Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (Special Edition)
aka:
Bokujou Monogatari: Oh! Wonderful Life
Moby ID: 21945
PlayStation 2 version
Talk about a dead cow...
The Good
I try to be objective before I trash a game. Unfortunately, this is an exception to the rule.
The Bad
Hey, what console gamer hasn't heard or played Harvest Moon? I played the first, with it so-so graphics and even that was addictive as hell.
This version of Harvest Moon however is reason enough to kill off the series:
Well the thing is, its a console game. Console games usually tend to focus a bit more on graphics, or so I assume. The graphics on this game looks like it was released in the 90's not the 21 century. They made a somewhat ugly graphical 3D version of Harvest Moon in the game. Worse still, because of the graphics, everything is very slow. You move so slow that your cows would have gave birth before you reach the barn! Amazing how this game ever got released in the first place.
If moving around in slow-motion was bad enough, consider the fact that it takes forever to load every time you enter a different building. Anything more than 1 minute loading in-game is something unspeakable in the 21st century. Obviously the programmers wouldn't care less about that. If that wasn't enough, even clicking the dialogs are slow. If there's one thing I hate more than slow-motion moving is slow dialogs.
You know that the developers weren't serious about this game when you're talking about the story. You even know that the story wasn't serious from the start of the game: Old Man: You wanna be a farmer, boy? Choice: [1] Yes [2] No Boy: Nope. *enters Main Screen* Whaaaa? That's it? My god, someone actually came up with that dialog in the first place? Oh, my god!
In reference that the game is freakin' slow, you'll notice that after you tend your cows, its almost afternoon. What the Flying Cow? Someone obviously didn't notice the timing mechanics in this game. There isn't enough time to do much of anything in one day. Since most of the game has to do with chores of farming in the first place...any additional adventuring around has to do AFTER those chores are done. Or you could abandon those chores, but that wouldn't make you a very good farmer, know would it?
**The Bottom Line**
If your a Harvest Moon series fan, you'd probably already know by now from fellow gamers to stay away from this Harvest Moon disaster. For everyone else, you'd be have more fun imagining Harvesting at the Moon than actually playing this game. Time to get back to playing Harvest Moon 1. Now where did I put that emulator?
by Indra was here (20755) on December 13, 2006