Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life brings the depth of farming, and unfortunately, its tediousness, too, to life.

There's a good reason why there aren't a lot of manual-labor simulation games, such as The Sims Blue Collar or Coal Miner Tycoon, out there. Natsume makes a valiant and polished effort at highlighting the joys of the rustic life, but unfortunately, many won't be able to associate planting and watering with fun.

The Daily Grind
Wake up 5 am, and water each crop with the pitcher. Water two more times during the day after the soil dries. Feed the cow with hay reaped from your field and then milk the cow. Push the cow outside the barn, wash it, push it back in, and milk it again before the end of the day. Repeat daily. If all this sounds tedious, it is: Raising good-quality produce means being disciplined and regimented in your lifestyle, and the long traveling distances between areas means there's not much time to waste. Thankfully, slacking off on your agrarian chores doesn't have quick and dire consequences, so you can be a little more carefree if your mission in life is not to produce the ultimate tomato.

Good Roots, But the Soil's Dry
The wonderful life isn't a simple life?Harvest Moon is unbelievably deep and thick. You have to marry in the game, choosing from three different heroines and wooing them with gifts. Although the game offers only a couple of plants like tomatoes and potatoes to grow early on, you can later buy more exotic ones like bananas and even combine produce to create hybrids. To top it off, you can use all of the produce to cook and create your own soups, salads, sweets, appetizers, and entr?es.

The beautiful visuals delight the eye and change with the seasons and weather. However, the uninspiring sounds and music get old quick, and the controls can become unwieldy, especially in farming. Although Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life has a mind-boggling array of options, it offers no relief from the monotony of the daily chores. In setting out to create the ultimate farming game, it seems Natsume has simulated the drudgery of farming in real life as well.

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