juliko25

I give this sequel to the first Harvest Moon GameBoy Color game...a 73/100!

The first Harvest Moon game I ever played was the first one for the GameBoy Color via the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. That was basically a pint-sized port of the SNES game, but without marriage, character events, and it basically locked you to your farm and turned the town into a menu. Probably not the best game to get into the franchise with. It didn't help that a lot of requirements to get a good score at the end of the game were not only glitchy, but extremely hard to understand. That was my entry to the series back in 2016, and I did find it repetitive and at times frustrating, but I still liked it enough that I wanted to play other entries in the franchise. There are three GameBoy Color games for Harvest Moon in total, and I own all three, but haven't played the third one yet, only the first two, though from what I hear, the third game has a lot of issues. But I will say that out of the GBC games I've played so far, Harvest Moon 2 is the best one I've played.

Like the first game, you're tasked with running a farm, raising crops, taking care of livestock, getting to know the townspeople, and so on. But there's an actual storyline here this time around: The mayor of the town you move to says that in three years, a company will set up an amusement park, and apparently that's bad, so you need to run a successful farm within those three years if you want to prevent the amusement park from being built. This plotline would get reused in the games Save The Homeland and Hero of Leaf Valley, the latter of which is a remake of the former, and similarly to Homeland, you don't get to marry a potential bachelor/ette. But this game does give you the option of choosing your gender, even though it's completely inconsequential to the story.

The first Harvest Moon game was very, VERY barebones in terms of features, and there wasn't a lot that you could really do. Harvest Moon 2 improves on it by a country mile by adding a ton of new features, such as NPCs you can talk to (Even though they repeat their dialogue over and over again), foraging for items in the forest and mountains, bug catching, and a goal you can work towards. Plus, the game introduces sheep as livestock, but you can't raise them until you get a sheep barn, which unfortunately costs a lot of money to build. The game also introduces hothouses, where you can plant flowers and herbs in clay pots, and yes, they count as crops, so you're able to sell them, though you need the scissors tool to get them out of the pot when they've bloomed. Speaking of crops, the game even lets you plant crops during the winter, so you won't have to spend your winter days doing nothing! It also helps that the setting of the game is much bigger and more expansive than the first game, with your farm being much bigger, being able to explore the town and the mountain area.

That being said, don't go into this game expecting expansive character development or any semblance of action, because simulation games aren't necessarily for everyone. This is a game that's solely about owning a farm and being part of the community. As I mentioned before, you're unable to marry anyone in this game, something which has become a staple in many of the more popular games, both before and after this one. Anyone looking for hotblooded action will find this game terribly boring, and compared to games that would come later in the HM franchise, this one would also feel rather barebones and primitive due to the refinements made by later games. Furthermore, the game does require you to make a lot of money if you want to get certain facilities like the hothouse and the sheep farm, which can result in the game feeling rather grindy after a while, and this is on top of the fact that the game doesn't allow you to purchase cows or chickens until you have a lot of grass planted behind their barns/coops. The graphics are the same as the first game's, what with reusing character sprites for your farmer, the animals, and the crops, and since the game doesn't let you carry anything other than tools, foraging can be rather tedious.

In all honesty though, I still found Harvest Moon 2 to be very enjoyable. I can certainly say that I liked it way better than the first game for the GameBoy Color! While not necessarily groundbreaking in any way, Harvest Moon 2 is still a fun little romp that can serve as a pleasant time killer.

I give the remake of one of the best Harvest Moon games ever...a 90/100!

