Harvest Moon: Magical Melody Comments by Mathew Kumar

"are you going to enter your cow"

that made me laugh

Ban this sick filth!

noooo, not again i lost a whole summer to the last harvest moon, and then i couldnt get the better half off it for the whole winter.

I didnt tell her not to buy a goat though did I....that'll teach her.

Its a good game. Matt failed to mention the new take on fishing which is alot closer to Animal Crossing than previous incarnations, so you can catch fish alot more and with less trouble, and there are some spots which if put some time into can net you several thousand a day in cold hard cash.

Also not mentioned is the way the village evolves around the characters shipping habits. You start of with a Junk shop in the town which has lofty prices for tool upgrades, but if you head to the mine and ship plenty of ore a blacksmith moves into town which offers cheaper upgrades but asks for ore for the job, and will take a few days, but can save you alot of money. Also, if you stop shipping ore for a prolonged time the blacksmith with move out citing lack of resources in Flowerbud to do the job. There are quite a few residents that will do this so the game encourages you to ship a variety of crops and resources over just grinding the money givers.

Also not mentioned (there's a theme here) is the fact that you can buy more land as you progress, and sometimes it directly relates to how well you get on with the mayor, while you have a few plots available to buy all the time, befriending him will lead to more plots for you to run your empire on, which is a vast improvement as you have more scope to develop your bussiness than just a single farm.

The game is better than AWL no doubt, its more of a big brother to Mineral Town as it runs on the same conventions as that (only feeding animals once a day, not stupid talking plants etc.) and is more enjoable because of it.

How about i mive that artice an edit for you there? :P

Sounds excellent.

This and Chibi Robo next, then.

Excellent game. I hated A Wonderful Life, but this game is great. If you can get over the cutesy style, you're all set for a classic Harvest Moon game with a whole lot of stuff added in.

It does a have a bug or two though, and the usual (bad) Natsume translation in places :P

And damn does Jamie scare me. He/she is both a male and female - it depends what gender you play with. The intentionally designed him/her like that so it could be either way :S

Does success within the game rest on befriending those insufferable Sprites that are in the GBA game?

/rough male-ish voice: so... is this a game for girls?

Hmmm. Sounds a lot better than A Wonderful Life, which I found awfully repetitive. That and the absolutely static world really put me off, especially when compared to the charms of Animal Crossing.

I loathed AWL with a passion, and since it was my first Harvest Moon game I think it's put me off trying any of the others. This does sound quite good though...

Teeth, the sprites are the one who give the mission to find 100 notes (dunno why it says 50 in the review?) and they only talk to you when you turn up every 5 notes to turn it into a Musical Instrument (you can't play them sadly)

BOOORING!!!!!

Cheers Hunam85 - so how does the player get a lot of harvesting done then? The review mentions farm machinery, and I never played the GC game.

Same way you allways have done, pick it up and shove it in the shipper. Thing is the area you get to farm on most of the time is small, with a coop on mine i have at most 4-5 3x3 squares for crops and 4 3x3 for grass. The game is more animal centric and wants you to ship a variety over just massive hauls, so the need for tools to help you dig out hundreds of crops isnt that high, as you dont really need to do it.

The machinery is a Mayo maker in your cook and cheese maker (i think?) in the barn, which can help with highering the price you get for shipping something (which now pops up when you put something in the shipper so you know how much its worth) there is loads of cooking to do, the house works like AC too where you can rearrange and buy nice things for it, i bought an arm chair :)

I love the Character Design.

Reminds me of Wind Waker. :)

Sounds good Hunam, cheers.

Lol, still think i should have wrote the review :P

"Also not mentioned (there's a theme here)"

Hunam85 there is a difference between a review and a reference guide.
There are a few other things the review didn't mention, like you have to put the disc in the machine, and turn it on, you have to pick up the controller and press buttons and you have to pay your power bill, or they cut off your electricity

From the review it sounded like there are lots of things to do, maybe the reviewer isn't your clone after all. Also don't forget editors like to change things as well.

