Harvest Moon: A New Beginning and Why We Keep Playing This One Game

Alright, so I talked about Rune Factory a while ago and I mentioned Harvest Moon, so you and I both knew that this would happen. A whole post on Harvest Moon, specifically new, 3DS Harvest Moon before I go back and talk about old, not 3DS Harvest Moon. But yeah, Harvest Moon. Ready? Go!

Despite this game being called "A New Beginning", this game does not in fact have a new beginning. See, Harvest Moon is like... not the most creative in the beginnings department. I mentioned this before, but... I mean it's really, really ridiculous how this always turns out. Your family has land in Insert_Town_Here, and you know, no one was using it or anything. Sometimes it's like, "Your grandmother/father owned this land, but then they died and you came to take it" and sometimes you're just... driving by and decide to stop in and become a farmer. As you do, I guess.

This game comes from the "my family owned this land and didn't think to rent it out to anyone" family. You just show up, right, and the mayor, Crocodile Dundee, is super happy that you're around.  He asks if you'd like to join the community. You can say no, of course, but that's saying no to adventure. So, you know, your character just automatically says yes.

His name's Dunhill, though.

So you join the happy little town of three people, but then you're joined by another guy, Neil, almost right away. So the town, including you, is five people strong. Then Iroha joins you, making it a six person town. Finally, Rebecca and her son Toni move in and you're now eight people in a small enclosed area and honestly... it could stay that way for a really long time.

But here's the kicker... Harvest Moon: A New Beginning isn't as good as previous Harvest Moon games. And I mean like, games prior to A Tale Of Two Towns. I mean games that are generally thought of as bad, like Grand Bazaar. Why? Well...

Harvest Moon: Not The Best Choice For A Game

Around this time in Harvest Moon, I assume people somewhere were complaining about... err, something. Namely, it's hard to get married to people because if you play without a walkthrough, you might accidentally force your sweetheart to marry someone else. So they dropped that completely from literally every following Harvest Moon game. But just so you know, there is literally no other form of tension in a Harvest Moon game in the beginning of the game.

"We're the hardest people to marry~!"

I'm not saying that the now defunct marriage thing is what makes A New Beginning not that great of a Harvest Moon game, but it's one of the little things.

A New Beginning by the title suggests that the beginning is, in fact, new. That could mean a lot of different things. But I think they decided to take a large step backwards in this game and so the title turns out to be a very... err, faulty lie of a name.

Anyone who buys this game usually buys it with the warning that it has the slowest start-up of every Harvest Moon game. If you've been told this, the person who warned you is absolutely, positively 150% not lying. This game has a literal full year of dicking around before you can really get to do anything. On top of that, if you're not cheating your way through the game, you might find yourself with maybe... two or three bachelorettes for the first year. If you're playing as a girl, you have pretty much the same odds. See, this game is following the template of a few of the games in this year-- full customization. Rune Factory IV had it in the sense that you could decorate your rooms (it wasn't the focus of the game and everything is static so it's pretty annoying) and Animal Crossing had it in spades. This game really focuses on that aspect of gaming, so it has to teach you how you customize your town.

How, you ask? Well, Crocodile Dundee will give you Town Restoration plans, because even though you're not the mayor, you're the one making executive choices for the town. You choose where things are placed, like houses, fields, and so on. Full customization of your farm is, of course, the dream. I don't, however, see why the game changed so much between A Tale of Two Towns and this game.

FARM EVERYWHERE GOD DAMN IT

All Harvest Moon games have a story to break up the monotony of just farming everyday forever, which is why the Harvest Goddess usually is such a raging idiot. Thankfully, they decided to nix the whole "The Harvest Goddess made another whoopsie" story and went for "Everyone moved out of the town" story. I especially like that everyone just demolished their houses the moment they were leaving.

"My son and I run an inn, which I subsequently destroyed out of frustration that no one was coming to visit Echo Village."

Your job is to complete the Town Restoration plans that Crocodile Dundee has and create a new town from nothing. What does this have to do with getting married? Everything. You have to build someone's house in order for them to move in, and you have to build houses of people you don't even like to get people that you do like. I mean, if we were going for full customization, at the very least you should be allowed to pick who you want living in your town. On top of that, to get these people to live in your town, you'd better be cheating or just save everything you pick up, because the town restoration plans happen to be seasonal.

And don't get me started on the hoops you have to jump for the mine.

They don't seem seasonal, which is the problem. For one plan, you need to ship 10 honey, but one of the vital items doesn't appear in the summer or the winter. So if you reach this plan and you've been selling that item, you need to wait a season. The game is already slow enough without this bogging you down. Another thing is that rocks, which you need to break to make material stone, appear very rarely. If you don't buy material stone from Rebecca, good luck trying to finish the second and third plans within two or three years. What's stupid is that black rocks are all over the place, and black rocks take a special hammer to break. What's even more stupid is that small rocks are also literally everywhere but you barely use small material stone for anything.