A few years ago (five to be exact), I decided to try out playing some new games, the Harvest Moon series being one of them. I didn't grow up with these little farming simulations like most people did, but I quickly started to see their appeal. Fast forward to today, and I am now Harvest Moon trash. Yes, really. I made so many good friends in this fandom, and at this point, I have no intention of digging myself out of this hole anytime soon. But when you ask HM fans what they consider to be the best Harvest Moon game, chances are they'll say Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. A GameBoy Advance port of the PS2 game Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, Friends of Mineral Town become revered and beloved for the new additions they brought to the game that inspired it, to the point that the characters and their in-game characterizations are the most common and widely accepted takes on them. So when it was announced to be getting a remake for the Switch last year, fans, myself included, were absolutely ecstatic. Now having come out in the US, a little over a year after it was first announced, how does it hold up in comparison to the original? Other than a few nitpicks and flaws, pretty darn well.

The story begins similarly to how Back to Nature did. Years ago, your main character spent a happy childhood on your grandfather's farm. Recently though, your grandfather died, leaving his farm in disrepair. You decide to take on the task of bringing this farm back to life and becoming part of the Mineral Town community. You do things like grow crops, raise livestock, forage for items, and getting to know the various townspeople. If you play your cards right, you may even get married and start a family of your own. While the original Friends of Mineral Town for the GameBoy Advance added a lot of new additions and improvements compared to its predecessor, Back to Nature, this remake, titled Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, takes this further. You can play as a boy or a girl, instead of buying a certain game to play as the gender you want, more crops are added such as chili peppers and azuki beans, more recipes are added as well, along with new ways to learn them,

(more to come soon)

I give this cute little farming series...a 93/100!

There's a lot of debate in the Harvest Moon fandom over which game is the best. Most people say Harvest Moon 64 is the best. I personally don't agree, as I tried playing it once and I just couldn't handle how different and faced paced it was compared to the later games. Others say the Playstation game, Back To Nature, is the best one. I haven't played that myself, so I can't vouch for that. Others say the GameBoy Advance games, the Friends of Mineral Town games, both of which are ports of Back To Nature, are the best. Personally, I consider Story of Seasons to be the best Harvest Moon game in my book, but now that I've played both Friends and More Friends of Mineral Town (Yeah, I know. Suuuuuch a creative title, right?), I do feel that the GBA games' popularity is more justified.

While the two games do have different backstories for your player character depending on their gender (For some reason if you want to play as a girl, you have to buy a separate game to do just that, as you can tell by the pictures above), the core story is relatively the same: You find yourself owning an overgrown farm and are tasked with bringing it back to life. You move into a new town, get to raise livestock, grow crops, and become a member of the community by getting to know the various townspeople. If you play your cards right, you may even manage to find romance, get married, and start a family. The thing about the FoMT games is that while they're technically ports of Back To Nature, it does change a lot of things from the transition from PS2 to GameBoy Advance. For one, the three-year deadline is axed, so you can play the game for as many in-game years as you want without any sort of penalty. More character focused events and cutscenes are added, especially heart events for when you try to romance a chosen bachelor/ette, and it provides more things to do than just farming and talking to people, such as upgrading tools to their highest levels and connectivity with the GameCube game, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. From what I've heard and read, a lot of people really appreciate the games for trying all of this stuff out.

(more to come soon)

I give Harvest Moon's 20th anniversary game...an 88/100!

After the company Marvelous made their own English translation company and took back the Bokujo Monogatari franchise from Natsume, the company that translated the games from day one, many thought that the Harvest Moon franchise, now renamed Story of Seasons, was dead in the water. Even more so since Natsume began making their own farming sim games using the name Harvest Moon, relying on the brand recognition to make easy money. But after people discovered Natsume's HM games were...poorly made at best, and recognizing that Story of Seasons is the franchise they know and love, the franchise is still thriving even to this day. In 2016/2017, Marvelous would release the last Story of Seasons game for the 3DS called Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. I played it like hell because it introduced a lot of fun and new ideas and built on a lot of things the previous 3DS games for the series introduced. I originally rated this slightly lower, but after replaying it, I've come to appreciate it a lot more.

