First debuted on SNES in 1996 the project Harvest moon (Bokujō Monogatari in Japan) was one of the first iconic representatives of the farm life simulator genre. Since then, the series has developed successfully on a wide variety of platforms, both stationary and portable. Carefully developing existing gameplay concepts based on calm, methodical care of a virtual farm and communication with various side characters, the franchise taught ordinary players and even critics to love themselves for who they are, and the authors did not need to come up with something completely new every time to attract an audience.
In 2014 the company Marvelous, the Japanese owner of the franchise, has ended relations with the publishing house Natsume, which was responsible for the release of the games in the series Bokujō Monogatari under the brand Harvest moon in the United States, and dropped the name “Harvest Moon” as Natsume owned the trademark. The new western name for the main Japanese series is Story of Seasons…
In turn, Natsume, having the rights to the trademark “Harvest moon“continued to work with her, and now publishes her own games under this brand.
Harvest Moon: One World, released earlier this month on consoles Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4is a Natsume game.
I would like to say right away that the developers related to Harvest Moon finally relaxed and, without noticing it, began to simply hack, which is especially noticeable in comparison with vigorous, young competitors, like Stardew valley… Before us is a project that in all respects should have been released on mobile devices, not on consoles – this is felt literally in everything, but first of all, primitive graphics and poor technical execution are striking.
Each time you launch the game, it takes more than a minute (!!!) to load the start menu, and at the same time it is completely incomprehensible why we have been waiting for so long. The visual design is depressing: nondescript, as if drawn with a clerical marker, textures, low detail, primitive animations, small, narrow locations, the absence of any bearable shadows and lighting effects. In a project where the most important role should be given to the beauty of nature, the cultivation of the land, observing the growth of crops and contemplating life, the authors managed to make the world around us static and plastic. And although the style of Harvest Moon has traditionally been quite ascetic, One World looks rather empty, without any hints of aesthetics. On top of that, it’s worth mentioning the unstable frame rate: the image at times seems to start to stutter out of the blue. The situation is saved only by pleasant character models and unobtrusive, soothing music.
Shaking the ashes from our heads, let’s think, maybe One World received some interesting solutions in terms of gameplay?
Before embarking on a journey, the game invites you to create a character in a fairly sketchy editor. Next, you will find about a twenty-minute prologue with an explanation of the basics of agriculture and a very conditional plot plot, following which the Goddess of the Harvest suddenly disappeared, leaving the world without knowledge of agriculture, and you should definitely go on a journey around the world in search of small wandering lights that store information about various seeds … The main innovation of the gameplay is the ability to compress your farm into a small ball and carry it in your pocket until you like a new place. Considering that the whole game is dedicated to a journey in search of new types of vegetables, fruits and animals, such mobility would seem to be beneficial, but in fact, coupled with the excessive transience of the in-game day, it creates a feeling of chaos and haste – again, there is a taste of some kind then a primitive game for mobile devices capable of holding your attention for a maximum of ten minutes.