Some liar somewhere told me that it was easy to make money in this game, which would be true if you weren't sinking your money into buying material stone and saving literally everything on the off chance that it might be used later, which again, would be something you'd have to do if you aren't using a walkthrough. But I guess the worst thing is that you have to buy items to start dating other people, even if they have reverse proposal/engagements. Like if you want to marry Neil, you need to be carrying a blue feather so that he can propose to you. What?

"I can't marry you unless you've put down at least 10000000G on our future. PS, I'm not going to help you on your farm, so... you know, fuck that."

To further the vast amounts of work you need to do for this game, you can get your cows and other produce animals to be more productive. Sounds good, right? Except your animals die and you have to level them up by giving them treats. "Eh." You say. "Still not that bad." Yeah, I know. That's why no one in game informs you and you only learn via straight up cheating that you have to give them a certain number of specific treats (cow, chicken, sheep) and a certain number of general treats to level up your animal. The plus side is, the treats roll over. The minus side is, it takes a bloody fortnight (okay, longer than that) and it adds to the already pretty long amount of time you spend tending to your crops daily. I suggest getting a pet that can herd when you have maybe five barn animals and let them feed themselves outside.

Pets have always been the bane of Harvest Moon because they never give you a pet to start out with, which means you get the pet animal so late in the game that the pet becomes more of a hassle than your produce animals. I get that you don't want the game to be too easy, Natsume, but by the time I buy my first cat or dog, I'm literally done with the game. So this game decided to cut that short (thankfully) and make it so you could buy pets early on, if you complete the town restoration plans quickly. The moment you see "Build a Cottage", you should just dump your money into that so you don't waste half your morning running into and out of buildings to feed your animals. Unless you only have chickens, in which case you have to build a separate place for them to eat outside AND you have to put food down for them everyday. The only upside  to chickens is that the star level of the eggs corresponds to the number of hearts a chick hatched from said egg will have.

And if you have ten chickens, prepare to spend an in-game hour picking them up and putting them down.

But this is a lot of complaining considering that I like the Harvest Moon titles a good deal. So why do I dislike this one so much? Outside of all that stuff I labeled above I just... don't think Harvest Moon has been progressing.

I get it, though. As we move forward, people want new and more exciting things and Harvest Moon is just a status quo. Farming isn't exciting (or new) and so of course players get bored with it. I mean, since Harvest Moon has appeared on the DS, I think only two games have been really original in the whole set. If we're talking about Wii games, don't even get me started-- Animal Parade is probably the best Harvest Moon game for the system and one of the better series installments, but I don't want to play Harvest Moon on a Wii, really. The creator of Harvest Moon, Yashuiro Wada, for some reason thought that the series itself was beyond saving (he called it a marriage simulator) and created a new game, Hometown Story. But that game seems to be suffering from the same flaws that this game is. It's slow, it's extremely boring, and after a while it becomes just... intensely annoying to play. It's like having a job on top of your real life job.

By the way, you can get married in this game, so... marriage simulator, this time without growing stuff.

But have you seen the reviews of that game-- have you played it yourself? I only played a little, but it suffers from Harvest Moon Syndrome hardcore, and it's worse off than the regular Harvest Moon games. Harvest Moon games start getting bad the moment you are no longer interested in the townspeople, romantically or otherwise. On top of that, without the nostalgic backing Harvest Moon has, it's very hard to want to continue playing Hometown Story. The character design took a step back and isn't as cute as Harvest Moon is, the characters are all bland and forgettable, the camera is ridiculous and the music is forgettable too. It's literally just Harvest Moon if you extract all the things that made you play Harvest Moon.

But we keep playing games like Harvest Moon and Hometown Story-- Why? It's a life simulator and we actually live lives, but Harvest Moon's charm comes from the small town closeness that it generates on top of the life simulation, in my opinion. The moment you stop trying to progress making the people in the game interesting is the moment that the game starts to stall. The way to make people continue to play Harvest Moon games is, quite simply, to keep giving them characters to learn about and to keep making the characters interesting. For example, after Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, you never had to build a relationship with your child again. In Animal Parade, they touched on it, but not in the same way that A Wonderful Life did-- instead of watching your child grow and having a relationship outside of "Hey kid, good to see you're still mine, " A Wonderful Life had character arcs for your child (depending on the mother, but that's still a thing that occurs in game). I don't know why, but this function was completely dropped from the game.

And look at him. HE'S ADORABLE.

