Animal Crossing to Harvest Moon

[shogun]

Ok, I'm addicted. The 31st will mark my first month of owning Animal Crossing, and my roomie and I are still playing it on a daily basis. But I know at some point my interest will wane, so I'm looking at the one other game that even closely resembles it:Harvest Moon.

For those who've played both, is it worth getting? Which is better? Also, How does "A Wonderful Life" stack up against other H.M. games (particularly PS2's "Save the Homeland")?

[Wario-145]

Ok, I'm addicted. The 31st will mark my first month of owning Animal Crossing, and my roomie and I are still playing it on a daily basis. But I know at some point my interest will wane, so I'm looking at the one other game that even closely resembles it:Harvest Moon.

For those who've played both, is it worth getting? Which is better? Also, How does "A Wonderful Life" stack up against other H.M. games (particularly PS2's "Save the Homeland")?
Animal crossing will leave you bored after a while. I'm interested in harvest moon as well.

[Gadfly2317]

Ok, I'm addicted. The 31st will mark my first month of owning Animal Crossing, and my roomie and I are still playing it on a daily basis. But I know at some point my interest will wane, so I'm looking at the one other game that even closely resembles it:Harvest Moon.

For those who've played both, is it worth getting? Which is better? Also, How does "A Wonderful Life" stack up against other H.M. games (particularly PS2's "Save the Homeland")?

Do you and your roommate both have homes in the same animal crossing town, or did you create two different towns on different memory cards? My wife and I lived in the same town when he played this, and I thought it made the game a lot better. My daughters have their own town on their GC, and when they come to visit we could travel by train to each other's towns and mail each other gifts we'd gotten them.

My interest in playing animal crossing daily (well, about 5 times a week) did wain, but it took a LONG time. Even after I got the largest house upgrade I would still check in a couple times a week, look at the events schedule, check the store. I'd always check-in on Saturday night between 8 and midnight to get a new song from K.K. for my house. I'm amazed that in addition to the in-game music, they wrote over 50 really cool little toons that you can play in your stereo. Some of them are pretty damned good (and weird) and they are different on your stereo than the live performance K.K. plays (check out K.K. Fugue if you want a weird one.) It's worth going on line and "cheating" by finding a full list of the songs names so you can "request" K.K. to play something specific. Like K.K. Ska, or tunes like "Only Me."

Animal Crossing is the far superior game over Harvest Moon in that it has no goal, really. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and there are all these little weird special events. The november fishing tournement was great. I never cheated by messing with the GC internal clock. I just waited until Sunday morning, and dragged my ass out of bed at 6 to get the biggest fish and win the prize (you could never win if you fished the tourney later in the day it seemed like. And in all that time we played, we did get all the skeletons in the museum, but only have about half the paintings. I may take up the game again.

Like Wario said, AC will leave you bored after awhile, but all games do. But this one, when it gets dull, set it aside. It is best played for in short, short periods several days a week over a several month period. Animal Crossing was never the kind of game where I wasn't also playing something else. It was like having an ant-farm or something, this little virtual world it was fun to check in on. What made this game last longer for me was there was a bit of family competition over getting better Happy Room Academy scores, and like, in real life I'm obssessive collector. If I start listening to a band, I want ALL their CD's, and with DvD's I'm the same way. And some games where you collect stuff, like "the shines" in Mario Sunshine, who cares. I just wanted to "beat" the game. But there is nothing to "beat" in animal crossing. There are thousands of set items, and its actually really addictive trying to complete furniture sets, and do the fung-shui decorating thing. Hell, I like collecting those krackoids. My basement is full of them.

Animal Crossing seemed very little like the sims to me because that game seemed more hectic, all these things you HAD to do or your sim would go to pieces. AC is much more of a stoner game, and even the original TV ads hinted at that.

I actually got tired of Harvest Moon much quicker. It is just so much more work. You HAVE to milk the cow, you HAVE to water the plants (or they die.) I played past the first year, got married, and kind of got burnt out. I'm going to play it more later to mess with cloning crops and stuff, but I've gotten all the major equipment already except the automated milker. It just didn't take me that long to figure and exploit a "get-rick-quick" scheme that is in the game and because of that, I don't have to work hard planting many crops to make money, and the wandering around aspects to the game like fishing and talking to people or working in the mine are just not in any way compelling the way they are in animal crossing, with its over 200 characters and thousands of lines of random text.
Still, if you like Harvest Moon, this is a fun game. I wrote a review of it in the review section at VGR if you want to hear more. That review didn't include my getting burnt out and figuring out the get-rick-quick scheme because I hadn't figured that out yet.

[no.1gamer]

Ok, I'm addicted. The 31st will mark my first month of owning Animal Crossing, and my roomie and I are still playing it on a daily basis. But I know at some point my interest will wane, so I'm looking at the one other game that even closely resembles it:Harvest Moon.

For those who've played both, is it worth getting? Which is better? Also, How does "A Wonderful Life" stack up against other H.M. games (particularly PS2's "Save the Homeland")?

Well, I've been playing Animal Crossings for about 1 month myself shogun. My girlfriend and I both live in the same town. I think the one aspect of Animal Crossing that makes it better than the Sims is the ingenious multiplayer. I haven't played the latest Harvest Moon game though.

I keep asking myself how can Animal Crossings be fun when the graphics are this horrible? Well somehow it actually is fun. Perhaps though in a stoner kind of way like Gadfly was explaining.

I think you really need to play Animal Crossings with more than one person in your town. You have to live in the town with multiple gamers to really understand just how clever the concept of this game is. I really hope that Nintendo expands on this concept with a sequel for the Nintendo N5.

[shogun]

I think you really need to play Animal Crossings with more than one person in your town. You have to live in the town with multiple gamers to really understand just how clever the concept of this game is. I really hope that Nintendo expands on this concept with a sequel for the Nintendo N5.

My roomie and I both live in the same town...we also have a town from a mutual friend who was done with the game a while ago. Between us we're playing as 6 characters from 3 towns..game gets kinda complex that way. I've found that after a certain point the game really can't be played in long bouts...but the fact that new things happen every month means the game will almost certainly be in my GC every few weeks. It's certainly a neat way to extend replayability. My goal is to at least finish off the museum...I suppose I could try to collect everything, but that might take years if I don't cheat :p

Ah...and thanks for the Harvest Moon info...might be one to rent before sinking money into.