64 Times the Harvesting: Let's Play Harvest Moon 64

[Deme]

Psssh! I'll admit I did enjoy Harvest Moon 64, but everything about it was so laid back. There's nothing laid back about farming! There's really no consequences to the game, you just sort of do whatever you want.

Harvest Moon for SNES... now there was a game, I tell ya what.

EDIT: Oh god, I just looked up Harvest Moon for SNES and I've come to the horrible realization that the game cannot be beaten, at least from how I pictured it as a kid. At the end your dad scolds you, but apparently it doesn't matter how good or bad you do, he always scolds you and takes back the farm! WTF

Thanks to this lack of knowledge (pre-internet days, mind you), my real life dad refuses to play video games after how hard he worked on Harvest Moon SNES, only to fail. I still remember him vividly saying, "WHAT? WAS IT BECAUSE I DIDNT SELL OVER A HUNDRED TURNIPS?!"

Everything I know is a lie. Oh god...

Heh. I've never actually played that one, though I have a friend who has... I don't think she's ever mentioned how the ending works, and she seems to treat it as reasonably laid-back aside from the lack of rucksack. Infinite time at night sounds like a pretty swell deal to me.

But 64 can be a lot less laid-back than you'd think. While its true that unlike SNES, it's possible to get just about everything... But possible and easy are not the same thing, and someone trying to get the most out of the game has a real challenge on their hands, is the experience I've seen, both first-hand and through others.

I think most early Harvest Moon games have, to some extent, "adjustable difficulty." If you want to be the best like no one ever was, you'll need to fire on all cyllinders. If you just want a good time, it's like totally chill. That said... Modern HM games are totally wusses. Like, we want to talk "laid back," these are the laid-backiest.

Also, thanks, Selph!