With new technology comes better ways to make Harvest Moon interesting again. Why not make it so that people in towns get married to each other again? Why not have small story arcs for your child? Why not make it so that the amount of time you spend with your child as a baby influences the way your child treats you when it grows older-- why not have an "ending" to your character's game and have the child take your place in a New Game + option? How about using the 3DS's DLC to add new characters or levels to an actual mine and not the crap we got in A New Beginning and A Tale of Two Towns? If you're really all about making the game fully customizable, how about finally making the kid look like both parents i.e. make it so that making a black or Asian character isn't just a skin and is actually something that has continuity in the game? They could update the things people say via downloads, or make the characters change clothes depending on the season (they do change their clothes in some games, so the technology exists). There could be downloadable festivals, or ones that only show up on odd numbered years or even numbered years. Maybe make the game so that we can visit a nearby city and open a shop and hire people to run the store? Or make tons of different town events for each year that actually impact the town in some way? How about having characters be indifferent to you, or become your enemy over specific events instead of everyone just being sugary sweet all the time? How about more events that have an effect on your town's look and feel? How about making same sex friends have the option of becoming "best friends" and that resulting in different scenarios and options for the player? In all of Harvest Moon I can only remember one character actually dying, like for real dying. They had a tombstone and everything. Why not more character progressions in that way? What happened to just living your life in a town, even if the town isn't one of your creation?

I need to feel invested in order to play a life simulator. When you really think about the genre of life simulation, gameplay comes in two forms: either you are a god or you are one of the mortals. When you're a god, your "gameplay" comes from your own sense of humors and so forth. For example, the Sims is a life simulator in which you are a god, and people play those games in vastly different ways. But Harvest Moon is a life simulator in a different way. You're no god, you're just a person who lives in a town. Sometimes, you befriend everyone because you love everyone. Sometimes, you just don't befriend people. That's just how it is. Your gameplay experience by and large has nothing to do with who you are, except for who you marry and what you design your house to look like. But investment comes from the same place. Why are you playing the Sims? Are you playing to design houses? You might be, but you're probably not. You're probably playing because of the people. You're probably playing the Sims and enjoying being an immutable, infalliable voice in the lives of computer people. And in Harvest Moon, you might not be a god, but you're probably not playing the game to run a farm. There are plenty of free Facebook games for that. You're also most likely playing Harvest Moon for the people. The gameplay is different, but the investment is the same. You play the game not for the bells and whistles, but for the "lives" that you have the chance of touching.

And you play this game if you want to litter your friends walls with nonsense and terrible art.

I felt invested in the lives of the people in Rune Factory 4, I was invested in the conversations they had, the festivals, the events... everything. I wanted to protect the town and so I played and played until I had done so. That made the absolute mundane chore of farming (which it was, I'm serious) less mundane. It was less about me making a nest egg for myself and more about me getting Princess Points to get more things for the town. I stopped playing Rune Factory 4 right before I had enough Princess Points to nationalize the bath houses, and it wasn't because I was bored but because I had a backlog of games I had yet to finish writing reviews for. That is crazy.

A new Harvest Moon graces the horizon and while I spent this whole article stripping the veneer off of the series and saying what amounts to "there's no forward thinking here", I'm probably going to buy it because Harvest Moon is a dying breed. Say what you will about it, Harvest Moon is not a game that holds your hand, it's not a game that makes things easy, and the amount of nuance put into each game is commendable. But I spent all of Rune Factory pretty much talking about the good things in Harvest Moon, because those good things carried over into Rune Factory as a series. I hadn't even touched on every single good thing. Crazy.

I want the next Harvest Moon to be good, I really do. I can see why the series creator sees it as a lost cause. But what I'd tell him as a fan of the series is that this particular series has only really just begun. I'm not sure that in the world where Call of Duty still makes money (you know, with their one game) that Harvest Moon will become the next big thing, but I think there's still some merit to it's existence and continued existence. If Harvest Moon does, one day, run out of ideas outside of "create more characters and make the world larger" (cough cough Pokemon) then it's probably time to think about calling it quits. But right now, while I don't recommend A New Beginning, I do recommend the series.

Rune Factory 4: A Fantasy Harvest Moon Review

I really like the Harvest Moon series, but you knew that, unless you didn't and now you do.  Harvest Moon is the kind of cute/annoyingly long type of game that doesn't have a real ending though, and on top of that you'll probably find yourself really pissed at the Harvest Goddess who literally can stop all of the problems in every town you go to, but still she finds a way to just do literally nothing. But we're not here to talk about Harvest Moon, even though we kinda have to.

And I said I was going to clean this room because I have to, but...

So let's get Harvest Moon out of the way! Without getting into history or anything, Harvest Moon has just about 20 games in it's series (give or take if you don't consider games like Boy and Girl or  DS and DS Cute to be games of their own accord) and generally speaking, they're all the same. You either come from a city (you know the one) to get your parent's farm or you're an amnesiac that the mayor of a town decides to give full control of the economy. You know. Because.

"Thanks, Mr. Mayor!" - Literally every amnesiac ruining towns across Harvest Moon land

Your job basically is to save wherever you are from the Harvest Goddess, who for the most part, is the reason these towns are failing. You do this via getting married, having a kid, farming, ranching, cooking, mining, foraging, and making friends. Now if you're hearing this and thinking, "But where's the violence?!" well, that's what Rune Factory is. Sort of. I mean it's more than that, but if you wanted to play Harvest Moon but with violence, then you should give Rune Factory a try.

