DS #4141: Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming (USA)

[granville]

^^ndsrelease-5331^^

 

[Brocktree]

I wonder if this is any different from the first one.

 

[tinymonkeyt]

I think it's a puzzle game, rather than a farming sim?

 

[granville]

This looks like just a puzzle game from screens-
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2009/...7_screen002.jpg

 

[tobyx]

WHAT THE?
how can they screw up harvest moon even more? this is the only franchise i know which is getting worse and worse with every single release... -.-'

 

[berlinka]

Well if it's a fun puzzle game then they can't fuck it up more than they have.

 

[Donato_Dobango]

First Impressions:

Natsume really screwed the pooch with their last Harvest Moon puzzle game, Puzzle De Harvest Moon. It was too fast paced and complicated, coupled with having to face 3 computer opponents in single player who all seem to devote every waking moment to learning how to defeat you as if they are Harvest Moon Skynet.

They learned from their prior mistakes and completely went back to the drawing board for this game, though. You get your standard grid set up like a farm, with various crops at various levels of growth on it. You can slide these crops around at will in any direction, up down left or right. Your goal, with the help of a harvest sprite, is to grow the crops to fruition and harvest them, obviously. If you string together ready crops, you complete a chain. After a harvest sprite harvests a crop, he'll do the traditional Harvest Moon water can spin and water the growing crops around him. So your goal is to constantly keep ripe crops near him to get him to move towards growing crops that need the water.

Here's the rub: the story mode takes all of 10 minutes to complete. It's a fun 10 minutes (or rather 3 minutes of actual game time, 7 minutes of hitting A to skip wordy cutscenes). After you finish story mode, you unlock mission mode, which is your standard "Complete X puzzle in X amount of moves" game, which sadly isn't as fun as the story mode was since story mode had a sense of competition against computer AI that is devoid in missions. You get a score attack mode to try to compensate, but, again, that's you competing against yourself so you really never capture the 2-3 minutes of story mode that works.

Because of this, I can't recommend this game as more than just a little time waster you keep around because it's 16 megs and you might forget it exists and be surprised to play it for another 3 minutes a year from now. It can't keep your attention because it has nothing to offer you.

 

[Exbaddude]

I really think this game is boring.

Just shifting bunch of Vegetables around.

 

[StingX]

I smell an easy beat

 

[mrfatso]

WHAT THE?
how can they screw up harvest moon even more? this is the only franchise i know which is getting worse and worse with every single release... -.-'

what i was thinking when i saw the picture, well, i have it with me, so i pray that i be able to enjoy anything harvest moon.

 

[Zerrix]

I gotta try this out^^

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Damn, Harvest Moon is just getting worse and worse... Luckily there's still RF. (which still isn't very good but at least it's better than HM)

Also, thanks for the great mini-review as always, Donato Dobango! Saved me the download. WTF is up with a 10 minute story mode...

 

[Covarr]

Yeh, I've been playing HM:AWL on GC, loving every minute of it. I won't even touch this crap though.

 

[Artheido]

I'm going to go play the original HM just... because...

 

[Donato_Dobango]

In terms of Harvest Moon games themselves, if I have to play one on the DS it's going to be Rune Factory. If I can play GBA, I like Friends of Mineral Town.

This isn't a Harvest Moon game in the traditional sense, though. This like to Harvest Moon what Kirby's Block Ball is to Kirby's Dreamland. It's just a spin off puzzle game featuring the characters and themes.

I really do enjoy the puzzle aspect of the game itself. It's just too bad there's only 10 short "stages" of story mode and no other mode in the game gives you the same freedom or fun than that. It's almost not even really a game but an extended Flash Game.

 

[Artheido]

In terms of Harvest Moon games themselves, if I have to play one on the DS it's going to be Rune Factory. If I can play GBA, I like Friends of Mineral Town.

This isn't a Harvest Moon game in the traditional sense, though. This like to Harvest Moon what Kirby's Block Ball is to Kirby's Dreamland. It's just a spin off puzzle game featuring the characters and themes.

I really do enjoy the puzzle aspect of the game itself. It's just too bad there's only 10 short "stages" of story mode and no other mode in the game gives you the same freedom or fun than that. It's almost not even really a game but an extended Flash Game.

It probably would've been better as DSiWare since it's so short.

 

[Donato_Dobango]

I feel bad for anyone who spends 30 bucks on this really.

Unless you unlock an additional "Actual Fun" mode for completing mission mode. But how fun could fun be if you have to dive headfirst into bloody syringes first?

 

[DS Rox!]

aww..D: this game looks boring.
WHERES HARVEST MOON SUNSHINE ISLAND?

LOL sunshine island. they shoulda kept harvest moon shining sun and friends.

 

[elixirdream]

I feel bad for anyone who spends 30 bucks on this really.

Unless you unlock an additional "Actual Fun" mode for completing mission mode. But how fun could fun be if you have to dive headfirst into bloody syringes first?

this is why we have something call ARDS + cheat codes

LOL

 

[Avalyn]

WHAT THE?
how can they screw up harvest moon even more? this is the only franchise i know which is getting worse and worse with every single release... -.-'

are you serious? I could name several....