The first game in the Harvest Moon series -- Innocent Life: A Future Harvest Moon -- is coming out in a couple of days. I've played through the Japanese version and so I think I'm qualified to talk about it.
First of all, if you are a fan of the Harvest Moon series, you may not like this game. It's done by a different developer and is missing a lot of the stuff that people like about the Harvest Moon games. The story is on the serious and sad side, rather than being cutesy. And purists won't like how you have limited contact with your animals (you mostly have robots and machines tend for them) or how you can get a robot to automatically water and harvest your crops, but overall I found that it got rid of a lot of the drudgery that sets in after a while with other HM games. Overall, while it does seem a little dumbed down, it also feels like it takes the series in a new direction, which for me after playing through several samey Harvest Moon games, seemed like a breath of fresh air. I'd go into more detail, but I think this review (the only one I've found so far) sums it up just about perfectly.
It's definitely worth playing, in my opinion, as long as you can keep an open mind, and are willing to adjust to its pace. In a way, it's too bad that the PSP couldn't have gotten a more traditional HM game, keeping the excellent visuals of this one, but I also think this is a very good game with its own sense of story and style, and you shouldn't dismiss it just because it isn't exactly what we expect from the series.
First of all, if you are a fan of the Harvest Moon series, you may not like this game. It's done by a different developer and is missing a lot of the stuff that people like about the Harvest Moon games. The story is on the serious and sad side, rather than being cutesy. And purists won't like how you have limited contact with your animals (you mostly have robots and machines tend for them) or how you can get a robot to automatically water and harvest your crops, but overall I found that it got rid of a lot of the drudgery that sets in after a while with other HM games. Overall, while it does seem a little dumbed down, it also feels like it takes the series in a new direction, which for me after playing through several samey Harvest Moon games, seemed like a breath of fresh air. I'd go into more detail, but I think this review (the only one I've found so far) sums it up just about perfectly.
It's definitely worth playing, in my opinion, as long as you can keep an open mind, and are willing to adjust to its pace. In a way, it's too bad that the PSP couldn't have gotten a more traditional HM game, keeping the excellent visuals of this one, but I also think this is a very good game with its own sense of story and style, and you shouldn't dismiss it just because it isn't exactly what we expect from the series.