I don't mind people criticising badly written reviews, or bad choice in reviewer - a vegan reviewing Kill all the Wildlife and Eat Their Hearts Too, for example - but to make off hand remarks that stuff is missing from the review, when at least one of your examples is actually in the review, could be seen as rude.

Can you write your own review and have it posted on this site? Please do, so I can write in how you didn't mention that the berry leaves were teal coloured. I'm sure someone will not buy the game just because they hate how all games have mint coloured berry leaves.

"Kill all the Wildlife and Eat Their Hearts Too"? Now that sound like my kinda game, when's it out?!

Seriously, I'm a bit concerned that all the people who adore this seem scathing on AWL... the thing is, having not played any of the previous iterations, I actually enjoyed AWL (silly talking plants and all). This sounds much more like hard work.

I'll probably still pick it up if it gets a UK release, though.

darkbhudda, I made my comments as i felt that as a review it was lacking in some necessary information that would help a buyer make an informed choice on the game in question, a game which i happen to know a whole lot about, and by the looks of it my comments helped at least one person make a choice about wether or not to look into it.

Many of the comments here are based on past exprience with the past iteration of HM on the GC, one which was vastly different to all the others in the series so i felt that some points which were poor in AWL and improved on here should be mentioned, such as the fishing aspect of the game. Fishing is now a massive part of the game and a huge help to any would be virtual farmer as i can take alot of stress of the farming and on to the social side of it, yet you liken such a comment to pointing out you need to put the disk in or what colour a leaf is? Maybe the basing you knowledge of HM off the review alone drew that comment, as what i mentioned is an important point to anyone who has played HM on the GC. The reviewer himself even commented that he only just scratched the surface.

The review was actully an enjoyable read, but far too short for an overhaul of the series, maybe EG doesnt place HM highly on its rader, but id say more people would read a review on HM to figure if they want to buy the game than say, on Oblivion. Before this review was posted the reviewer should have spent more time on this game or maybe more time with the series as a whole to understand the grand scheme of the HM legacy.

And to again be rude, which example is in the review? I read the copy throughly before even commenting so i wouldnt fall into the trap you claim i have? Sure he says you can fish, but thats not the same as what i said.

I bought AWL, and I was pleased. For the first few weeks, anyway.
Until I bought a goat. Spent all my money on that damned thing, and let it die.

Oh dear...

I think the review was a bit short/lacking too, much like many of the recent EG reviews. Bit of a shame; not the end of the world.

"I made my comments as i felt that as a review it was lacking in some necessary information that would help a buyer make an informed choice on the game in question, a game which i happen to know a whole lot about, and by the looks of it my comments helped at least one person make a choice about wether or not to look into it. "

Indeed you have, I greatly thank you for your comments as you have helped inform me in greater detail about the game and have aided me in coming to a decision about this game, I will most probably buy it. Cheers.

Also, what was really that bad about AWL, I have not played it myself but I recall at the time it getting many shining reviews. how key are the differences between that and this?

"Before this review was posted the reviewer should have spent more time on this game or maybe more time with the series as a whole to understand the grand scheme of the HM legacy."

As the reviewer in question, I'd like to state that I've spent far more time on this game than I probably should have, and spent even longer watching it be played (admittedly not something you base a review on, but it's a nice refresher) as I said in the review. As for my understanding of the series as a whole, I really don't think I need much more, having been right there for the beginning with the original Harvest Moon on SNES, and each iteration up until now. Personally I consider it the peak of the series so far, other than a few flaws, outlined in the review.

That's all I really have to say on the matter.

You know if you fricken people hate the game then dont fricken post anyting. Also nobody wants to hear how much you loath the game you people are alway trying to start fights...*sighs*

P.S. By the way I liked the article! it was funny and made me want to play it. I got the game after reading this article and the game is wicked fun! I loved it. Thank you for making the article.

Anyone know when this is out in Europe yet? Various websites are posting different dates, then changing them.