But if you've actually played any of the games from Rune Factory, you know that Rune Factory is a series now because it's... really kind of amazing. There are people called Earthmates who have the power to harvest runes, there are elves and dwarves with political problems with the human races, there are people related to people in other towns and continuity between the games, there is an actual enemy in an empire nearby to the country you live in, there are bosses, there are dungeons-- I mean, the game's world is immense. When you really look at Harvest Moon, there's a lot of vagueness, a lot of ambiguity about the world and the towns themselves, which makes it almost Pokemon-like, except that everyone in the town isn't completely mystified about what's over that mountain range, people of Kanto.

"DON'T GO OVER THOSE MOUNTAINS! WHAT IF THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE OVER THERE?!"

Rune Factory has a lot of story that doesn't really connect in the games until you get deep into the plot, so I'm not really going to talk about the story too much. I know, that's crazy of me.

Rune Factory 4 follows the incredibly creative and stunningly fresh amnesiac main character formula that I've never seen before in games like Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, Theresia, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Final Fantasy,  Cave Story, Megaman Zero, Ghost Trick, and-- surprisingly-- Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You can pick to be a boy (Lest) or a girl (Frey), but I chose a girl, so we're going with that.

Is it a boy or a girl? I guess it... doesn't have breasts...?

You start on a airship with an odd glowing purple ball. You don't get any actual story here, while you have your memories. Nope. You just get kicked off the airship and land on a dragon.Oh, and you live, so this isn't a five second $50 game. The dragon you land on is Ventuswill, the Native Dragon of Wind. The names of the other Native Dragons are just the worst, so be happy you landed on one with a tolerable name. Ventuswill is oddly compelling for a god character (because the Native Dragons are pretty much gods). It's honestly kind of sad and infuriating to hear her story.

Because Harvest Moon as a series almost always has some god-infused problem, Rune Factory sometimes pulls from that idea bucket, and this game is an example of that. Ventuswill is the source of the problems in the game, and there's a lot of "tension" between her and the people of the town of Selphia, which you can't really tell because the game doesn't talk about it until the ending of the first plot. Oh, also, there are three plots to the story. 

Now, most Harvest Moon games have the same engine (depending on the system it is on) and the same goes for Rune Factory, for the most part. They changed this one up and for the most part, it's all good changes. But there is an issue with unequipping items and I am totally not a fan of always having to hold the magic book for escape despite it being on the bottom screen... but it isn't anything game breaking. The controls are otherwise intuitive.

Like most games that have day-to-day life, the people in the town have static texts, which is a bit lame. The people in the town are not all tropes, but they might as well be. You have a tomboy-ish girl who likes sweets, which is normal. You have the overly hyperactive girl with overly hyperactive actions. You have the moody male who is moody for the sake of moodiness... I mean, standard characters. But there are interesting twists on terrible tropes, like the narcoleptic butler who does her work while she's asleep and forms a "Get It Together" club. Or a man who time travels (Trust me, it makes sense within the story) to save the world. There's a gothic girl who sees ghosts, which is pretty trope-ish, but her family is a lovey-dovey couple who people actually think are too lovey-dovey, which is nearly unheard of in Harvest Moon. But  Rune Factory 4 actually has interesting in-game random events... like for example, there are three butlers in the town and one of them wins a butler competition randomly throughout the year and everyone in town talks about it. There are also Town Events with a group of characters who have an event together and they'll have different texts than normal. You can even have sleepovers, and the texts there will be different too (sometimes. I've gotten one or two different texts, but it probably had to do with the fact that I wasn't dating during the first sleepover and I was dating during the second one), but day to day you'll probably get through the static texts within a year, if you talk to everyone equally. The marriage candidates all have more dialogues after you get higher than 3 Love Points or Friend Points, and everyone else doesn't really have anything like that. It seems kind of lazy. When you reach 7 Love Points, you can start dating, and you'll get little events with each of the bachelors or bachelorettes where you start seeing that they might be in love with you.

Pff. Uninterested.

Now, like I said, I played as a girl, so I had to deal with bachelors. When you pass people in this game, they ignore you at FP/LP levels 0-2, wave at around 1-3, and wave with a musical note from 3-7. Around level 7, people will start waving with a heart over their head, which means that these people are free to date you if they're bachelors or bachelorettes. However, just because they're beckoning lovingly to you over a candlelight dinner doesn't mean they're ready to admit they're in love with you. A more surefire way to know is to wait for the event where you and your bachelor of choice are forced to interact. Some are really cute and some are... well...

My bachelor of choice was Leon, because if there's ever a dude who isn't white or Asian, I go for him to see if my kids will turn out dark skinned, except for Kai because I hated him. But it helps that I like Leon's character and I especially like his taste in gifts and foods.

Okay, so he's not THAT dark skinned, but who is in video games? AND DON'T YOU TALK ABOUT FF7!

