Review: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns (3DS)

Title: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns
System: Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It:

• Nintendo DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com
• Nintendo 3DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com

Before we start off, let me say this: for all intents and purposes, this review is for the 3DS version of Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns. Other than 3D effects, an animal-petting minigame, and the 3DS region-locking, I know of no differences between the two versions. Now, with that out of the way, let's get to talking about HM:ToTT!

The Harvest Moon games have remained mostly unchanged since the franchise started in 1996 on the SNES. As much a dating simulation as it is a farming simulation, it has a niche following in the United States, making it a small - but successful - franchise. Other than some graphic re-hauling over the years, the main HM franchise has always been about two things: rising up to create a successful farm, and finding yourself a spouse. In that regard, HM: Two Towns does nothing new. But the new things it does bring has kept me interested and occupied.

The most interesting part of Two Towns is that you can choose which town you want to live in at the beginning of the game. The first choice is the farming village Konohana, a tranquil and pretty Japanese-inspired town that centers around raising crops over livestock. On the other side of the mountain, you have your second option: the town of Bluebell, a more European-looking town that centers its income on raising livestock. No matter which town you choose, you can utilize the land on both farms. (This makes it easy to live in Bluebell and raise a lot of livestock and still use the fields in Konohana to raise long-lasting crops like soybeans, corn, tomatoes, etc.) Living in Bluebell is almost like cheating. Living in Konohana is a lot more typical of other Harvest Moon games: being broke all the time and struggling to get the money needed for important things like seeds, fertilizer, and pet food.

Other activities - fishing, bug gathering, and foraging - are back from other games and work just as well as they ever have. Fishing has a new option, though: you can now wade into shallow water and catch fish with your hands by walking up to them and hitting the "A" button. These tiny fish can't be used in cooking, but they can be sold for ten to thirty gold and be used to fulfill requests for villagers.

The 3D graphics add a cute shadow effect to the game, but overall isn't worth the ten dollars extra you have to plunk down for it. The 3DS-exclusive animal petting minigame, however, makes your animals friendlier faster, and is an interesting benefit to getting the enhanced version.

In spite of everything that Two Towns is doing right, though, classic HM bugs are still present. The game freezes periodically and at random times, and when your only option for saving is before you go to bed, a lot of things can be lost. Additionally, the game lags when there's a lot of things going on: riding your horse while other livestock roams around in their pens will cause the game to slow a little bit. In 3D mode, it's motion-sick inducing. In 2D, it's just annoying. The last thing that this game has wrong with it - really, really wrong - is that the weather system only kind of works. Listen to the radio before you go to bed, and it will tell you what the weather for the present day and the next day will be. There's about a 45% chance that the weather forecast for the next day will be wrong, making it confusing and difficult to plan ahead for the next day, especially for weather-specific events like flower events and figuring out what to do with your livestock for the day.

Overall, Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns is fun and addicting. The typical bugs are still present, but are as much a part of the Harvest Moon experience as courting a villager.

Bottom Line: Mostly the same Harvest Moon, but with an interesting addition of choosing where you can specialize. It's a welcome - and interesting - change. Typical HM bugs are still present and more annoying than ever.

Final Score: 8/10

Review: Princess Debut (DS)

Title: Princess Debut
System: DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1

If you read my post about gaming that segued into a post about my bizarre love of otome games, you remember me mentioning Princess Debut, the otome game about the girl who swaps places with the princess from a fantasy land that looks just like her. She then goes on to spend the next month in this fantasy land, learning to dance and looking for a prince to act as her dance partner, all the while trying to pose as the real princess. Oh, and the princes all look like the cute guys from her school in the real world.

Yeah, I know. The story kind of sucks. But this is an otome game, where the only thing that really matters is the boys.

Above: The only thing that matters in an otome game. (Minus furry.)

So, you have six boys to pick from, not including Tony (the rabbit) up there, though he does get an ending of his own. The sixth guy never actually shows up until your second playthrough. But those guys up there, from left to right, are: Prince Luciano, Prince Liam, Prince Klaus, Prince Cesar, and Prince Vince (lol, rhymes.) The last prince, tastefully clad in purple, is Prince Kiefer. Each of these guys falls into one (or more) of the stereotypical otome game male categories: the doting big brother (Liam, or "the ridiculously kind one who likes plants" in the "real" world), the "perfect" one (Klaus, or the basketball star in the real world), the aloof one (Luciano, or the childhood friend in the real world), the flamboyant flirt (Cesar, or the playboy in the real world), the bookworm (Kiefer, who's still the bookworm), and the mischievous one (Vince, who's still the mischievous one).

