An Analytical Look at Harvest Moon


Alright, before I get started with this section of the guide, I think that I need to point a few things out.  This section is unlike what you would typically find in any other guide.  There are probably several people who disagree with me that this section belongs in this guide.  It could be put out as a stand alone review or other look at the game.  If that is your opinion on the matter, that's fine with me feel free to skip this section and use the rest of the guide.  The rest of the guide is still an excellent reference to the game and contains most of the necessary information about the game and its various areas.  However, this is my guide and I feel that I have a legal right to include it here. 

I have decided to add this section to the guide for a number of different reasons.  The primary one is that I am adding this section to make my guide different from all the other faqs and walkthroughs that I see on the site for every other harvest moon game.  Which, brings me back the reason I am writing this guide in the first place.  One purpose of this guide is to provide the sought after information about this game including, the basic strategies, explanations of where things are, the little tables showing prices, and the other commonly found in guides about harvest moon and similar game.  I am probably one of the first to write a free guide for the U.S. Release of the game.  While that is a worthwhile endeavor in itself, I know that in the next 3 to 5 months there will be quite a few guides just like this one that spring up on game faqs and similar sites.  They will contain basically the same information as the first few sections of my guide.  Probably in a different format, but with the same content listed here. 

There will be several general guides like this one appears now and quite a few smaller ones on the specific topics of the games.  While I want this guide to fulfill those objectives, I also want to use it as a chance to take a deeper look as the mechanics that drive the game and to develop a detailed walkthrough for it.  Now, I have seen several guides online for past harvest moon games that give you a getting started walkthrough that leads you through the first few weeks or season of the game.  Most of them are similar in content and do a good job getting out of the starting gate, but nobody really seems to know where to go from there.  This provides me with an opportunity to provide two new sections to this guide for uniqueness.  I plan to add a in depth walk through later on when I have finished compiling the necessary information to do so.  Also, I want to include this section because it can be useful for long term planning to examine the game from a different stand point.  This section will break down the games mechanics to a simple form that you can use to plan ahead and get an idea of how the walk through will be.  It can also be interesting to look at the game from this stand point. 

Alright, lets get started by looking at what the harvest moon series is in the first place.  I have seen the game commonly classified both as an RPG and a strategy game or simulation game.  Most people consider it a combination of the two.  The character moves like an RPG and the animations and mechanics play and feel like a real time RPG on a counsel.  However, regardless of the view you take, this game is a simulation strategy game at its basic core.  If you disagree, that's fine but we each have the right to our own opinion.  I will argue mine here.  To see this clearly, you need to pull away all the character interactions, the story line, the experience tool upgrades, and the collecting things game play.  Basically all the window dressing and look at what you have left to work with.  Don't get me wrong, these things all make the game fun to play and I enjoy the show they put on. But if we're going to look at the game seriously we need to see past all the gloss and examine the base of the games mechanics. 

The core mathematical strategy system that harvest moon revolves around is very simple in ideal.  However, it is more complicated than most other strategy games.  Harvest moon's core system revolves around three variables and the limits they put on your advancement through the game.  They are money, time, and stamina or productivity.  They begin the game in very limited quantities and you need to balance them so that you can raise their limits. The higher you raise their limits, the quicker and more advanced you can progress through the game. These three variables provide a complex balancing system by working with and against each other.  You can usually trade one for another, but usually at a loss.  This is quite a bit harder to analyze than a typical strategy games.  They usually rely off of only two variables, time and money. Let's look at each one individually. 

Money:

Money is the key resource in the harvest moon game. You acquire it by using your other two resources.  You do this by purchasing seeds or animals on your farm and then using your time and stamina to interact with them to make a profit yielding more money.  You can trade it for more of the other two directly and indirectly.  For example, you can buy bodygizer and turbo jolt to restore stamina. You can also but better tools that allow you to do more work in less time and with less stamina.  Finally, you use money to make money by purchasing the items you need to interact with the other resources. 

Stamina

Stamina is the second and odd ball resource in the game.  It limits the number of times you can interact with your animals and crops to make money.  You can use it to expand the other resources in several ways.  Making money should be pretty implicit.  You can increase your time by charging up tools.  This will cost more stamina, but take less time to accomplish the same goals.

Time

Time is a constant resource throughout the game.  It is divided into two controls, the amount of time in a day and the number of days in a season.  The first limits the amount of work you can get done in a day and the second limits the number of times you can produce a profit from a specific source.  You can trade it directly for stamina by using the hot springs or foraging for something to eat.  You can trade it for money by gathering items or working on the farm. 

There you have it, that's is the basic structure of how the game operates at the most basic level.  The main objective of any harvest moon game is to find the most productive balance between the three resources.  Thus, the game is a strategy game at its roots, but you don't have to play it like one if you don't want to.  The harvest moon series has quite a few other aspects of game play that you can achieve.  But, the primary focus is expanding the limits of these three resources.  The next thing to look at is how the expansion occurs and what the other aspects of the game have to do with them.  Let's continue. 

Let me outline the mechanics that the system is supposed to work on.  When you start out the game, you are supposed to have a constant amount of time, a limited amount of stamina and a small amount of money.  The first few days of game play are pretty predictable.  You will spend your meager money to purchase a few bags of seeds.  Then, you will use your stamina to plant the seeds and water them.  This will take most of your resources from the first day cumulatively.  The next few days, your money is gone and you will spend the other two trying to recover it.  You'll likely water the crops and spend the second half of the day foraging or fishing to bring in a little money on the side.  Eventually, the crops will mature and you will make more money from them.  You can then use this money to buy more seeds and the profits should grow geometrically (multiply by itself).  I. E, you use money to make more money.

