Introduction: Clearly in the GBA's life there have been many weird and wonderful games but just when I thought I'd seen them all, Harvest Moon landed on my desk. 'Build and maintain a farm while befriending the town's people' it says in the press release, which is not only the shortest blurb I've ever read but also makes for a potentially open ended gaming experience. It's not the first time the game's appeared on a Nintendo handheld though, a little digging revealed a handful of Harvest Moon titles that have appeared on the Gameboy Color. I worked on a farm when I was a lot younger but this is my first journey into the virtual world of farming and I'm expecting great things. Shorter hours, less work and absolutely none of those strange odors that seem to occur randomly as you're driving through the countryside - in the UK anyway?

GamePlay: Harvest Moon starts out with you inheriting a farm from an old man you befriended as a child. The problem is that while you have fond memories of visiting the farm years ago you have absolutely no idea how to grow and nurture crops or, for that matter, how to tell one end of a sheep from another. Before you even get to the game though the cart prompts you to name everything from the farmer to his dog in order to fully personalize your experience. It's not completely hopeless at the beginning because you have the bare essentials of land, tools, several buildings and some cash but unfortunately the farm is in a state of disrepair and you'll need to spend some time readying the land before you even think about actually planting anything. Once you've done this it's all about spending to accumulate and although things start out slowly you can end up with a reasonable sized farm at the end of the season. This is all down to success of course because while there are always people willing to buy your produce, you have to actually grow it in the first place. The seasons last for 30 days before your crops wither away and so the cycle begins again. Obviously time management is also important here because while each day can last as long as you want it's only actually 10 minutes in 'real' time.

Clearly all this is something of a stretch for even the most physical of humans so one of the keys to your success is befriending spirits who will allow you to run your farm a great deal more smoothly. There are a number of ways to gain the spirits' friendship but the best and quickest is to give them gifts and they'll be working for you in no time at all. In order to keep them motivated though you'll have to keep them happy but get the balance right and you'll gain some all important quality time because even if you succeed in your work you may have a bit of an empty social life, especially if your relationship with most villagers only amounts to a nod or a friendly 'hello'. You also have further aspirations: a girlfriend, a wife (one or the other), a family and even a cottage in the village. Getting the balance just right is probably the game's most difficult aspect though because dedicating too much or too little time to anything generally means that something, somewhere is about to go horribly wrong. Anything can fail, for example, cattle can die, crops can fail, you can be near to bankruptcy but it's just a case of dusting yourself off and maybe trying a different strategy.

It's not all about working hard though because if you push yourself too much things start to unravel. Spend too much time cultivating the land or caring for your livestock for example and you'll get incredibly tired, occasionally falling asleep on the spot. It's wise to spend some time away from the farm altogether, we enjoyed relaxing in the hot springs. There are also a handful of mini-games to enjoy with the spirits and even the local village has a range of activities. If all this isn't enough (and believe us it is) there's even a Game Cube link-up feature available, which unlocks a whole host of new features. Finally it goes without saying that there is a battery back-up but strangely there only appear to be two slots, still it's better than what would probably have to be a 23-digit pass code.

Control: While Harvest Moon doesn't require any pixel-perfect collision detection it' s still a pretty complicated affair. Fortunately this is taken care of by helpful villagers who will gladly give you a run down of anything that crops up throughout the game. You'll only ever be given a new piece of information when you absolutely need it though so you don't have complete overload. What Harvest Moon is all about is menus and stats and even though these change depending on what you're doing it's still all very accessible and incredibly intuitive.

Graphics: The visual style here is simple but still retains a certain degree of charm. More importantly though it's always functional and, given the amount of information you're dealing with here, arguably the clarity of the graphics is more important than how pretty they appear. If you've encountered any Japanese RPGs you've seen this all before and while everything is representative of its 'real life' counterpart we were a little concerned when the sheep appeared to be the same size as the cow on the title screen. Genetic engineering? Your guess is as good as ours.

Sound & Music: The music, whilst pleasant enough, is nothing you haven't heard before either as this well-composed sound chip score appears to be used by most Japanese RPGs. More impressive are the various sampled farm sounds such as cows and sheep but we're still not entirely convinced by our main character's footsteps, which are accompanied by what can best be described as a water droplet sound effect.

Final Comments: Like The Sims and The Urbs, Harvest Moon asks you to put your own life on hold and immerse yourself in a digital alternative and it really is so pleasant you'd be a fool to turn down the invitation. Unlike most games of this nature though hard work and the short day, mixed with the sheer volume of tasks mean you're completely exhausted by the end of the farm week, not to mention the hours you'll burn up in 'real' time. It's all pretty simple stuff as far as the presentation is concerned with the emphasis always on the gameplay. It's hard to recommend Harvest Moon without warning gamers about just how much time this game will eat up so if you've played it before you'll know what to expect but for everyone else: Beware!

Pro: Hours of Gameplay.
Con: You'll Get Older Playing It.
Final Score: 8.7


Reviewed by: Andrew Blanchard