Leon is the last bachelor you save-- which I will get into like right after this so SHUT UP-- but not the hardest bachelor to marry. Nope, that's Doug, who is storyline related. After Leon though, you never bring a new person into the town. The other three saved characters-- Amber, Dylas, and Dolce-- are leagues easier than saving Leon, who literally is the most ridiculous "end game" that there is. And that's the thing, after saving Leon, the game plays the credits like you just finished the game. I beat the "game" in one year, I even saved one of the characters on my in-game birthday (you're welcome Dolce!) because to make it "hard" on myself, while playing in Hard mode, mind you, I only saved one character per month. But to be fair, I'm the queen of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory... or something. But after the credits roll, you wait for a week and the second plot starts up, so...

Right, but, to beat the first plot you have to level up. In everything. No... seriously.  You level up in eating to get more health and rune points, which like stamina, you level up in sleeping (really) for the same stuff. You level up in bathing (really.) for the same thing. You level up in walking to--

(But in case you don't know, it's the same thing as the other three)

You level up in chemistry for better medicines than the doctor, and crafting for good armor and accessories... cooking for food that you can use to give to other people or to get more RP and HP from what you eat, and forging for making better weapons and tools. Leveling up in taming nets you more powerful animal friends, leveling up in different weapons makes them easy to use with less stamina wasted... and on top of that you still level up yourself. Dungeons have level requirements outside of them, and usually you're way above those requirements because you'll constantly be going back to old dungeons to get monster drops for crafting and forging and new pets for your animal barns. You might have problems with bosses, except in the first plot you'll find that the bosses are all pretty simple, with the exception of Dylas, that lying sack of--

Wait, isn't this a text review?

But this all sounds complainy when I actually really, really like the game. I like the tri-story bit, because it makes your actions seem like they have purpose. I like the fact that you can bring townspeople on trips to dungeons. I like the diversity of the texts, or I did for the first year. I LOVE THE TOWN EVENTS, and I like that the townspeople really do seem tightknit and still have some pretty crappy things to say about each other-- the town isn't nearly as saccharine as Rune Factory 2, where I feel as though everyone should've straight up been like, "Yo but, real talk... Mana suuuuuuuucks."

"I like Pink Turnips and flowers and farm produce, and I'm bright and chipper for no reason. Also, I have a strange lust for you, amnesiac farmer. MARRY ME!"

I like that I don't dislike Ventuswill in the way I dislike the Harvest Goddess, which sounds stupid but... I like that my dislike for Ventuswill is more sympathetic than... well, wondering why she's so pathetic. The Harvest Goddess always says the same stuff when you see her. Either she just straight up ruins a town, A Tale of Two Towns style, and expects some random newcomer to show up and fix her mistakes, or she's like, "I can literally talk to anyone I want, but I choose not to so everyone in town literally forgot I exist. Now I have no power because no one believes in me. I couldn't have forseen this, considering I'm a goddess and stuff."

I like the fact that I can decorate my house, although it's useless and for the most part meaningless. I like that I can open a store, and that my responsibility towards the town is just to attract tourists with more stores and festivals and fresh produce.

But I guess what I like the best is that I always feel like there's something to be done in this game. When I "finished" the game, I remember being confused. I was about to put the game down when I went online to check and make sure I hadn't just beat a $50 game in like... an in-game year. I mean the time I spent on this game to beat it was about... half a week or so if I put the hours together? I mean, it could've been shorter if I hadn't given myself restraints. But when I learned that there was more plot I was really happy because the next set of bosses are difficult and fun (although I hit level 100 before I reached the first boss of the second plot because I farmed the crap out of monster drops so the dungeons to reach the bosses are pretty subpar because of that. I haven't even gotten to the third plot yet, which I only know about because I looked up the first ending and stumbled across THAT gem. But you know what? I'm actually really interested in what will happen in the third arc.

The Gnomes are more interested in the second arc.

And just so you know, I stopped playing Rune Factory 4 at one point to play Pheonix Wright: Dual Destines, Pokemon, and Etrian Odyssey IV (because I can't play Millenium Girl until I actually beat that game). I really don't want to stop playing Rune Factory until I'm done, though. And that's incredible for me. I'm the kind of person who plays a game for a few weeks and then swaps the game out for something else. I mean, the only games where I don't put the game down are in my favorite games list: Sonic CD, 999, Lux-Pain, Ever 17, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations... not very many games, but games that I like because there's something about them that pulls me into them. Sonic CD is colorful, fast-paced and fun, 999 is creepy, dark, mysterious and compelling, Lux-Pain is so thought provoking and compelling with an odd story that has people who really feel real for what could be considered anime characters, Ever 17 is straight up disturbing... and I think I like Rune Factory 4 because it's busy. You have a lot to do and the fact that you can balance all of the things you need to do in game is pretty incredible. And despite how silly the leveling up gets (and it really does have sleeping and eating as things you can level up in, for reals), it makes sense after a while of playing. 