However, there is a problem with this approach.  You will soon find that the number of crops you want to produce is also constrained by your stamina and time.  You either lack the strength or time to care for all the crops you would ideally like to produce.  So, you need to spend money to do more work in less time and with less stamina.  This is done by buying more efficient tools and accessories in this game and Stamina restoring items. You can also buy things like the teleport stone that saves you travel time at the expense of money and stamina.  Or, you can buy a ruck sack that allows you to carry more items, thus allowing you to ship items faster.  The remaining aspects of the game interact with this equation in several ways. 

The other aspects of the game exist to allow you to expand the resources and to consume the excess amounts you gain as their limits increase.  For example, the mythic watering can will water 252 spaces in 10 game minutes for 20 stamina.  While, the iron one would take 504 stamina and all day for the same result.  The watering can costs a lot of money, but it frees up the other two resources of time and stamina.  This system works fine to begin with, but what happens when all three resources reach their threshold?  For example, what happens if I have a lot of money but I have already bought every item related to increasing my productivity available. Money becomes worthless and I get bored with the game because expanding my money serves no benefit. This problem is why some of the earlier harvest moon games ended after a set number of years.  However, Natsume has done a pretty good job at expanding their system to consume extra resources to avoid this problem.

Mining, fishing, and foraging serve several purposes in the game.  They allow you to consume the extra time and stamina you have at the end of a game day for a monetary value.  They take less stamina than working on the farm and provide an alternative profit margin.  They also assure that you won't go broke completely if you spend all your money stupidly.  I.E. Buying 10 bags of flour to start with that you cannot make a profit off of.  They ensure you have a way to restart if you go broke.  Animals work in the same way in this game.  They allow you to make money and expend less stamina than crops.  They are also used provide another use for any time and stamina you don't spend on crops.  Additionally, they require you to spend money to gather them food and a place to live. Finally, animals add a fun aspect to the game allowing for an interactive thing to do, and they allow you to personalize your experience some. 

The same thing can be said about cut scenes, festivals, collecting things and marriage in the game.  All of these things consume the resources of your time and money.  The time spent at festivals and hunting down cut scenes is pulled away from your time to make money.  Collecting items and going after a girl require both time and money.  You will often need to spend time looking for things or tracking the girl you want to marry down to give her gifts.  Also, the gifts you give to her either cost money or you lose money because you could ship them rather than give them to her.  They may also burn stamina to retrieve them. 

Finally, we have the window dressing effects that eat your money for breakfast.  Natsume made sure that there was plenty to buy this time.  Buying everything that you can will cost you several billion gold in this game.  I mean you really don't need a gold lumber barn for the cows.  It's indestructible and impressive to show your friends, but you could build several thousand grass ones for the same price.  The same goes for the kitchen stuff, Van's TV and DVD's, the records, the table, the clock and any other hokey thing I forgot to mention.  These provide no other useful function in the game other than something to look at and to give you some thing to spend your money on.  That way you won't get bored from having nothing to buy.  Before you get mad at my opinion of this, please finish the section so you can get the full story.

Okay, that's the system that you play with in this harvest moon game in a nut shell.  Please don't take this section the wrong way, the other aspects of the game are what really make it enjoyable to play.  After all, the cute graphics, hunting stuff down and getting married are what make this game fun.  They keep it from getting boring and repetitive in a short amount of time.  They also serve as milestones for measuring your overall progress through the game and add a new more challenge to it.  The purpose of this section is to allow you a look inside my reasoning behind the strategies that appear in this guide and are to come in the future.  I know that I have overanalyzed this, but it helps to explain some of my ideas in this guide.  It can also be used to explain why some of my strategies work so well.

Take my quick start mining trick for example.  This strategy trades stamina directly for quite a bit of money.  It doesn't require much game time since time hardly passes in the mine.  If you follow the common sense mining tricks I learned playing mineral town regarding saving and loading for a floor you can conserve stamina easily.  It, doesn't require any advanced tools either.  So all that leaves you with is the need for 3 to 4 thousand stamina in a portable form.  The obvious answer is to buy bodigizers from Van.  So, all you need it 30,000g to get started.  You can get that from about two weeks of crops and foraging or from digging in the dig site for 2000g items to ship.  Then you have pretty much infinite money to start with if you want to make multiple trips a day.  The point is that you need to understand how the underlying system works if you are going to find a way to beat it. 

Overall, the rpg effects of the game attract the younger intended age group of 7-12 year olds to the game.  They can be enjoyed by everyone, but its really the strategy of harvest moon that attracts teenagers and adults to the game. I am in my early 20's and I still love this game because there really isn't anything else like it on the market.  Natsume got the system right the first time, and they have just been improving it since.  Some of the strategies I want to include later will require some explanation that I will summarize.  But, I don't want to take the 3 to 4 pages of algebra to prove a point.  Most people don't understand it and get a headache looking at it.  So, I added this section to show my reasoning intuitively in an understandable fashion.  For those of you who made it this far, thanks for sticking with me through this.  I hope this can be of some help to other's of you planning to write guides for this game.