Probably More Than You Wanted To Know

I'd hesitated to opine on Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness because the Harvest Moon series is so niche, but enough of you requested, and I am nothing if not a Servant of the People.

I actually find the franchise in general to be fascinating. It's really evolved so little since its inception. You are a farmer. You grow crops in 6 x 6 squares and sell them; you raise and care for cows, chickens and sheep, and you sell milk, eggs and wool. You make your house bigger. The seasons pass, you make friends with the townsfolk and you get married, and that's about it.

The game's primary elements hinge of the farming, fishing, animal care and general cash-raising, and the elements of socializing with the townsfolk are somewhat optional and secondary. But that's really the most interesting part -- that, and the fact that time passes. When fall comes, the scenery turns red and gold; pink cherry blossoms abound in the springtime. The evolution of seasons and the evolution of relationships alongside it provide, together, emotional impetus to continue and to invest in what is essentially an enormously simplistic grind in terms of gameplay.

Simplistic in that you push the same button to repeat the same tasks over and over -- but Harvest Moon has always been especially complex, even speaking in sheer technical terms when you think about the number of stats, both visible and invisible, that your gameplay affects. If you're not familiar with the series, just take a quick glance around the Ushi no Tane fan resource. This is probably my favorite FAQ/fansite for any game ever, because it's so comprehensive. When I bought Island of Happiness, I happened to see the game's companion strategy guide, and it's so dense you could stop a door with it, so there's quite a lot to catalog, but this site has got it all.

So while it's repetitive, there's tons for imaginitive players to sink their teeth into. I've always played it only on the portable; I've never played a console Harvest Moon, because it's the sort of thing you do in short bursts on the subway or for a lazy, soothing hour or two after dinner.

If the series has a flaw, it's that it's struggled to find useful ways to iterate on a complex formula. It also tends to have quality issues in each version, like pretty major bugs -- the DS one has a bug that makes it literally impossible for the player to accomplish certain things, for example, and it also has one that, once the player learns to game it, can allow you to gain overnight more money than you could ever raise on your own, so much as to demotivate the gameplay.

Longtime franchise fans will be glad to know that Island of Happiness seems, at least 10-15 hours in as I am, to have resolved a lot of the quality issues. They'll be less glad to know about the new control scheme. It's entirely stylus-driven; if you prefer to move with the D-pad, guess what? You can't. It feels very weird at first, a steep barrier to entry for those expecting a familiar experience, but you do grow accustomed to it.

The major flaws with the control scheme are, firstly, the fact that the stylus now often points the player on a diagonal, but you still can use many of your tools only facing up, down, left or right. Adding so many natural diagonals means that if you're trying to chop wood, for example, you'll miss, and kind of have to wiggle yourself so that you're the proper proximity from the log. Plus, you pick up or interact with items by touching them with the stylus -- running over to a log or stone to chop it might result in you picking up the log or stone instead.

Second, placing and throwing stones and logs is nothing short of a major pain. With the button-based controls, you could essentially walk to where you wanted to place an item and set it down directly in front of you -- now, you place or throw by tapping and then dragging the item from your hands to where you want it, but this is always a trial-and-error process. Like most things with the new controls, it does get easier with practice, but still a pain.

You automatically put anything you pick up into your rucksack, too. So basically, the major problems come down to picking things up and putting them down when you want to, but the majority of the control issues are things to which you quickly become accustomed.

The game's look is finally updated in a clean, constructive way. It's still top-down, thankfully (gag me over the PSP versions), but graphically it's pretty good looking. And the difficulty curve is way, way steeper. Weather affects your ability to do your tasks much more than it ever did, items now have quality grades that affect their shipping price, it' s much harder to keep your stamina up and the world unfolds for you much more slowly.

The steeper difficulty curve is actually kind of a boon, though -- this isn't a game where you'll wham-bam everything by year 3 and have nothing else to do. Rather, it's a more gradual process of chipping away at a broader series of goals. You're tasked with restoring the whole island, not just your farm, so in addition to expanding your house and barns and so forth, you're building roads, bridges to new areas and things like that. I had always felt something of a schism between my home and the town, so making the entire works your character's purview helps dissolve that a bit.

The town population is likeable -- and ever growing. The more you accomplish, the more people move in. There are like 90-something total characters to unlock in the game, but the vast majority of these are sort of portrait-less filler sprites that show up in response to achievements you've made -- like, ship a certain number of fish and little fisherman dudes start showing up at the town's watering holes, just standing there all day. Other major characters do require you reach certain areas or complete certain growth requirements before they're attracted to the land. Some of them will also move out if you don't talk to them or take care of the land. This makes maintaining your social relationships a necessary task and not an optional one, but it doesn't feel all that burdensome.

Summary judgment: It's good, much more solid than it usually tends to be, if you're tenacious about dealing with some things that are different from what you're used to.

I'm sure many of you wanted a more experiential analysis, and I'll be getting to that shortly. I'd like to explore what really makes the series tick, and why it's so challenging for it to make really constructive strides forward, and try to pin down what makes it so appealing that I persist with it when design issues like Harvest Moon's probably would have made me ditch any other title.

Meanwhile, got questions? Leave 'em in the comments, and I'll answer them in the next post.

Oh, and before you ask, yes, the bachelorettes are cuter than ever, although there seem to be fewer than ever, with no "special" or secret brides that I can discern. The bachelors? Well, they're better than usual, if that makes sense -- this is the guy I'm hung up on. I love distant jerks. <3 And I would like to play Tree of Tranquility on Wii, but it hasn't shown up yet. I think it's delayed.