This game has surprised the hell out of me.  With a really lame subtitle (Animal Parade???  REALLY???) and recycled graphics from the last installment my expectations for the latest Harvest Moon were very low.  If it hadn't been an early Christmas gift I likely never would have even picked it up. I just wasn't interested in the same old thing again.  Turns out, while a lot of core gamplay elements are unchanged (farming and ranching is still the same as ever), they've tweaked a few things that pretty much turn this into a completely different game.

Animal Parade is apparently someone's attempt at Natsume to turn Harvest Moon into a western RPG.  Or maybe the designers of this game spent a lot of time playing WoW or EQ before tackling this game because there is a task system in this game that drives the story forward that is exactly like what is found in those games.  

For the first time in a while there's an actual story in this game and it takes the forefront.  Farming in this game is really just a way for you to earn money - which in turn is used to buy a lot of the things you'll need for some of the tasks (food, cooking supplies, livestock, etc.).  A given game day is about 20 to 30 minutes long and the actual farming portion hasn't taken me more than 5 minutes of that.  The character wakes up at 6 AM and I'm usually done by 8 AM.  

There's also a lot more forced social interaction in this game. You have to be very social and talk to everyone to find out where the next plot points begin.  

Truth be told I'm not really sure I like the game just yet.  The game crawls as far as time.  They give you a very slow clock so that you can accomplish a lot of the quests and walking back and forth (the island is huge so walking from one end to another is not a 30 second task).  Unfortunately when you're not working on a task there isn't much to do.  Plus while the game encourages socializing everything is so spread out that it can kind of be hard to figure out what everyone's likes and dislikes are.  So while I'm a few weeks into the game I don't feel like I know the neighbors yet.

Anyway if nothing else the game is different so that's not a bad thing.  I'll keep playing for a while, but this may be one that I don't finish.  Time will tell.

Foolz said:

I want Dark Robio's impressions.

Dark Robio is away at the moment.  He had a long night drinking cheap booze and pissing on midgets.  I'll pass along the memo though.

gamingeek said:

Is this a DS game?

No this is for the Wii.  Though there is a new DS Harvest Moon game called Sunshine Islands.  That actually seems like it might be a good game.  Very traditional style and they corrected all of the poorly implemented controls that made the last Harvest Moon DS game (Islands of Happiness) nearly unplayable.