This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on November 16th, 2019.
Hello! Welcome back to PlayStation Basement. PlayStation
Basement is a weekly, Saturday review of an obscure or odd game for the
original PlayStation. The games I review end up rated Good, Bad, or Neutral.
The point is to emphasize the review over the score. Now, let’s go!
This week, we will relax again for the fall. I’ve had a very
rough week. I went to Myrtle Beach on the 8th for a wedding, and I
started coughing a lot on the plane. By the time we had landed a little over an
hour later, I was really feeling tired and unwell. I’ve been pretty sick since
then, missing work for this week and lying in bed for nearly the whole time.
The doctor says it’s some viral thing, and I hope it goes away soon.
Unfortunately, I was so sick that I could barely do
anything, even play a video game. I did manage to get some time in for this
week’s game – Harvest Moon: Back to
Nature. I skipped out on this game when I was younger, as I had played
hours and hours of Harvest Moon 64.
The back cover for Back to Nature
made these games look like pretty similar farming RPGs, so I skipped the
PlayStation game. In Japan, the games came out only 10 months apart. Even the
American release of Harvest Moon: Back to
Nature (11/22/2000) was only a year after the Nintendo 64 game
(11/30/1999). Back to Nature was also
released in Europe in 2001, though its counterpart only made it via 2017’s
Virtual Console. Online sources are a bit spotty on the development of either
game; both seem to have been developed by Victor Interactive and published by
Natsume. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature
was actually the first non-Nintendo game in the series after one release on
SNES, two on Game Boy/Game Boy Color, and the previously mentioned N64 game. I
honestly never heard much about Back to
Nature when I was growing up, but everyone had Harvest Moon 64 (I think I honestly convinced many of my friends to
get it). Anyway, how does Back to Nature
stack up with its more well-known cousin?
First off, let’s take a look at the cover art to Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. The art is
almost the same in all three regions. It shows the main character, his dog, a
cow, a sheep, a chicken, and various harvest sprites on a grassy backdrop.
Other than the main character, dog, and some of the sprites, the animals are
within a window peeking into the game world. The Japanese art is flipped and
also has a brown circle around the other characters too, giving them kind of a
rural folk art design. This border also oddly clips the pitchfork in the
farmer’s hands. I like the brown border very much except for this clipping
effect. Otherwise, the art looks a bit scraggly. It’s a friendly enough cover
in any region for a friendly farming experience, though.
Graphically, Harvest
Moon: Back to Nature is a bit limited. If you have played Harvest Moon 64, the graphics here are
basically identical in design. The characters, animals, and items have a soft,
pre-rendered look. The backgrounds are all 3D, and the sharp PlayStation
polygons don’t really blend in well with the squishy characters. The character
designs are chibi anime characters in bright colors. Though the in-game
graphics aren’t the best, the classic designs are cute enough to make this all
more than tolerable.
The sound of Harvest
Moon: Back to Nature is a bit limited as well. The game has some nice
musick of a calming nature. There are not a ton of different songs, so you’ll
be hearing the same tracks over and over. The musick has an old-timey feel like
the town themes of Pokémon Red and Blue.
Sound effects are kind of sparse, though they sound fine. Axes chop, hammers
smash, dogs woof, and cows moo. I like the chicken’s cock-a-doodle-doo in the
morning. Unfortunately, Harvest Moon:
Back to Nature seems to have few sound channels. The church bells go off to
signify afternoon and evening, but they can get cut off by other sounds or by
entering or exiting a door. This makes the game feel kind of cheap and
artificial. I thought we were going Back
to Nature?
Okay so if you have played a Harvest Moon game before, you know what to expect overall. Players
start with an old farm full of weeds and rocks and need to fix it up. You till
the land, grow vegetables and fruits, raise livestock, participate in
festivals, and get married. You can race your dog and horse, and you can even
raise fish in your pond. You can fish in the river and work in the mine. The
game is divided into four seasonal months full of weather, festivals, and
birthdays that encompass a full year. Accomplishing more in the standard three
years awards you with a better ending, though you can continue playing beyond
that.
Back to Nature is
more of a business simulation than some other titles in the series such as its
N64 cousin. The town is pretty small, and characters don’t seem to do much,
sticking to one or two areas. I felt like sometimes I hoped to see what people
were doing, only to find them either unavailable or just hanging out at the
same places. It also costs a lot of money to get your farm back together and to
upgrade tools which require ore and a few days of work from the blacksmith in
addition to enough experience from use. There’s some wilderness to explore, but
there isn’t a lot to find there. It’s best to stick to farming and raising animals
to make money. A small starting rucksack (it only holds two items!) makes
gathering ore the mine or foraging in the woods difficult. Like many other
things, this can also be upgraded. The milk, eggs, and wool produced by your
animals can even be upgraded to cheese, mayo, and yarn for extra profit. The
game keeps track of how you are doing each season financially. If you are doing
well enough, you can even hire harvest sprites to help you too. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature will
require at least a minor degree of financial planning to succeed.
The game is overall easy to understand, but I had some
gripes with a few things. Movement is on a grid, as expected. There is an
option to you can use the analog stick to move, but this feels incredibly
weird. Using tools can be awkward too, as the grid does not always match up
where I expect it to. Sometimes I would grab an item that I thought was behind
another item. There’s some weirdness that can happen when running too. Running
allows you to pass through characters, so you can get stuck inside them if you
stop running as you are passing through their square. Thankfully, this is very
solvable - just run again. Some dialogue is a little awkward, and some stores
repeat far too much information every time you purchase from them. None of
these little issues are much to complain about, but they do make the game feel
a little rough around the edges in certain ways.
Overall, Harvest Moon:
Back to Nature is fun for those who really want to work hard to succeed.
Planning and working hard will get your grandfather’s farm back into
prosperity, and the adventures along the way are fun too. If you’ve already
played Harvest Moon 64, Back to Nature will still be interesting
to you, as the map, festivals, crops, tools, and upgrades all function somewhat
differently. The map, for example, is entirely different. And even though the
characters are all here (along with some new ones), many of these folks have
entirely different attitudes or occupations. Anyway, I better get back to my
farm now to water my cucumbers. If you end up moving into Mineral Town, maybe I
will have some for you.
Harvest Moon: Back to
Nature receives a Good.
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