Harvest Moon Animal Parade (Wii)
Released less than a month ago, Harvest Moon Animal Parade is one of the two latest additions to the Harvest Moon videogame series (Harvest Moon Sunshine Islands for the Nintendo DS is the other, released the same day here in the US). Being an enormous fan of the series (proudly owning a copy of each US release!), you can bet I had a copy reserved (not that Gamestop could get it to me…but that’s another story). I’m happy to tell everyone that the game is well worth the price (as long as you like this type of game, of course).
As ever, you get a farm (or ranch, depending on what they call it) and one of your goals is to run it well. How you do this is quite a bit to your own tastes (not quite as free as things were for Magical Melody, but quite free), specialize where you will: crop growing, animal raising, fishing the ocean & streams or mining for jewels day in, day out. Ultimate goal, save the land- a recurring trend in the later games (and not an unfamiliar hook to any roleplayer): the Harvest Goddess’ powers are weak, her tree is dying and you must restore them. To do this you must find, restore and ring the 5 Element Bells, summon the Harvest King and then you’ve fixed the main plot. But it doens’t end, as you can continue on in your little farmer life, wooing the local guys or gals (depending on if you decide to play as a male or female) and having children and working that ranch for all it’s worth. You can also buy secondary (and so on) homes that are scattered over the land & on a nearby island. Much fun.
But, this isn’t all that I want to say on the topic. One of the neatest things I find about this game (and indeed, pretty much any game of this type) is that though the big goal is the same, how different people play it seems to make a fairly remarkable difference. I will illustrate this by showing you how Grav & I are faring so far.
What’s the same? First, neither of us have completed the ultimate goal of the game (we’re still working on restoring the tree). Neither of us have played further in that Summer Year 1. Neither of us has married a local and settled down. We both still have the starter home and all the starter buildings.
What’s different? Well, our skill sets are, but that’s a little boring to get into much detail with. Suffice to say, what we do in the game makes a big difference in how our skills progress. Grav loves to mine, so her character has a higher skill with her hammer. I cut more grass to feed my animals with, so my sickle’s skill is superior to her’s. She’s chosen to play a female and seduce a local male villager, while I picked a male character, intent to woo the elusive (but not impossible) Harvest Goddess to be my wife. Other than that, I would leave all the remaining differences up to play style. Here we go:
Day Currently playing:
- Me: Year 1 Summer 16 (Day 44)
- Grav: Year 1 Summer 19 (Day 47)
Attempting to woo:
- Me: Harvest Goddess (back up is Candace)
- Grav: Wizard (back up is Chase)
Number of Elemental Bells rung (of 5):
- Me: 4
- Grav: 4
Number of Villagers with hearts:
- Me: 1
- Grav: 4
Number of Wild Animals with hearts:
- Me: 5
- Grav: 2
Number of Animals owned:
- Me: 1 Cow, 1 Chicken, 1 Duck, 2 Sheep
- Grav: 1 Cow, 1 Chicken, 2 Ducks, 1 Sheep
Cash on hand (Gold):
- Me: 34,993G
- Grav: 2,230G
Total gold earned to date (broken down by category, includes cash on hand):
Me-
- Farm 96,769G
- Animal 13,013G
- Mining 10,590G
- Fish 16,474G
- Other 33,560G
- Grand total 170,406G
Grav-
- Farm 58,832G
- Animal 2,810G
- Mining 42,740G
- Fish 3,844G
- Other 36,773G
- Grand total 144,999G
Well, there you go. Obviously, very different areas of concentration even though the meat of the game is the same. That’s just awesome. =)