So should you get this game? Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you're not into farming, you'll find you'll really like the farming system in this game, where you don't get penalized for planting crops out of season. If you don't like ranching, you'll be happy to know you don't need a milker or clippers or anything like that because your animals just drop their given item. But those things aren't really necessary, unless you're trying to win every festival, because you can fight bosses over and over and even make most of them your pets if you're into fighting stuff. That's CRAZY.

What I'm trying to say here is that Rune Factory 4 is a fantastic addition to this series and I hope all the games that come after this one have the same pomp and busy feeling to them. Where I felt let down in Rune Factory 2 when I randomly just played as my child for half the game for no reason even though I'd been building rapport with my main character, and I felt annoyed in Rune Factory 1 because it was so rough and ridiculous to play, I really found myself liking this game. (I don't remember what I picked up instead of Rune Factory 3, but I never played 3.) So, 3DSers, get this game. Go get married to some random townie and have a kid that looks nothing like them for whatever reason. I salute you!

But... one thing for Rune Factory 5... Can't we personalize the main character in these games at this point? Do you know how weird it is for the world to be so homogeneous and then Leon shows up and points out that dark skinned people exist? Do you remember there being a black elf in Rune Factory 1? Are you trying to tell me there are no dark skinned Earthmates? It's just that I always go for being a dark skinned person just so that when the entire town inevitably falls in love with me I can blow off most of them by sticking my nose in the air and going, "You're just in love with the exoticism of there being only one black person in miles." I would've gotten away with that in Harvest Moon: A New Beginning if Rebecca and Toni weren't dark skinned. But bet money my kid in Harvest Moon will be white as snow. I'm trying to add diversity to the games here. Diversity and the feeling of stuck-upness at being the only black person in a town. Pokemon did it, so now you have no choice but to do it!

Theresia

Far be it from me to say that people who like scaring the living crap out of themselves are crazy. Personally I don’t understand it. After all, there’s plenty of stuff that’s already really scary and they don’t need a video game written about them to make me fear them. For example, bees.

And fuck bees.

But hey, I can understand the need to feel a little scare every now and then. Life is mundane and a little horror goes a long way. That’s why video games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame have the audiences that they do. But for every innovative horror game that comes out, there’s always seven that figure, “Hey, we don’t actually need to be scary to actually be a horror game!”

All of those games are probably weapons developed by fucking bees.

Today’s game is Theresia. It’s a mystery/horror/adventure-esque game that, in case you couldn’t figure it out, is not scary. Normally I’d start out by telling you what the story is, but I have no idea what the story is-- and I beat the game. Twice, because I had to replay it to talk to you guys about it!

Well, I’m sort of lying. See, I do know what the story is and it is an okay story, but... I mean, I didn't figure out the story from the game. I actually could not figure out the story until I sat down and did some research, and even then I can't say I figured all of it out. Ah, well. Here’s the beginning of the story for you.

You, as a young girl, wake up in a room on a cot. Try as you might, you can remember nothing about yourself or where you are. You must find your way out of this facility and to some other people! All you can really remember is a woman, a beautiful woman, with alabaster white skin, crimson lips, and long dark hair.

Yeah, sounds riveting to me too.

So there’s a lot of stuff that made this game into the crowning achievement of not scary that it is, but there is one major reason why this game flopped the way it did and one major reason why I think it shouldn’t have been made at all.

A reason that isn't bees, though.

The game originally was an episodic cellular phone based game. After all the parts for both of the stories (that’s right, this one game is split into two parts) were finally completed, I guess it turned out pretty popular so Aksys figured they’d make it into a DS game. Not a bad idea, but it was executed pretty badly.

“So who developed this game,” you ask. “Was it Aksys?”

Nope, good guess. Actually the developers are a Japanese company called WorkJam. WorkJam mostly seems to make mobile phone applications for Japanese model phones, but they also have made some pretty good console games. I’m actually a pretty big fan of their work. Now if you do know WorkJam, you probably know them from their console releases, namely the Tantei Jinguji Saburou series-- not to be confused with Tantei Jingūji Saburō, which is Detective Jake Hunter in English (also developed by WorkJam). Anyone into mysteries would love their work. Theresia is, I’m sure, a popular game of theirs. I’m just saying that this adaptation is lacking.

Alright, alright. I’ll stop meandering about the topic here. Of course you want to know about gameplay and all that jazz. Let’s start with the music. It’s terrible. Moving on.

You're supposed to be solving puzzles, but I'm pretty sure that's this game's excuse for why you just... wander through hallways aimlessly. I walk around in my everyday life, Aksys. This game about walking, that's pretty much been handled. I'm going to need more motivation to play this game. You know, like cutting edge graphics and beautiful scenery!

