Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland is about as much fun as watching your tomatoes grow…and for some of you that’s gonna be a whole lotta’ fun. Harvest Moon fans exist as a sort of secret society among RPG gamers. For this season, they’ll quietly celebrate Homeland’s new social activities, more detailed animal husbandry, and fresh graphics style, with a little bit of magic tossed in the mix, too. And if you don’t snicker when you hear phrases like “watching your tomatoes grow” and “animal husbandry,” you just might be a Harvest Moonie. Your goal is to work your grandfather’s farm and “save the homeland” from a money-grubbing theme park threatening to clear-cut your village. Also, early on the Harvest Goddess and a trio of Stooge-like wood sprites recruit your services and offer magical help, too. Harvest Moon’s basic gameplay remains true to the series and so is the unique challenge: you’ve got to have the patience to run a farm by growing crops and raising livestock. There’s a broad range of other activities that extend gameplay, too. The most important task is to make friends with villagers, who then reveal clues and help. Other deceptively addicting tasks include raising horses, cows, and chickens for sale; cooking food to use as gifts to neighbors; fishing, and foraging in the forest. Special events include a treasure hunt, a horse race, a bake-off, and a butterfly safari. If this all sounds like fun, you just might be a Harvest Moonie. The basic controls do the job, but there’s not a whole lot asked of them. Switching tools is quick and easy, but navigating the inventory feels time-consuming, requiring about one button-press too many, especially when you want to pick up and store several items at once, like gathering a crop of fruit. The scenery here isn’t very expansive either, but the visuals present a sharp, new look for Harvest Moon. The character graphics are bright and detailed in the style of Japanese anime cartoons. It’s just that they mainly depict just a few characters, farm animals, and plants. The sounds are also plain, simple, and unexciting. The chipper music’s sweet but uninspiring. The subtle, low-key effects hit their…er, heights with the pitter-pattering of rain on soil. If these few hitches don’t deter your yen to work this land, you just might be a Harvest Moonie. What’s not to like about a solidly constructed RPG that encourages you to make friends, be kind to animals, learn how to cook, and save a village? Harvest Moon’s harmless, pastoral action appeals to the hidden farmer in all of us…er, some of you. And for what it’s worth, there are nine possible endings for good replay value. If you’ve got an agricultural attitude, patience, and a hankering for steady and safe gameplay, you just might be a Harvest Moonie.