One thing the game really sold me on is the fact that your player character actually has a family. The story is about you, the player character, wanting to become a farmer, but due to your father's job making you move around all the time, you've never been able to do so. One day, your character decides to move out of the house to become a farmer. But the father, Daryl, is heavily opposed to the idea, knowing that farm life is not a walk in the park. But the MC is steadfast and refuses to budge, intent on moving to another town and becoming the best farmer they can be, enough to prove to Daryl that they can handle it. Your farm is just outside of three different towns; the Western-themed Westown, the beachside Hawaiian style town of Lulukoko, and the Japanese-themed town of Tsuyukusa. The MC has to both make their farm a success and get to know the various townspeople, gradually becoming an important member of all three communities. This has about the same premise as Tale of Two Towns, in the form of having several locations to go to instead of just two or three, but the characters thankfully don't act like complete idiots this time around, and Trio introduces a lot of neat mechanics to make things more fun.

For those of you who didn't like Story of Seasons' getting rid of the shipping box, don't worry, it comes back here. Like the previous game, planting seeds yields much more crops than simply one crop at a time with every seed you plant (Each seed plants nine crops), and fertilizers are given more complex mechanics as well. Instead of just using one fertilizer, you're given a total of five, eventually six, different types of fertilizer, with each one increasing a crop's color, sweetness, size, and juiciness, along with one that yields more crops than the usual number, not counting upgrades. A lot of people I know feel this mechanic makes using fertilizer more difficult, but I personally like it, as the crop contests require that crops be evaluated on all those things, giving you much more reason to use them, so it doesn't feel like the game is just forcing you to use them for the sake of it. Also, for anyone who hated that you couldn't receive certain things, like animals, crops, or special gadgets, until a certain amount of time passed, don't worry: Trio does away with time-locked advancements as well. Instead of simply waiting for enough time to pass to unlock them, you have to fulfill various tasks to progress through the game, which mostly come from increasing the towns' rankings and fulfilling the tasks your family gives you early in the game.

As far as the graphics go, they're about the same as the previous game that came before this, but with the overworld sprites having much nicer, less derpy-looking faces. The character portraits are a bit rounder and more chibi-esque than the previous game, but they do have their own charm to them. The soundtrack is definitely a lot more varied, with a larger repertoire of background music for events than the previous game did. Not as much as, say, Stardew Valley, but I still found Trio's BGM variety to be an improvement over Story of Season's, and that's my favorite HM game ever! I do have to admit, I don't like that Trio did away with swimming in the river and walking while watering crops simultaneously. I really liked those mechanics. But it does make up for that by giving food special effects. You're able to cook your own food based on recipes, which is always good, but by eating them, most foods give you special abilities such as being able to use your tools longer, restoring energy after expending it, slowing down or speeding up time, and running faster.

But you can't have a good farming sim without good characters to go with it, so how does Trio fare in that aspect? Actually, surprisingly well. I didn't like the cast for A New Beginning, as many of them were either uninteresting or plain intolerable. Story of Seasons was slightly better, but didn't have much variety, though I genuinely loved several characters in that. Trio's cast is the best out of all of them, with every character, from the bachelor/ettes to the NPCs you talk to every now and again, all having their own sets of personalities, flaws, quirks, and charms that make them fun to follow. Plus, the bachelor/ettes are not only given many more heart events, but said events are made much longer, giving them much more depth and nuance to them than previous games did, something I genuinely appreciate, even though I can see how others would find their length and the fact that there's so many of them rather tedious. The fact that the game even cares enough to not only show the player character's family on screen, but show them interacting with the MC on multiple occasions, is definitely a feature I appreciate, as other games never even bothered to do this, making it feel much more authentic and intriguing. But not all of its characters are good though, as there are two I genuinely dislike: Iluka, for being a massive spoiled brat in her heart events, and Moriya, for the way he constantly treats Sumomo, a ten-year-old child, like a troublemaker and causing all of her issues. I wanted to smack him upside the head so many times, it's not even funny.

