Welcome everyone, today i'm going to be reviewing harvest moon one world this game was reviewed on nintendo switch but is also available on ps4 up to 2014 the harvest moon series had been developed and published in japan as story of seasons by marvelous but in the west the game was published as harvest moon by natsume however in 2014 natsumi and marvelous parted ways and marvelous continued developing games.
But now, published them worldwide as story of seasons the harvest moon series we know today is actually published by natsume and has been considered by many as a cash grab with natsume simply trying to cash in on the goodwill fans have towards the name of the harvest moon series
and honestly up till now it kind of seemed like that the previous games were kind of bland.They just seemed like copycats of story of seasons and they always had these mobile s game graphics. However with harvest moon one world I think that natsume has finally hit a turning point for their series and made it something of its own now and i can't believe i'm about to say this.
But harvest moon one world isn't a bad game it's actually a pretty good one harvest moon one world sees you setting off on a journey to save the world by awakening the harvest goddess. However this isn't your typical save the valley farming game instead you traverse the world starting farms in different areas and restoring them to their former glory.
While at first looks it might not be the most visually attractive game there are some really good aspects about this game that i'd love to highlight.
When you begin your journey your neighbor doc jr gives you an expand farm it's a portable farm that can be put in your pocket and then set up at various points throughout the world it's a neat concept but i found myself really only moving my farm when i was moving from town to town or needed a new big piece of real estate for all the seeds that i wanted to plant.
Now the reason why i wasn't
moving my front around as much is because the only thing that moves with your
farm are the major building and animals your fields and your crops and any
fencing or decorations you put in your fields.
It doesn't move with your farm at all the game does have a quick travel system. So if you want you can travel back to your last field to tend to the crops that are still alive. But backtracking isn't really that big of an issue because crops grow quickly and are finished producing in about three to eight days.
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So the field's gonna be empty anyways in just a little bit of time. Now the farming system in the game is very streamlined you till the ground, you get the seeds, you plant them you water them, fertilize them, and then harvest them.
One nice thing that one world does is that you never have to worry about flipping between tools you simply press the a button and the game knows what to do whether that to be to water the crops or to till the ground and this makes for a very fast farming process.
i believe one of the reasons why the process is so streamlined is that you can focus on gathering different seeds. There are hundreds of different types of crops in the game and the streamline process allows you to plant and try out many different types of crops very quickly now in a normal farming game.
You would probably have to buy most of these seeds. However one world differentiates itself by having a huge focus on exploration. All over the world there are hundreds of harvest wisps who will give you a single seed per day.
When you talk to them because there are so many different types of crops and seeds for you to gather a nice touch the game has is that if you ever need to go back and find a particular one. You can go to your map. Say that you want to find that crop and then the map will put a tracker on the wisp who is giving out that crop.
Another really cool thing that one world does with these seeds is called crop mutations. There are five main areas in the world and crops will mutate depending on where they are planted for instance. You can have a regular tomato or you could have an ice tomato.
If it's planted up in the cold north area, each of these crops and their mutations are tracked in an encyclopedia in your house.
So if you're someone who really likes lots of collectibles and games then this is probably really going to appeal to you.
Now also recorded in that same encyclopedia
are dozens of animals that you have to buy or tame in the overworld, fish
minerals, and the hundreds, and hundreds of different recipes.
I was honestly surprised by how much there is in this game to collect. I mean this has stardew valley levels of collectibles which is honestly a really good thing.
This cycle of farming and exploring to find these seeds really make up the bulk of the day to day loop for the game and this is what differentiates one world from other farming games in other games.
The focus is probably on making your farm as big as possible. But this has more of a focus on exploration finding new crops and just overall progressing a larger story i really enjoyed this change of pace from other games and it made me feel there were things to do beyond the farm.
Now another way that one world differentiates itself from the pack is the story and traversing of theOverworld the game isn't just set in one small town like many other games, are there are five different areas.
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Each with unique villagers themes, vegetation crops, and animals as you move from town to town you participate in main quests which help to awaken the harvest sprite in that area.
There is a beach area a desert a forest a winter themed area and more upon completion of the first area the world opens up for you to go to any of these areas that you want to.
However there's a catch as some of the areas are extremely hot or cold and although you can go into them. They will deplete your stamina very quickly to get around this. You have to find crops and recipes that give you heat or cold resistance.
