Gamecube - Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

Format
Gamecube
Publisher
Natsume
Developer
Marvelous
Country of origin
Japan
Genre
RPG

First Look at Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

By David Rasmussen
7th May 06

The world of Harvest Moon has not been the greatest lately.
Yes, we’ve had the excellent A Wonderful Life, and it’s “sequel” (remake) Another Wonderful Life, but for all the excellence in graphics and designs the game fell far short of expectations with a lackluster festival line-up, lacking interest in doing anything in town, as well as an overall downer on the game that was nice but could have been better.
Thankfully this game takes you back to the Harvest Moon you remember and loved in Harvest Moon : Magical Melody, aka Harvest Moon : Thank God We’re Not Going Back To Forget Me Not Valley! This means we’ll have the crops, variety of animals, a tonnage of festivals to party away at, loads of events to get into which was sadly missing from before, and a new experience that will remind you of the good old days of the franchise while taking it forward into new domains (even if in only a minor sense).

The first thing you’ll notice is that this game corrects the glaring problem that plagued A Wonderful Life slash Another Wonderful Life, in that this game you can play as either boy or girl WITHOUT having to purchase two separate games in order to do this. If they did this with Wonderful Life we wouldn’t have two likeminded games shoved into our hands that played practically the same with only gender being the difference between the two games, which thankfully wasn’t repeated in Magical Melody.

Also you receive the largest spread of choices in all things marriage because you are promised TEN potential significant others, for EACH GENDER! That means 10 wives for your man and 10 husbands for your girl… I’m guessing Magical Melody continues the Natsume/Harvest Moon policy of not opening the doors of same sex marriage. You know, don’t ask/don’t tell.

The second thing you notice is that the game gives you motivation in the form of a rival, which is a new thing in the Harvest Moon franchises. In previous games you went it alone, with only yourself or some vague motivator to get you successful (your father is coming to bring you home, or your village is being sold in the case of Save The Homeland) but this time there’s an actual motivation towards your success by plying you against an AI rival to motivate quicker growth by having you compete against this person on a daily basis. Everyday your productivity will be measured against that of the AI rival, and you both will be judged by how well (or how poorly) you both run your farms.
But this rivalry will not remain confined to the farm, with your rival facing off against you at festivals as well as during the day to day grind of farming life.

The usual promise, however, returns as once again the game promises to deliver a wide variety of crops and trees for your growing pleasure. That, yes, did pan out of the Wonderful Life games, so I guess it could pan out again… though I would like to see a bigger variety of recipes to cover the bigger variety of available food products that you will be growing. Then again considering how many recipes you can make in Harvest Moon : More Friends of Mineral Town you’d be hard pressed to one-up the massive menu available on that GBA port, though I’d like to see this game try it’s best.

Another same old promise returns in the animals. Raise cows, horses, sheep and chickens.
Yeah, looks like Wonderful Life was the only game that offered a new beast (goat), even if said new beast was a glitchy proposition that didn’t work out as well as it should have.

One new twist, which I welcome, is the first time use of multiplayer in the Harvest Moon franchise.
For the first time ever you can join up with three other players to play a variety of minigames, and while I don’t know what those minigames are it sounds rather interesting and I hope (once I get my hand on the game) it pans out and delivers a good playing experience.

Remember More Friends of Mineral Town, where you could purchase a plot of land in town to build a new vacation house? This game takes that idea and runs with it by allowing you to upgrade your farm through the purchase of different plots of land, which you can use to expand your farm by building various extensions over the land. This is a welcome new addition to the franchise as it means you’ll have more reason to save up your money, which should give you a new level of addictive gameplay that’ll keep you playing longer than you were compelled to play Wonderful Life.

A new sidequest that has you do something more than just farming.
Remember the first time I told you about the subplot about collecting musical notes? Here’s the exact story : It seems the Harvest Goddess has been turned to stone (no, she’s not taking the rock and hitting the smack, I mean Medusa God of War turn into statuary stone) and you need to find the scattered notes of a magical song that’ll bring the goddess back to life. This means you have yet another layer of playability to the game, which means you should not become bored by this version anytime soon from the varied amount of things you can do day in and day out (which is a welcome break from Wonderful Life where you peaked in things to do too quickly and became bored after awhile).

One strange thing, though, is the promise to combine the Harvest Moon world with the gameplay mechanics of… Animal Crossing? Apparently this version provides more depth by having you do Animal Crossing style activities in the game, which probably means you’ll have freeform gameplay where you can do work for neighbors, join in festival events, and other things. Of course this also means that we might be looking at the first realtime Harvest Moon, which is one of the trademarks of Animal Crossing.

Oh, and the mine returns. Yes, the fun of going mining to raise money returns!

Eating is not required… yeah, right. As always you have an energy meter, which you have to keep track of (though for once I hope they mean an ACTUAL meter since most games have usually depended on you interpreting the “moods” of your character in order to know when your low on energy). Sleep fixes this problem, but eating food can also raise your energy so you can keep working… eat, player, eat! Oh, and you can collect items to sell in town like herbs and foods (if you want to earn money without using up a lot of energy).

The game’s beginning is another new twist.
After you select your gender you’ll be given a chance to pick your choice of properties to own.
In previous games you had the one property, only this time you can pick a specific property (each specializing in a different trade you can undertake at the start of the game).
One of these lands excel in fishing and farming, while another property have lots of land but no fertile land for farming. Yet another land doesn’t have much space but is close to town, mountain and caves which makes it easier for you to commute to these for scavenging and mining.

The way this game is going you are going to have lots of things to keep you playing for hours and hours on end, meaning that Magical Melody may yet be the greatest Harvest Moon game ever made… short of the coming Nintendo DS version (which I will review soon once I can get ahold of it).
The game, however, was supposed to have been out by now but I haven’t seen this yet.
As soon as I can get ahold of this game it’ll be on the top of my review list so I can tell you about it ASAP.

-- David Rasmussen 7th May 06

Gamecube Harvest Moon: Magical Melody Images