I can't really find much in the way of flaws, other than the little things I just described, and even here, I don't think they affect the game's overall quality in any way. It's like the creators realized the mistakes they made in Tale of Two Towns and decided to see if they can do it better, and I think they succeeded here. Trio of Towns is definitely one of the best Harvest Moon games to come out in the 2010s, and a great way to end the 3DS era of HM games. Granted, I do like Friends of Mineral Town (both original and remake) and Story of Seasons better, but Trio is still in my top three favorite HM games, so it's still high up there in regards to being one of my favorites. I can wholeheartedly say that this is an entry that every Harvest Moon fan should play at least once. I'm even writing a fan fic based on this game! That has to say something about its quality, right?!

I give this drastically formula-changing Harvest Moon game...a 73/100.

Looking at Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns' premise, you would think this would be one of the best Harvest Moon games out there. It completely changes the formula of the series in many different ways, such as having a substantial storyline instead of just raise animals, grow food, and get married. It also lets you change your characters' clothes, you get to go to two places instead of being stuck in one place, it offers a new variety of pets such as alpacas, owls, and St. Bernard dogs, all of the bachelor/ettes look great, you can actually go on real dates with them rather than just trigger their flower events, and there are even ones you have to unlock manually if you want them hard enough. With a new and improved animation style and a catchy soundtrack that changes depending on the events that happen, you would think that Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns would be an undisputed masterpiece among Harvest Moon games.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. Don't get me wrong, this definitely isn't a bad game by any means. But it has a lot of problems and flaws that really hold it back.

The general premise is simple. Two towns, Bluebell and Konohana, have been feuding since olden times, namely because their mayors are too stupid and immature to be civil for two seconds. Their behavior angers the equally stupid Harvest Goddess, so much so that she causes an earthquake where rocks fall in the tunnel in the mountain that connects the two towns, blocking both of them off for good. Years later, you, the farmer, move into one of the towns, and are tasked with making the two towns stop fighting, because obviously the Harvest Goddess can't be bothered to fix her own mistake because she's too shallow, selfish, and lazy for her own good. You also get to fulfill requests for people, kinda like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's requests, only people want items and give items in return if you're able to give them what they want, and you can participate in cooking contests, which is the fastest way to make the mayors stop hating each other.

As you can't tell, Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns does have an overarching storyline rather than just run a farm, grow food, raise animals, and get married. Unfortunately, one of this game's biggest flaws is that said story relies completely on certain characters acting as immature, stupid, and downright idiotic as possible, to rage-inducing levels. The whole feud could have been solved had the two mayors been civil for just two seconds, rather than just flinging terrible, G-rated insults at each other like little kids in the school yard, and the mayors are fully grown adults, for crying out loud! Not only that, any hatred the two have for each other doesn't even last long anyway, as if you win the cooking contests enough times, they actually do start to become civil with each other, making the entire conflict not only completely pointless, but leaving it with no lasting impact on anything or anyone whatsoever. You could cut the storyline out entirely and nothing would be lost.

I wish that was the end of Tale of Two Towns' flaws, but unfortunately, it isn't. Two Towns has a lot holding it back from being a truly great game. One is that it takes FOREVER for anything to get done! Oftentimes, people request items you're not able to get right away, and the requests are always on a deadline, so even if you manage to get the item, you might miss the deadline for the request, which is really stupid. Why make them request items that are impossible to even get the first time around? This also applies to really important things, like expanding your field or house. These particular achievements only appear once a month, and if you don't have enough materials, you're not going to be able to fulfill that request again until it pops back up at random, and even those acquire hard to get materials such as Ore Stones. It can take many in-game years for you to even get anything done, especially if you want your character to get married and have a child. And if your request involves crops, do be careful not to let those things rot! Yes, crops can actually rot and spoil if you keep them for too long. This can be rectified somewhat if you have horse carts at a certain level, but those don't keep them fresh completely. So even if you have the crops, they could very well spoil if enough time passes! And you NEED certain crops if you even have a sliver of a chance of winning those cooking contests, let alone entering them! Speaking of crops and cooking, the game holds cooking contests every week, each with a different theme. You're basically browbeaten into participating because of how frequently the game throws these cooking festivals at you, more so because you cannot progress through the main story without participating in them. Combined with the game not allowing you to grow as many crops as you'd like, along with making crops spoil after time passes, it makes the cooking festivals feel more tedious than enjoyable. Oh, and did I mention you can't even access the mine until you completed certain requests, even AFTER you finish the main story?

