 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Marvelous Entertainment |
| Publisher: | Natsume | |
| Genre: | Simulation | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Card | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Harvest Moon veterans should also notice a plethora of familiar characters, culled from several earlier entries in the series. Strangely, there appear to be some problems in translation this go around, as the obviously French artiste Henri is blandly Americanized as the unconvincing "Henry". Even more bizarre, the very Hispanic fruit orchard owner gets saddled with the bizarre nomenclature of "Ronald", while one of the harvest sprites winds up with the more appropriate "Carlos" in his place!
One of the only real downfalls of Magical Melody lies in the fact that your character lacks any stamina whatsoever (even by comparison to prior series entries!). Regardless of gender, the gamer will find their character disturbingly prone to passing out while performing the simplest of chores, inclusive of such difficult, energy-consuming tasks as picking up an item off the ground, brushing an animal or tossing produce into the shipping bin! While progress in the game, with its corollary achievement of several "power berries" certainly helps, this problem is hardly ameliorated, and remains a sticking point throughout. This is worsened by the fact that unlike prior Harvest Moon games, you simply cannot "farm through the night" to catch up on lost work time, paying the minor penalty of "sleeping in late". In this game, you wake up at 6am regardless, with correspondingly miniscule stamina marking just how late you decided to work the prior evening. Not that you can do much of anything in the wee hours in the first place, as your character seems to get weary by 5 or 6pm, and any time in the evening not spent in the safety of one’s own home inevitably results in one passing out in exhaustion, despite ongoing food refuels. There is also no "failsafe" refuel option, such as the hot spring – if you get low and don’t have sufficient eats on your person, well, you’re sh*t out of luck. In other words, if you’re to follow the game’s logic, we should all be up with the birds and asleep by 8, on the outside (holy right-wingers, Batman! It’s an old folks’ convention!).
There are other redundancies present in the game even beyond those already discussed, as previously essential purchases such as a horse are rendered practically useless (unless you’re really into the horse races). Participation in festivals seems generally pointless, outside of a rare note or two and the ones involving dates (which hold the potential to up that heart meter), and generally wind up cancelled anyway, unless you remember to "donate" some item or other a day or two in advance. Mining doesn’t really provide enough cash to justify the effort, except in winter (where you can access the "lake cave" and drop to level 50, where you can rake in the $500 apiece diamonds). There are also no real means to increase your carrying capacity, outside of befriending a certain old lady so she’ll open an extra 5 slots in your rucksack – no baskets, horses, or purchasable rucksack upgrades are to be found.
The addition of mini-games is a nice touch. These help the more obsessive gamer take a break from the main game, offering the opportunity to practice for the horse race or swimming contest so that when those festivals come, you can win a couple of those precious power berries for yourself. Outside of participation in one or two of the festivals, the only other way to earn a power berry is to somehow get yourself to the bottom of the "moon mine". This can only be accomplished by falling through cracks in the floor or digging for stairs. This whole procedure proves extremely time consuming and rather annoying, particularly as most of these drops only involve a floor or two in distance, and several of the "cracks" will actually send you back up to the surface! So irritating is this entire operation that the average gamer will probably give up on the whole idea – after all, it’s just another lousy power berry, and you can see how well they work…
All that said, Magical Melody is the first Harvest Moon game since the Playstation’s Back To Nature to actually prove addictive, relaxing, and downright fun, consuming hours of the interested gamer’s life at a clip. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed myself and find that it, like the aforementioned Back To Nature, remains the only Harvest Moon game I find myself going back to on an ongoing basis. On the whole, despite several redundancies (the horse, the sprites, the festivals, etc.) and a highly annoying fatigue/enforced curfew issue, Magical Melody comes highly recommended to anyone bearing the slightest interest in this sort of thing. There really are no competitors or comparisons, you’ll have to try it out for yourself. You never know, you might find yourself hooked…
"Country bumpkin, sittin’ on a pumpkin…"
Bottom Line:
Natsume wised up. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody has finally returned the Harvest Moon series to its roots, with the emphasis being on freedom of action and farming per se as opposed to just "making friends and raising a family", the flawed emphasis of the last two, ultimately failed installments. The end result? A game that’s actually fun and addictive, just like Back To Nature was, way back on the original Playstation. Good move, guys. Knock out a few of these glitches I mentioned, and you’re finally back on track with this series. All hail the new Natsume…
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
|
| 9.0 |
Posted: 2006-05-04 18:12:35 PST