If you've never played a Harvest Moon game before, this is not the game you want to start with and base your impressions of the series on.
Natsume, the developer of this "Harvest Moon" game, is the North American license holder for the franchise name "Harvest Moon". They are not the original, primary developer of the franchise. Due to their recent scuffle with the original developer, Marvelous, Natsume is using the brand to make and release their own awful games in North America (and Europe?). Marvelous can't do anything about it because of foreign copyright laws.
So what now? The original franchise name is "Bokujou Monogatari". Marvelous has entrusted their future Bokujou Monogatari games with a different localization company "XSEED", who in my opinion are better than Natsume because Natsume frequently leaves bugs and translation errors in their games. The Bokujou Monogatari series is now "Story of Seasons". All future Marvelous-made games will be under the title "Story of Seasons" and Natsume's shitty wannabe games are "Harvest Moon".
To me, a long-time fan, it's really distressing to see this confusion over a long-loved franchise and it's name. All we, the fans, can do now is lead returning and prospective players to "Story of Seasons" so that they can play the quality farming games the series was truly known for.
Of course, you can play the Natsume Harvest Moon games anyway. They're not as original as the Marvelous games, but if Farmville can entertain, so can those.