Current Events > The Harvest Moon series suffered a slow and painful death after HM64

(+) Yeah! (+)

HM64 was legit, but the HM games these days are garbage. They tried to make the games way more cutesy and kid-friendly, and just ruined them. Everything after Animal Parade has been vapid garbage.
Fortunately Stardew Valley is the spiritual successor to HM64.

the only ever I ever liked was Friends of Mineral Town on GBA

A Wonderful Life is the best one imo.
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Story of Seasons is the spiritual successor, not Stardew Valley.
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SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Story of Seasons is the spiritual successor, not Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley stole the idea and did it better. It is closer to HM64 than any of the actual sequels were.

I only remember playing Back to Nature.
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The three for 3DS are pretty good, liking them a lot better than most of the DS games.
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DivideR posted...

I only remember playing Back to Nature.

That game was amazing
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ReineRolab posted...

Stardew Valley stole the idea and did it better. It is closer to HM64 than any of the actual sequels were.

But I don't want to have to go dungeon crawling, fight monsters and all that action-y stuff. All I want is my farming, fishing and all my other peace time activities.

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Story of Seasons is the spiritual successor

No it's not. Story of Seasons is the same series as Harvest Moon 64.

HM64 was awesome, but Back To Nature was my first. It was one of the three games that made me sign up for GameFAQs just to use the message boards for discussion. Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout were the other two games.

I remember the Harvest Moon social board was super active back in those days. Fanfics and whatnot.

The last one I bought was the GameCube one.
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SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Story of Seasons is the spiritual successor, not Stardew Valley.

Story of Seasons IS Harvest Moon. Natsume is no longer publishing the games but they kept the rights to the Harvest Moon name so Xseed and Marvelous were forced to rename the series.
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Myself, I've played the original SNES version and FoMT on GBA.

Especially the GBA version. Even got around to claiming the teleportation stone, unlocking the recipes for X egg/milk/cheese among other endgame things.

JE19426 posted...

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Story of Seasons is the spiritual successor

No it's not. Story of Seasons is the same series as Harvest Moon 64.

I mean successor in terms of the overall feel of the game. HM64 dealt with adult themes--something that the rest of the series lacked. Stardew Valley brought that back.

SoS1 definitely did some of that.

Still, I don't think JE was rebutting YOUR claim TC.
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I played Trio of Towns and liked it pretty well. I did quit before getting married because I had completed all the other goals by that point.

Animal Parade was pretty fun too. A little on the slow side for my taste, but not nearly as bad as,say, AWL. I did get married in AP (and had all the rival couples married off), but again, I'd finished the majority of the "story" content by then and wasn't really interested in playing further.

All that said: Stardew Valley has never really appealed to me. Not sure why.

I will also say that the lack of same-sex marriage in HM games is a major disappointment.

They've made a work around recently though~
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HitTheGroundWal posted...

They've made a work around recently though~

Oh?

ReineRolab posted...

I will also say that the lack of same-sex marriage in HM games is a major disappointment.

Jamie in Magical Melody is basically genderfluid (can be married by both genders), and the girl version of Harvest Moon DS (Cute) in japan let you be able to marry the special brides like Leia the mermaid and the Witch Princess.

Besides that, the only reason to marry in the games is to have kids, and so I can see why it's not really something that they might care to include. Even in the JP HMDS Cute, they had to make the bs excuse that the Harvest Goddess "blessed you with a baby" if you married one of the special brides instead of the men.
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ReineRolab posted...

HitTheGroundWal posted...

They've made a work around recently though~

Oh?

There's decently robust character customization, hair, outfits, etc. And none of it is genderlocked. So there's nothing stopping someone from selecting male at the start, and giving them a female name and early on you can get them female clothing, and pronouns don't come up often. So while it's not perfect, you can more or less be gay.
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Chaosmaster00 posted...

they had to make the bs excuse that the Harvest Goddess "blessed you with a baby" if you married one of the special brides instead of the men.

if theyve done it before, why not keep doing it?
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I have pretty fond memories of playing A Wonderful Life, and the only thing that enticed me to even get the game was from seeing it in Nintendo Power.
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HitTheGroundWal posted...

ReineRolab posted...

HitTheGroundWal posted...

They've made a work around recently though~

Oh?

There's decently robust character customization, hair, outfits, etc. And none of it is genderlocked. So there's nothing stopping someone from selecting male at the start, and giving them a female name and early on you can get them female clothing, and pronouns don't come up often. So while it's not perfect, you can more or less be gay.

Yeah, I will stick to games like Stardew Valley that actually respect and acknowledge my existence.

So by that logic, I shouldn't play any game with relationships that shows or implies consummating of the relationship in order to progress said relationship, or if not doing so damages it somehow. *looks over at ME trilogy*
Geez man, I was just trying to help, there's no need to be so harsh. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but it's a really good start.

I understand it's upsetting, but I prefer to be happy that progress has been made, rather than get all angry that it's not perfect yet. Because this is a lot more than it used to have. They could've genderlocked and hair clothing, but they didn't.
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HitTheGroundWal posted...

So by that logic, I shouldn't play any game with relationships that shows or implies consummating of the relationship in order to progress said relationship, or if not doing so damages it somehow. *looks over at ME trilogy*
Geez man, I was just trying to help, there's no need to be so harsh. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but it's a really good start.

I understand it's upsetting, but I prefer to be happy that progress has been made, rather than get all angry that it's not perfect yet. Because this is a lot more than it used to have. They could've genderlocked and hair clothing, but they didn't.

I am not being snippy at you, I am being snippy at the devs.

Indeed, Stardew Valley has assumed the mantle, imo-- it's everything I loved about HM for SNES and N64, plus a wonderful sandbox element. Such a cozy game.
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It's really not how it came off. You could've said "That's not really enough for me, unfortunately."

Honestly though, with how Japan is a bit slower to put gay options in their games, I kinda feel like not genderlocking hair and clothing was their way of trying to sneak in an option without causing an uproar.

Now I ended up reading a really interesting article about it, focusing on the second of the three 3DS games, all of which allow this.
https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/the-queerness-of-story-of-seasons-54657a2e4b18

Polycosm posted...

Indeed, Stardew Valley has assumed the mantle, imo-- it's everything I loved about HM for SNES and N64, plus a wonderful sandbox element. Such a cozy game.

I do keep meaning to get that, but I can never get around to it for a couple reasons.
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