Not helping matters are the mechanics behind feritlizers and increasing your crops' star quality. The game practically forces you to buy fertilizer, which is expensive in-game, and not just one batch of it either, but huge amounts of it if you want your crops to even get past three stars. Plus, when tilling your fields, the game wants you to make trenches, which allows you to make fertilizing your crops easier rather than having them take up one individual hole. But the game also wants you to completely circle your crops with it, and I could never figure out how to make trenches for the life of me. For a game part of a franchise that's supposed to be relaxing and laid-back, it seems like it's actively trying to turn you off to actually doing anything.

But wait, you say, surely Tale of Two Towns has SOME redeeming qualities about it, right? As few as they are, it goes have some good points. For one, when you're trying to romance someone, you not only get to go on dates with them, and having the locations of said dates affect how it turns out, you can't simply increase their heart level and then marry them. You also have to raise the heart levels of their family members and close friends, making the dating sim aspect feel much more organic and true to life in the fact that you really have to put in the work to woo your chosen bachelor/ette. The soundtrack is pleasant to listen to, the graphics are cute and look really good by Nintendo DS standards, and other than Cheryl, the mayors in the beginning, and the awful, egotistical Harvest Goddess, I found the characters to be pretty likeable. Not the most three-dimensional or fleshed out, but serviceable enough. I only wish several characters had been expanded on more, like Georgia, Nori, and Kamil. I also find it adorable that the 3DS version of the game made petting your animals into a cute mini game and that you can literally get an owl for a pet! How cool is that?! Fair warning, though: For anyone wanting to buy the game in any way, for the love of the Harvest Goddess, DO NOT buy the 3DS cartridge version! I hear that it is HORRIBLY buggy, from being unable to load character sprites to even outright deleting your save data! But if you do want to play it on the 3DS, either just get the DS version, or buy it off the 3DS eShop. You'll save yourself a LOT of pain that way.

I feel bad for being so hard on Tale of Two Towns, because it could have been a great game had it been free of so many of the problems mentioned above. While it's by no means a BAD Harvest Moon game, it's definitely one of the more flawed and tedious ones, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a leisurely gaming experience.

Here's a list of my personal top 9 favorite video games! I don't have enough for a top ten or fifteen, so I'm just going with eight.


10. Tales of Zestiria
I have a LOT to say about this one, which I already did in my review, so I don't feel the need to elaborate on it here. It's not the first Tales game I've ever played (That honor goes to Abyss), it IS the first Tales game I ever completed and invested myself in. While it's not as good as other games I've played, namely due to having an annoying battle system, a cliche story, gigantic plot holes the size of China, unanswered questions, wasted potential, and huge storytelling/character development opportunities being completely thrown to the wayside, I still really enjoyed this one. The characters are all very charming, quirky, and subtle, the graphics are fantastic, the world design is beautiful (though from what I heard, Berseria's tops it), the English dub is amazing, I love the morally gray tone it develops near the end, and it honestly felt very satisfying to me. It's not the best game ever, but I wouldn't call it bad simply because of its flaws. I'd play this game a thousand times over just to replay my favorite scenes...and in general, I love it that much.