So... the graphics in the game are pretty standard bad 3D. It’s not so awful you have to drop the game and projectile vomit for about twenty minutes before playing again, but it’s also not super immersive. It reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D. You know, the one you played on floppy disks back in-- aw, damn, I just dated myself there. Theresia is grainy at its best and pixelated at its worst. I don’t want to tell you that you should just accept bad 3D on the DS, because... well, the DS does have the capability of making good looking 3D. In this game, you spend almost every moving moment in the midst of grainy 3D, which makes me wonder-- did Aksys just take the 3D from the phone application and put it into the game? The DS has more capability than a phone for 3D rendering, so why would they do that?

See how the left wall is pixelated? Isn't it weird when it's contrasted with the right wall? Then there's the ceiling and floor, which seem grainy to me.

One of the worst aspects of the game is the backdrops when you’re not in the overworld, if you could call it that. It’s not even that the backdrops are bad. The backdrops are actually really good! They’re just super dark and because of the size of the DS’ screens, it’s really, really hard to make out how good they really are. Some of the artwork that went into this game is amazing and I’m upset that there’s so much darkness in the game that you can’t really see how great it really is.

This is one of the brighter images, also the first one you run into in the game. It's good looking, right?

So if you’re anything like me, at this point you’re like, “Well, I need to actually see the phone application to know if they did anything to the graphics, otherwise I guess this is okay.” Well, enjoy this:

So they’re small, sorry. But I can’t download Japanese apps-- and even on my iPhone emulator I can’t really get good screenshot-- so let’s just go with these. The top one is a 3D scene like the first Theresia screenshot in this review and the second is a still screen like the second Theresia screenshot in this review. I know you can’t really tell, but the port to the DS was a downgrade.

Yeah. It’s a downgrade. I don’t get it! To be fair, the 3D probably looks better because my picture is small-- I tried to do a little more research and found out that there’s a lot of 3D screens in the game that look pretty much dead on like their counterparts in the DS version-- but given that we know that the DS has better capability than a phone for 3D, why would Aksys not update the graphics?

Most of the regular artwork is still really beautiful in either adaptation.

The storytelling in this game is so bad it should be put into a museum. Seriously though, what is with this disjointed storytelling in games that can’t utilize it? I promise you, you won’t be able to figure out a single thing in the game on your first playthrough. Or your second, or your third-- if you play that far. So if you don’t know what I mean by disjointed storyline, I’m talking about spreading out a story haphazardly through the game’s environment, usually in such a way that you have to pick up books or notes to determine the "truth". However there is an overarching storyline that gives you the most generic version of the plot ever. This kind of storytelling technique is better in games where the purpose is vague, like an MMO or... you know, a cellphone app. Theresia’s purpose isn’t vague (and it's not a cellphone app). In Theresia, you have two clear objectives: 1) Get out of this weird, half-collapsed facility. 2) Figure out what the heck is going on. This should be easier than taking candy from a baby.

Ah, well. I do know why the story’s so disjointed. It goes back to the episodic gameplay. Previously you could replay pieces of the game. So, for example, say you complete your game and you realize you don’t have all the information in the game. Then you could easily go back to a previous episode and find that information. When you port an episodic game directly to a full game, it’s harder to go back and forth. If the overworld connected you to every area within Theresia, that would be one thing. But this was a direct port, it seems, so instead of working with the entire area within the game, after you pass checkpoints, you can’t move back and forth to find out what you’ve missed. Oh and trust me, you’ll miss something.

“But... uh, you! That’s impossible. I’m the most through adventurer this side of the sun. I’ve never missed anything in any game!”

I don’t believe that, but if you’d like to put it to the test, then welcome to Theresia: The Game That Hates You. I promise you, no other game goes through so much trouble to make sure that you have absolutely no fun playing it at all. Theresia is like the reigning king of skullduggery-- the moment you think, “Oh, there’s no POSSIBLE way this could be booby trapped!” the game’s like, “LAWL, FUCKING BEES!”

Seriously though, fuck bees.

Everything is booby trapped. Books, chairs, those things you hang key rings on, doors, floors, gates, your face, your computer, your mom, your fingers, thinking, breathing, red, blue, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, PSP Vita, Nintendo DS, Captain America-- Okay, so maybe I went off on a little tangent, but if you can dream it, it’s probably booby trapped. You have limited life, so after spending like twenty minutes getting shocked, shot with darts, or lit on fire you’ll probably stop playing the game.

“Boy howdy,” You say, “That sounds awesome!” To which I respond, where are you from, the 1950s? Boy howdy, really? Anyway, this is about as awesome as sticking thumbnails into your eyes. Or chewing through concrete. Or harvesting sweat off of a sweaty person to make a perfume that you have to wear on your very first date with a girl you’ve been pining after since the third grade. So is it awesome? No. No, it is not awesome. It is the opposite of awesome.

How about characters? Are the characters interesting? Nope. Well, yes (in that you do kind of want to learn what happened to them) and no, but for right now, no. The main female is kind of dreary and she gets on my nerves. I understand that she doesn’t know anything, but you’d think someone who knew nothing about anything going on around her would-- oh, I don’t know-- be a little more concerned that she’s alone in a facility where everything is out to kill her and she has no memory of getting there or if she’s being watched. Doesn’t that sound realistic? Prepare to be amazed at how little this girl cares.

