Harvest Moon: A New Beginning review

As you probably would have seen on Twitter, I've been playing Harvest Moon: A New Beginning fairly obsessively.

Let me preface this with the fact that I have played quite a few Harvest Moon games: Friends of Mineral Town/More Friends of Mineral Town, A Wonderful Life, Island of Happiness, Sunshine Islands, Magical Melody, and the Rune Factory Frontier game. Rune Factory is a fantasy spin off, that combines dungeon crawling with farming - It's pretty well done.

But my point is that I've played a fair number of the series' titles, so anything I may say could be classed as bias for the "good old days" of Harvest Moon incarnations. But I'll do my best to be fair.

One objection I have to this incarnation is that it seems a bit more shallow than its predecessors. Versions like Mineral Town and Sunshine Isles have extensive mines that run for hundreds of levels. This one has 3 mining points you can access on entry to the Forest Mine. Similarly, Mineral Town had 7 levels to most tools, A New Beginning has 3 for the Hammer/Axe, 4 for Scythe/Watering Can/Hoe and 2 for the Clippers/Brush/Milker.

There are a lot of different things to do in this one though. It follows the restoration/buildup of the town thing that's been pretty common in recent Harvest Moons, but instead of gathering stones or notes to restore things, the farmer follows restoration plans. It's a lot more fun to slowly build the town back to a glorious state - quite literal on the building thing, instead of a carpenter getting hired to build stuff, the farmer does all the building with the help of blueprints!

The other thing is you get to customise the placement of everything on the farm and in the town. Even paths and roads can be changed around!

All in all, despite the "easier" factor, it's a lovely entry into the Harvest Moon roster. That will probably keep me entertained for quite a while.