I know what you’re thinking…skill issue?? Well Harvest Moon may be one of the most difficult games that I have ever played but it does so in a very artificial way that doesn’t make you feel fulfilled or satisfied at all. Seriously this is a game that will have you shaking your head the whole time because it just wasn’t meant to be this way. I was looking forward to taking names and raising a great village but in the end it wasn’t to be. Harvestella destroys this one and I can’t say I’m hyped for the next Harvest Moon titles. This one has to take the very dubious honor of being my least favorite game of all time. Granted, something had to take that spot right?

The plot involves you moving to a nearby town and now it’s time for you to start up your own farm. There’s a bit more to the story than that but that’s the general premise and you have to get to work The only problem? I never made it to my actual farm. Yeah that may sound crazy but I spent a few hours on this one and couldn’t get past the tutorial. That was brutal. It seems like you need to talk to a bunch of folks to get through but I talked to everyone and it didn’t work. I was just stuck and couldn’t press on forward. How could this happen to meeeee?

Seriously I tried pretty hard on this one. I talked to everyone many times over and I ran around the whole map so many times. Ultimately I realized there was just no getting out of this. I had a theory that maybe I needed to talk to everyone multiple times in a row because sometimes they would say something different but it still didn’t work. Unless I missed someone since I thought about that a little later in the playthrough. Then you also have the issue of the guys telling me to find my tools but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Maybe that’s what I needed?

The point though is that the game was not very clear at all. I can’t picture most people being able to solve this case at least. It really stumped me at least. You could say that I was on the back foot the whole time. Because of that it definitely does impact the score because it meant that the game ended up being very boring. Seriously I could barely last a few hours in this one because it was just so repetitive. Imagine being stuck in the tutorial in any game. It’s exactly as brutal as you’re thinking.

Now I’m not giving this game a 0 or even a 1 because it does have some redeeming qualities about it. For example I think the graphics are actually rather solid. It may not be top grade stuff but it has aged very well from the SNES era. Additionally the music is quite an peaceful enough to work out well. I like the overall town atmosphere and I can see someone having a little bit of fun here. Ultimately it will be tough to get to that fun which is the problem.

If you can’t leave the tutorial then what can you really do right? At least in a game like Casper’s Scare School you jump right into the events. The game may be over in 12 minutes but you actually got to do something. That’s not the case here…that’s not the case at all. Oh noooo!!! I’m even struggling to get this review any longer because there’s not much more to say when I ended so early into the campaign. I guess that’s a knock in itself though. This has never happened to me before. Now perhaps there was some kind of glitch at play here. I would be surprised given the positive rep for the game everywhere but I do tend to be unlucky with glitches sometimes so it does happen.

I’ll definitely play more life simulations in the future though so we’ll see if another one can do better. Animal Crossing for example will probably be added at some point and I’m interested in trying that one out. Lets face it, it should definitely beat this one for me. Ultimately Harvest Moon didn’t really do it for me but at least I will never forget it. It has a lot of fans and I know a lot of effort was put into the game so I’ll still give it that level of props at least. Throw in some action gameplay and I may make it back for one of the sequels.

Overall, Harvest Moon is really not as good as I was expecting it to be. Trust me I wasn’t expecting it to be great either way but this was really going to be a game that I could play for a long while with a big smile on my face and that just didn’t happen which was disappointing. I like the concept behind the game so I think nowadays you could pull it off a little better. That said, it’s still not really my genre of game. They can be fun on the side but I tend to prefer the more action packed titles. If you have the Switch Online you should check it out though since it’s free at that point. No real downside to checking it out.

Overall 2/10