After a year of being released in the rest of the world, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning finally makes its way to the EU. The eleventh addition to the portable series, there are many additions the game has to offer for players new and old.
Echo town is your new home, as with all Harvest Moon games you have inherited a farm and this is the basis of your life in game. Before you start off your new way of living, you meet Dunhill – the Mayor and old friend of your parents. He starts off the extensive tutorials that the game makes you follow through. When I say extensive, it takes forever to actually finish any of the tutorial bits before you to be able to wander around on your own. It would be nice if there were an option to skip out on the tutorials for the veterans of the series but alas, you have to put up with it and storm on through. The positive side to the tutorials is that they are very detailed. New players will be able to grasp the basics and idea of the game easily so they can ease in to the game, which is better then being thrown into the deep end.
Eventually you become the go-to person to help the town regain its prosperity with the Town Restoration Project that you work on once you unlock your workshop. It’s your job to build houses for new villagers and decorations into the town to make it nice and pretty. Each villager will add something new and helpful into the town. It does take a while to get them all moved in, unfortunately, they all have a certain day on the year they move in on. A couple have certain requirements that need to be met before they move in as well.
Friendships in Harvest Moon are important – The better the friendship that you have with people in the town, the more things you can unlock. Some unlocks are more blueprints that will aid your life in game and others are just customisation options to make your town look pretty. Marriage is still part of the series, with 6 available bachelors if you are playing the female character or 6 bachelorettes if you are playing the male. It takes a while to become good enough friends with your future partner before you are able to propose, since you can only gift people once a day to increase your friendship points. Once you are married, they will move into your farm and you are able to start a family. You can even go on holidays with them once you unlock the Travel Agent!
Unlike Animal Crossing, there is some form of structure and story to the game – The Town Restoration Project, but outside of that you are pretty much free to do what you want. Will you make a farm that grows lots of crops? Or one that has lots of animals? You can also wander around in the areas outside of town to fish, gather crafting materials and bugs to sell. Bear in mind that a day in game isn’t in real time, so you have to decide how you want to go about everything to make the best use of your time. I ended up scheduling my time to fit in as much as I could, before I had to be back home to get my night’s rest for the work the next day.
As more villagers move into the town there are a lot more customisation options that open up to you. There is a hairdresser and a tailor so you can change your clothes; you can also change the interior of your house with different styles, wallpapers and flooring options. If you like customising, then you’ll enjoy the Studio that unlocks on your farm, which allows you to change the entire layout of the town.
Graphically the game isn’t impressive. It’s the first “3D” portable Harvest Moon which is a step up, but don’t expect anything amazing. The style is simple and cute which fits in well with the overall theme of the game. There are a large variety of camera options for you to play around with. You are able to move the camera further and closer away from your character, so that you can find something that suits your choices, and you can move the camera around your character to see more of the areas around the town.
The available areas that you can come across in EchoTown aren’t extensive. There is the farm, the town, the festival area and then 3 further areas outside the town that are immediately available to the player. Once you have the Travel Agent, then there are other exotic places that you can visit and find fun things to bring back to town and sell or gift to villagers.
There is a night and day cycle in the game which introduces new things depending on the time of day. Certain critters and animals are only seen in the wilderness at night, and each villager has their own little schedule of wandering around depending on the time of day. There are also certain events that only happen during a specific time and day, for example Heart Events while you are wooing your future partner can only be seen providing you have the right friendship level, are in the right place at the right time and on the right day.
Music also changes during the day, with a nice upbeat little background track while you are wandering throughout the day, whereas at night time, you get ambient night noises like owls hooting to let you know that it’s officially evening. This time will change in game depending on the season that you’re currently in, so in the summer the night will be later than in the winter.
Harvest Moon isn’t a game that will appeal to everyone. It’s a nice little niche of RPGs that you need to know that you enjoy before you delve into it. If you’re not a fan of simulation games then it’s not really something for you, since the main aspect of Harvest Moon is your little farm and building the town. I very much enjoyed playing the game, despite the long tutorial. It opens up to be a relaxing and nice little experience once you get past that initial wall. So now if you don’t mind, I have some vegetables and cows to attend to.
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