Video Game Review: Harvest Moon a Wonderful Life SE for PS2 is Tops
Harvest Moon a Wonderful Life SE starts out with the basic premise: Your father died and left the farm in your name. What are you going to do with it? There are so many new features that any previous player of the Harvest Moon series will not know what to do with themselves.
First off, there is a whole new horde of crops. In the game, you grow crops as you normally would; making sure they have adequate water. However, you can now grow trees and things called ‘hybrid’ crops. Trees, for lack of a delicate way to put this, are mostly just for monetary value. Hybrid crops are a pain to grow, but are well worth it if you want to cook and impress all of the villagers in town.
Secondly, wooing girls is pretty much a snap in this game. You can choose between four girls (rather than three in the previous Harvest Moon a Wonderful Life for GameCube), who will accept flowers daily and grow to love you almost instantaneously. Unlike previous Harvest Moon releases, however, this game has the new feature of continuing past the ‘last chapter’, and allowing you to age with your lovely wife.
The girls to choose? The lovely, quiet Celia who is much like you and works on the neighboring farm. Muffy, the flirtatious blonde with a lighthearted diction. Then there is Nami, a quiet adventurer who seems to prefer to be alone. And then, the newest addition to the bunch is Lumina, a young girl who enjoys playing the piano.
Next? Your child. In older Harvest Moon games your child could not age at all. However, in this new release you can choose to have either a son or daughter, who grows up before your very eyes. And, as you did, they take an interest in a fellow villager and choose professions based on what you do with them during their youth. They have an array of professions to chose from, anything from an artist to your very own little farmer. And, with all things, the kids seem to have their own unique personalities; dependent upon who their mothers were.
Your animals are also a bit different in this game. You can milk cows more than once a day. You can also choose to buy bulls and roosters, both of which were previously unavailable in the HM series. There are different, higher quality cows, along with sheep, and even a goat.
Some other, less important new features are that your clothes change from time to time, fishing seems to also be a snap, as is befriending most of the town villagers. You can also be the owner of a cat and ducks! Cooking is also a tad different- you have to excel in certain things such as soup and salads before you are allowed to make entrees or dessert. It can be fun, and exhausting, but it’s all well worth it, if you really enjoy these games!
This game seriously upgrades the opinion of Harvest Moon, especially with their last release, Save the Homeland, which seemed to flop. The gameplay was simple as pie. The graphics are better than in previous games. All in all, I would have to give this game a great word!
