"Is that a farm in your pocket, or...?"

Harvest Moon is a long-running series from Natsume in which you raise a farm that was left for you by some random person who died (it changes every game how this person knew you). In this game, an old man you visited randomly as a child dies (yeah.) and you take over his farm! And, luckily for you, the thing is a pile of random trash that you have to clean. Fun, huh? But you get a puppy!

So, what exactly do you do in this game? Well, you're going to be doing just about anything a farmer does. Planting crops, grass, and flowers, raising animals, interacting with townsfolk, shopping for new tools or items for your farm, going into the mountain to chop wood or dig up some ore from the mine, and eventually finding a wife. There's quite a bit to do, just like any Harvest Moon game, and probably more to do than any previous version (actually, a bit too much).

Gameplay

The controls are decent for Friends of Mineral Town. Because of the lack of buttons on the GBA, there are a lot of functions that are difficult, such as taking things from your rucksack without opening the menu. Especially when doing this to rapidly ship things or turn eggs to mayonnaise or something, you could end up screwing up and mixing the contents up, making you take much longer to finish what you were trying to do. It's also pretty easy to "miss" things... throwing a crop on the ground and ruining it instead of throwing it in your shipping bin, jumping over a crop instead of stopping near it, etc. Though after playing for a long time, you get used to the quirky controls, it still is difficult for a while and you still mess up even once you've gotten used to them... which is very annoying.

Time is important in Harvest Moon, and the game plays out in real-time (its own clock, not the actual time of day in real life). You'll have a very short day to get everything done, and this is quite a challenge. But that's where the fun in the game comes from... making sure you can do everything efficiently. But the other problem is energy. You'll have to keep yourself alive by eating or taking medicine as you work... which really hinders your progress since medicine is very expensive and food just doesn't help enough. The tiny amount of daily energy given to you at the start of the game is very insufficient, and more of an annoyance than a challenge.

Surprisingly enough, the idea of raising crops and things is extremely addictive. You'll find yourself doing the same things again and again just to get another little heart next to your cow's name or something similar. And if you really want variety, you can have it. There are so many things you can aim for in this game, from catching special fish to mining through all of the mine (witch is annoyingly virtually impossible, and you'll never do it without hours and hours of your time and a detailed guide that either hacked into the coding of the game to figure out what to do or was written by someone with 600+ hours on their hands). Getting married is very intriguing, and you can choose every type of girl you'd want, from a drunken bimbo to a shy librarian (or even a Goddess that comes out of a pond...)

And to prove that there is TOO MUCH to do in this game, you can get congratulated by shipping one billion of the same item... and you can do that for every item... and some items you can only get a few times a year...

Sound

Harvest Moon sounds... very strange. While the music is fitting and you don't notice it much, the sound effects can be really annoying. Animals all sound really weird, and the menu makes animal sounds, too. Even as you run you hear what sounds like drops of water plopping into a bucket as your "footsteps." There isn't much to say about the sound, though you probably will always just keep it turned down anyway, as it's nothing really to listen to.

Graphics

The graphics aren't that bad for a GBA game. They're actually pretty close to the PS1 counterpart (Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is extremely close to the layout of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature for the Playstation), but they're in obvious 2-D. Sometimes things can look strange, but nothing is too out of place or scary looking. It's not as bad as the sound, but it's definitely nothing great.

Replay

With so many things to do, you will never ever tire of this game. Well, you could if you don't really try to do other things like fishing and stuff (because doing all that on top of balancing all your other farmwork is really time-consuming.) In fact, I tired of it after getting married and getting all the extensions possible on my farm. Once you complete what you've wanted in it, you really won't have a reason to play anymore. But I mean, you got what you wanted out of it, so you won't be dissatisfied. And some people just want EVERYTHING, so if you'll want to get everything in the game, you'll keep yourself occupied for a very long time.

Error city...

Harvest Moon has a lot of errors. A lot of fans of the series admit that this gives it some charm... but if you're not a fan of bad localization, you'll want to stay far away from Harvest Moon, especially Friends of Mineral Town. There are typos all over the game, and it gets as bad as characters randomly switching languages to German and Japanese. Sometimes the wrong person will talk, and there are glitchy things such as a woman who thinks every day is her birthday. There's even a glitch that freezes your game, and you come across this by watching the TV at a certain time of day, so it could really happen to you without you doing anything strange at all.

But it's PORTABLE!

Probably the best technical aspect about this game is that it is portable. Because you can easily pull it out and play a day in the game, this game is perfect for when you have short moments to pass by. And if you feel like playing for a long time, you can do that, too.

Overall

Overall, I don't think Friends of Mineral Town is a bad game. But if you're not interested in farming, you will probably hate this game -- but don't just push it aside. You might think it sounds very unappealing, but until you actually try it, you will never know. So many people think the game idea sounds ridiculous and wouldn't be fun at all, and end up becoming adamant fans of the series. I think that Friends of Mineral Town isn't the best game to start out with, but unless you want to hunt down the Nintendo 64 or SNES versions, you could easily pick this one up as your first.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/05