9. A Little Lily Princess
Nobody, I mean NOBODY, expected such a thing like this to exist, but it does! One would think this would turn out to be a terrible disaster, but as it turns out, it's actually a really good game! Sure, it's super easy to play and there's very little challenge involved, but the story and well developed characters more than make up for it. The game really adds to the characters, fleshing them out and giving them full arcs (Jesse being the most prominent example) and adding so many layers to them. Plus, it's very faithful to the original novel all the same, no matter which route you go down. My only real gripes with it is that Miss Minchin is still a cliche villain character with zero redeeming qualities, and that the costumes are VERY out of place in Victorian era London. But if you're looking for a good visual novel that's a breeze to get through, then A Little Lily Princess is sure to be a nice little time killer.


8. Kirby Triple Deluxe
Like Pokemon, I've been playing Kirby games since I was a kid, though lately I kind of drifted away from Kirby because of real life obligations. That being said, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror and Nightmare In Dreamland are still very close to my heart. But I bought Kirby: Triple Deluxe recently, and I was extremely impressed, namely because the character designs for the villains are absolutely beautiful, especially the final one. This game has the best villain designs in all of the games I've played, and not only that, they manage to improve on previous villains such as Wispy Woods by giving them different forms and new sets of attacks that put the old villains to shame, and said villains can be pretty durn hard to beat. Trust me. Do you know how long it took me to battle the final villain in Arena Mode?! I also like the storyline, even if it is cliche, and that they actually give the main villain a backstory. Plus, the soundtrack is very nice, the setting and designs are also beautiful, and Kirby gets new powers and abilities such as Beetle and Bell, both of which are pretty kick butt. I hear that Kirby: Planet Robobot is a better sequel to this game, and I haven't played it yet, though plan to. Still, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a game you don't want to miss out on if you want a fun, entertaining, and challenging Kirby adventure that'll keep you on your toes.


7. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers
A Pokemon game where you can become a Pokemon, explore dungeons, and defeat bad guys?! Sign me up! Pokemon Mystery Dungeon in general was a huge step-up for Pokemon games that weren't the main games. But while the first PMD games were relatively good, Explorers improved on them in every single way, giving the partner and player characters more personality and depth, something that had never been attempted for Pokemon before, implementing a darker storyline that raised the stakes, better animation, a more expansive world and setting, and far more stuff to do, such as find rare items. My personal favorite has to be Sky, and let's face it, everyone loves Sky, and for good reasons: Shaymin isn't an annoying brat as he is in the Giratina and the Sky Warrior movie, and it actually provides character development for other characters that were previously given the shaft before! What's more? You can play through said flashbacks! People love the Explorers PMD games, and I do, too. In fact, Sky was the very first Pokemon game to ever make me cry! That has to say something!


6. Harvest Moon: Mineral Town series
This entry applies to both Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town. This game, along with Back To Nature and Harvest Moon 64 are widely considered to be the best Harvest Moon games ever. I haven't played BTN, and I tried to play 64 but couldn't figure it out, and it was way too clunky for me. Thankfully, Friends of Mineral Town was very easy to get into. It's very simple (Though cooking is a pain if you don't look up the recipes online), winning over your desired bachelor/ette is decently challenging, there's a lot to do, the characters are all very quirky and interesting, while still vague enough to be open to interpretation, the graphics are great for its time, and it's just a sweet, relaxing, fun little romp that you can sit back and enjoy without feeling like you have to finish it all in one year or something. Definitely recommend FoMT if you want a nice little time killer and are bored of action games.


5. Earthbound
Everyone I know loves this game. I hadn't even heard of this game series if it wasn't for one of my favorite game reviewers. Once I finally managed to get my hands on it, I found it to be fantastic. It's no surprise why people love this game. The cartoony graphics and designs are very reminiscent of old 80s slice-of-life cartoons, the monster designs are very creative (Where in any other RPGs can you find sentient mushrooms that can poison you and mess up your controls?), the characters, while a bit one-dimensional, are decently likeable, the dialogue and script can be down right hilarious at times, and it can get pretty serious and creepy when it wants to. Plus, you get to travel all over the place, to lush beaches, to an underground world full of dinosaurs, a vast desert, creepy swamps, etc. If you're looking for something that'll really keep you on your toes, Earthbound is the way to go.