The point of the game is to get a partner and wow the crowd at an important ball at the end of the month. The gameplay is a decently-implemented rhythm game, Ouendan-style. (Or, Elite Beat Agents, if you have no idea what "Ouendan" is.) The game gets progressively tougher as it advences throughout the month, and gameplay is pretty fun. The synthesized tracks are annoying from the get-go, and don't really get any less annoying, but they're not annoying enough to make me put it down. However, the game isn't without its downsides.

First, if you're not using a DS lite or a DSi (this doesn't include the XL; I'm getting to that), the game doesn't always register your tap as an accurate tap, and marks you points off (if it even credits you at all for it.) We have at least one of every DS incarnation in my house, and I've noticed that songs that I've gotten perfect scores on countless times always come up short on the 3DS and on the DSiXL. I'm not sure why that is, but I'd wager that it has something to do with the increased touch screen size on both. Second of all are, unsurprisingly, the guys. Well, not them specifically, but the dating cutscenes tend to drag out and could be cut by three or four rounds of conversation and still get the point across. Not only that, but one of the boys is frustratingly hard to get: Prince Luciano takes off about halfway through the game. If you're already dating him, and don't answer his questionnaire just right, he won't come back at the end of the month, and if you're single before he leaves and don't answer his questionnaire just right - you guessed it - he won't come back at the end of the month. And, given his personality type is tough to figure out what a "right" and "wrong" answer is, there's going to be a lot of rebooting and cursing on your end.

Bottom Line: Typical otome game story line, with a pretty decently implemented rhythm game embedded into it. Oh, and Luciano is a douche, but that doesn't really affect points.

Final Score: 7/10

Topic: Gaming, and Otome games

Gaming. It's one of those things that I've done as far back as I can remember. My dad got me a Gameboy Color for Christmas the year the Pokemon games hit shelves; my grandmother got me my first Pokemon game. Before that, though, my dad still had games in the house. PC games, NES games... we had them all.

And today, that's no different. Today, we have a 360, a PS3, a PS2, and the Wii, as well as a DSi, 3DS, and PSP. We keep up with current gaming trends, continue to get games as they come out, and I keep myself on the lookout for older games at rummage, estate, and yard sales. (I'm frequently lucky.)

But don't get me wrong. While I love new games and feeling like I could reach out and grab whatever's in the environment around me, and I love (clever) motion controls that don't force me to waggle my controller around like a douchebag (Did you get that, Nintendo?) I often get nostalgic for old games. They have some sort of cracklike replay value that can't be outright expressed in words, but grab you once you see them online, or hear their theme played. There's something about older games that I really enjoy - still - that really shaped the kind of gamer that I am today. (Which is RPG first and foremost, in case you were wondering, thanks.)

But all the RPGs and classic shooters (my first ever PC game was Doom 3. Dad let me play it, and it was epic) didn't prepare me for one of my favorite game genres: otome games.

Otome games are the girl's equivalent of dating sims. (This has led to a long running joke in the family that the "normal one who doesn't need help getting a date" cripples herself with dating sims.) In a way, the joke is right. I don't need help getting a date - I never have - but otome games usually let me indulge myself in cheesy cliche-ridden storylines without anyone around me having to suffer through another viewing of Chocolat - because most of them are, in fact, portable. And that's awesome.

A few publishers aren't afraid to bring them Stateside. One could argue that Natsume's Harvest Moon series is part dating sim, because no matter what gender you play as, part of the game is finding a wife (husband, if you're playing as a girl.) Actually, half the fun for quite a few Harvest Moon players is the dating side of it.

Natsume's also brought over one other, non-HM title that I know of, and it's called Princess Debut. The game is part rhythm game, part otome, and you play as a girl who trades places with the kingdom's Princess (who looks just like you...go figure...) to a fantasy land to learn to dance at a major ball. That's in a month.

But see, while the storylines are kind of shoddy, they're not supposed to be great, because telling a great story isn't really what an otome game is about. It's about landing "your dream guy." Besides, everyone knows that no real guy is perfect, and that there's no such things as fairytale romances.

...Which is why women everywhere love chick flicks. And some like otome games.