Reader Reviews

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)

by Tom Wark

I heard good things, years ago, about the quirky SNES title ‘Harvest Moon’. Described as a game where you try to establish a successful farm, find a girlfriend in the nearby town and get married, it sounded like possibly the most Japanese concept ever to hit Nintendo.

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is an updated version of the original, which fits quite comfortably on the GBA. There are new additions like mining (obviously), cooking and all new girls to woo, but overall the gameplay hasn’t changed that much. Which is fine - it’s still as charming as ever.

For a portable console game, it’s enormous. You can till the earth and grow a staggering variety of crops. You can keep all manner of livestock and plunder them for their precious natural bounties. You can play fetch with your pet dog, or spend quality time with your faithful horse. Or just forget the farm and spend the whole day fishing.

What impresses me is how much fun it all is, despite the fact that there is no great complexity to gameplay. Neither reflexes nor timing are required to succeed - just the ability to make easy decisions given ample time.. Playing with your dog is accomplished by pressing ‘a’. As is brushing your cow. And picking wild berries. And talking to girls, for that matter. These activities are simple, and are nearly impossible to screw up, but the game is engrossing because the dog is your pet, the girl has a crush on you, and the berries - well, they’re goddamn berries. They’re tasty, they’re seasonal, so you want them. That and the fact that they can be used to make fruit juice or jam buns.. Harvest Moon is a grand case of fun over gameplay, despite the fact that the two are often thought to be inseparable. The game is an experience, rather than a challenge, and it’s a fine one at that.

The graphics in Mineral Town are spot-on. While there are no flashy effects (it’s a farming game after all), the game delivers appropriate visual atmosphere every step of the way. Sunny days are bright and balmy, while the pouring rain and winter snow look sufficiently inclement. Objects all have neat, colourful 2D sprites and the manga-style closeups of each character are well drawn.

The game’s main shortcoming is that it leaves you wishing there was a greater level of complexity when interacting with the townsfolk. While simply ‘clicking’ on your animals to garner affection is fine, this feels a bit lacking when it comes to the other characters - particularly the girl you’re trying to marry. There are no response options or conversation trees, so communication is limited to giving gifts and gauging peoples likes and dislikes from their reactions.

While it takes a few minutes to come to grips with all the shortcuts, the controls are well designed, and largely overcome the GBA’s dearth of face buttons. You’ll have to do your fair share inventory juggling in the menus, but it’s never so irritating as to be a deal-breaker.