4. Tales of Symphonia
No surprise there. Tales of Symphonia is universally considered one of the best Tales games of all time, and with good reason. Now that I've played through a huge portion of it, I can wholeheartedly agree. Now, I've only played the GameCube version, not the Chronicles version on the PS3, which is based on the PS2 version. But I love the characters (except Zelos. He can suck it), the character designs are great, the English voice cast is awesome, the story is very rich, deep, and multilayered, the setting is very well developed, and some of the twists are downright shocking in a great way. It does suffer a few drawbacks in the form of some annoying characters, some idiotic decisions, the occasional tedious puzzle, and limiting your ability to make your characters learn certain attacks, but everything else totally makes up for it. It's no wonder Symphonia is considered great, and now I've jumped on the bandwagon. Also, stop hating on Colette!


3. Story of Seasons
Farming games aren't what I expected to play. I was more into Pokemon and adventure games with a linear, easy to play storyline. Ever. But I bought this off the eShop completely blind, and it was for sale. And wow, did I get treated to a wonderful experience! There's so much to do and unlock here, you can customize your character and marry a particular bachelor/ette, make clothes, raise animals, grow food, and so much more! While I admit that older Harvest Moon games have their charm, Story of Seasons happened to be one of the first HM games I ever played, and it kind of set the standard for future Harvest Moon games for me. Plus, the art style and character designs are beautiful, adopting an anime style and giving the setting a sort of Western sensibility about it. This game really made me feel at home.


2. Pokemon Games
Pokemon has been a huge part of my life ever since I was a little kid. Even now, it still holds a special place in my heart, and I still play the games. Pokemon as a franchise is all about catching monsters, fighting trainers, and defeating evil organizations. But even as it adheres to strict formulas, Pokemon always finds new ways to spice it up some without changing the things that make Pokemon so beloved by its fans. Even the remakes have been getting better and better as the years pass, with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire being the best remakes yet. But in my opinion, Pokemon Black and White were not only the darkest games, but the ones that took the most risks with the franchise. Honestly, I think its better off for it, because sometimes even Pokemon can be afraid to go outside its comfort zone. The gameplay is still the same, competitive players can exalt the new features that X and Y introduced along with IV/EV training, and with Sun and Moon coming out soon and introducing even more drastic changes, there's nothing Pokemon can do to make me let go of it.


1. Mother 3
I never even HEARD of the Mother series until one of my favorite internet critics did video reviews on the trilogy. I had originally thought they'd just be terrible games that happened to be super popular. But The Cartoon Hero's reviews spurred me to check it out. The hype for these games are 110% justified, especially the last game, Mother 3. No game I know of can even come close to matching Mother 3 in quality. Everything has a purpose. The characters evolve. The fighting style and gameplay are very polished and well done. The story is absolutely amazing and is constantly getting deeper and richer. The stakes are always high. It's funny, it's sad, it's cute, it's interesting. The battles are always challenging and really make you think and strategize if you really want to win. Also, it made me cry at the end. More so than Explorers of Sky. If a game can do that, you know it's going to be good. Seriously, this game is a masterpiece in my book. Getting it was so worth it. Mother 3 is an experience I'll never forget, and I wish more people would play it. It needs more love!

So...yeah. I'm apparently a Harvest Moon fan now. I now have the following games:

Harvest Moon GBC
Harvest Moon 2
Harvest Moon 3
Story of Seasons

The latter I just bought for sale on the eShop.



Games I plan to buy:
Pokemon Sun and Moon
Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town

Aaaaaand I'm already planning out a fan fic series based on the first two games (The GBC ones)! What's wrong with meeeee?! Oh well! I love it! Why have I never gotten into this series sooner?! I still need to work on my Pokemon, Steven Universe, and Yona fics, but I can't resist! These games are so relaxing and sweet!