It's a really nice touch of integrating the crop and recipes into the exploration aspects of the game each area has a set of problems surrounding awakening the harvest sprite living in that area.
In one area you have to heal a sick cow whereas in another you have to bring nutrients back to land by planting crops in a certain area well. The ideas here are okay.
There's nothing to write home about. But what really makes each area unique is the characters that live there I really like the character models in this game.
They're all unique and really well polished. In my opinion these are characters that i wouldn't expect to normally see in a farming game which I think is really good.
On top of that all the characters have personalities that fit their looks one girl appears to be a witch or a vampire and she acts that way another guy fits the surfer stereotype very well. You also have a girl who forgets everything from the previous day.
So as you meet her and over and over again. She completely forgets who you are and you have to reintroduce yourself to her there are five bachelors and bachelorettes to meet and win over in the game and by giving them gifts and talking to them.
You can raise your friendship level with them which leads to hard events now. Up to now i feel like i've really been praising the game a lot and there is a lot of good here.
But the game also has some issues the first is the graphics and their overall appeal in my opinion the character models they look awesome. The ui it's beautiful it's a really nice, clean ui, the interiors of buildings they look great. They're super nice.
Because of all these good things that's in the game it just boggles my mind that certain areas of the overworld just look so bland and uninspired. Particularly the first area of the game the one that everyone starts in is the worst looking one in the entire game.
People are going to go online, they're going to watch the first 30 minutes of this game, decide whether or not they want to play it and this is really not putting a good foot forward.
I mean sadly it takes an hour to get past this area before anything starts to really look pretty. But another weird thing in the game is that some of the model textures are just really pixelated and look so real res.
A lot of the models have this issue but a lot of people probably won't notice this. I just don't get how some of the textures can look hd and really nice. Others look like they are from ps1 game.
i also had some issues while playing the game where models would clip into one another or areas the world would just not load. They would just be black but surprisingly enough. Even though I encountered a few of these bugs, the game runs really smoothly with only a few occasional frame rate drops.
It has little to no loading times when entering areas. So that's really good now one final thing that i really don't like about the game is that the game holds your hand a little too much.
Where it doesn't need to be held and
too little where it probably should be held particularly in the first 30 minutes
to an hour of the game. There's so many tutorials and we probably don't need
them.
Most people have probably played a farming game before and these just feel a little bit repetitive one other small issue that i had with the game is that the world is very large.
Your character can walk slowly at times however this issue is pretty easily resolved later on the game.
When you buy your first horse which again is after the first hour or two of playing the game. There are a lot of other aspects to the game that i haven't touched upon in this review and that's because i've mainly wanted to focus on the biggest selling points of this game as well as the biggest hindrances to possibly buying this game.
But just to name off a few of the other small things that i really liked from the game first off there's an abundance of side quests in this game. Side quests can allow you to unlock new abilities or get items that would normally take a long time to go throughout the worlds and forage for they're quick easy and they're actually kind of fun there's mining in the game.
There's fishing and there's also festivals for you to go and enjoy. One of the cool thing is that a lot of the festivals are actually unlocked through side quests. So giving you a bigger incentive to go and do those.
You can go and buy a variety of different animals. But also in the one world you can find animals and tame them. They'll come back to your farm which is really cool. Overall harvest moon one world is a good game.
But it could have been a great one had they had fixed some of the performance issues and made harvest moon one world a little bit more visually appealing and interesting.
It would have been a great game. it's really sad that a lot of people are gonna write this off just by looking at the first 30 to 60 minutes of the game.
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If you can plow through that, honestly after the first hour or two the game is it's awesome. it gets really good the game has a great feedback loop where as you progress through the main story.
you get new unlockables and abilities which really feed back into that day-to-day loop, so if you're getting tired of the traditional farming game formula this game might be for you. it breaks some of those conventions of just doing the same day-to-day tasks to get more and more money and build up your farm.
But instead focuses on exploring and progressing a bigger overall story line this game isn't going to be for everyone. It's not the most beautiful game out there. It does have a really good satisfying loop and if you're into that, i highly suggest this now.
There is one final question that i'm sure a lot of people are going to ask how does this game compare to story of seasons pioneers of all of town well i can't tell you the answer to that yet.
