Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life

The Good
The best thing about Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (a pseudo sequel to A Wonderful Life) is the fact that it goes at a pretty slow pace for not only younger gamers, but for the those looking for a break from frantic shooters and other fast paced games. Players can, for the most part, proceed at their leisure as they tend to their new farm by doing a variety of tasks such as (but not limited to) tending the live stock, planting and gardening, or walking around town and socializing with the town folks.

The back story wouldn't be mistaken for a quality Hollywood screenplay but it gets the job done. You play as a girl who moves from the city to take over your father's farm, which sets the story for the rest of the game. During the course of the game, players are free to walk around town and socialize with the other town folks, can even fall in love with, and marry, some of the town bachelors (later on), and eventually raise a family. The town goes the through the whole circle of life during the course of the game (older town members die, the children grow up, etc.) and gives players a sense of a living breathing community.

Harvest Moon is also a very simple game to grasp. The controls are always displayed and can be learned in minutes, mainly due to that most functions are handled with the "A" Button. Players have complete control of the camera (except during cut scenes) and so you can always have a comfortable view of your surroundings the whole game.

The Bad
Harvest Moon is a VERY long, long game. It can take the course of several real life days to progress to the next chapter in the game due to events that cannot be skipped. Every day must be lived out to its fullest and cannot be fast-forwarded, so you have to play the game every day if you want to progress at all. While not a problem out right, for those who are impatient, this could drive you crazy.

The graphics are nothing to write home about either. While fully functional, free of glitches, and at times rather cutesy (especially the farm animals and their babies), the game just feels like someone turned the color brightness and hue levels way down, making the game appear just a little drab. And the graphics, given the artistic style of the game, look and feel dated as well.

Item management is not very well handled either. Rather than dividing your items into easy to remember categories, all of you items are lumped into one huge pot. While this isn't a problem early on, as you gain more items it becomes harder to find specific items you need.

The Bottom Line
For those who never played Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (the predecessor to Another Wonderful Life, which has all the exact same features except you're a boy instead of a girl), Another Wonderful Life is an easy going, quirky, fun little game. It may not revolutionize the gaming industry but most people will have a good time living the life of a farmer without the pesticides, droughts, or having their land reposed by the Government.