you. idk how to describe it. i feel like this game exists in a separate niche.

i like how your family feels more real in it, though; they periodically send you letters and visit you. it really feels like you had a life before coming to the town(s), rather than starting off as a blank slate at the beginning of the game.

anyway i hope that helped! lmk if you need any clarification or want to go over other things or want any other recommendations. i hope ur mom finds a game she likes! ^_^