She spends most, if not all, of her time speaking in ellipses. Like so: “I went... to the market. … … … … … It was a long trip... … … hampered by the FUCKING BEES” When she’s not speaking in ellipses, she’s talking about blood, the woman in her dreams, or flowers. That’s. It. It’s not compelling story telling, in fact it’s actually quite weak. But she can’t tell you the story, remember? She has no knowledge of anything. That’s actually one of the stronger points of this game-- she is consistent. Sure, her dialogue is stilted and unrealistic, but they made her out to be an amnesiac, and for the duration of the game she is exactly that.

But hey. I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if I actually like anything about this game (I can sense your thoughts by looking into the screen of my 3DS and chanting ancient ritualistic curses). I guess that’s a valid question. What do I like about this game?

Well, I don’t much like the music or the sound effects, but like I said, I like the static backdrops when they’re bright enough to be seen. There are red bugs that show up halfway through the game that are interesting and they’re accompanied by the only creepy sound effect. I like some of the puzzles, which I barely mentioned in the review because if you reach the puzzles, that probably means you probably just picked up the game after three months of not playing it. The ending is particularly good in my opinion, but again, to play up until that point requires a special type of gamer. Not a nerd... just someone who enjoys waterboarding and eating vomit.

Is this game bad? Well... yeah. Yeah, it kind of is. In fact, can I just say that I feel cheated out of my money for buying it? The strange thing is that I can see how it would work in episodes-- it would have been better to keep it as an episodic game rather than doing what Aksys did. As an episodic game, I think I might’ve enjoyed this a lot more. It probably would’ve made more sense. The booby traps wouldn’t have bothered me less, but at least I could reach the end of a part and felt like I accomplished something.

I guess in the end it has to be up to you. Do you find it interesting based on what I've said? Are you that waterboarding vomit eater who's been waiting for a game to show up and give you all of the fun with none of the mess? Then, surprise, Aksys literally only thought about you when they made this game. That's a pretty small demographic you went for there, Aksys. Oh wait, I forgot. THIS GAME WAS MADE BY FUCKING BEES.

Wait, it was YOU GUYS?!

Knuckles Chaotix

I promise I’m done looking at Sonic games. Well... no, I can’t promise that. I’m just really into Sonic, pre-Wii era Sonic anyway, and there’s a ton of games featuring Sonic characters that don’t really get that much air time. I mean, let’s face it, when people think about Sonic, they think about the Sonic Quartet-- all Genesis games that were all... well, really great, but still! How many people think of Tails Adventure when they think of Sonic games? Or Sonic Triple Trouble? Or, hell, Knuckles Chaotix?

You shut up.

Despite the fact that damn near no one I’ve met even knew this game existed, Sonic Heroes managed to stick three of the four characters that no one’s ever heard of into its game, making Sonic Heroes responsible for the re-emergence of four characters featured in unpopular games. Yay! But also Big.

Oh god I want to punch you.

Knuckles Chaotix, or just Chaotix, was released on the 32X in 1995. Don’t worry, if you’re like any other sane human being, you probably never played it. That’s because the 32X is a BEAST of a peripheral, requiring its own power source and no more than two connections to the Genesis. It was just difficult. But if you’re like me and you did have the 32X, don’t worry. You’re not insane. But I imagine you were pissed off with the 32X’s power adaptor.

Anyway, Knuckles Chaotix is a strange game as far as Sonic is concerned. Firstly, Knuckles Chaotix is really long, in comparison to most Sonic games. I guess it’s shorter than Sonic 3 and Knuckles, but it was longer than Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles if you looked at the games separately.  So it has a save feature, which is similar to the one in Sonic 3. Yeah, some of you are like, “So what? I beat Sonic 3 in two minutes and I was giving birth and building rockets and playing chess at the same time!” Knuckles Chaotix is much longer, and it’s probably because the gameplay style isn’t the same as any of the other Sonic games until at least around the Gameboy Advance era.

In Sonic 2, SEGA added Tails as a secondary character for two players and since then, Tails has been a re-occuring and relatively welcomed character, despite the fact that for some reason he’s always just building stuff when he can fly and swim. Well, Tails’ inclusion in Sonic 2 pointed out a major flaw in AI at the time. Mostly, AI is stupid. If you don’t want the AI character to beat the game, then you have to dumb it down. But when you do that, the AI starts doing things that you don’t want it to do, like stepping on breakable bridges before you can reach them, or repeatedly killing itself instead of helping you. It is possible to create AI that isn’t completely retarded, but I guess no one thought Tails was that bad in Sonic 2. Boy, were they wrong.

Oh, but I love you anyway! You're so cute!

So Knuckles Chaotix set about it at least trying to make a second player AI that wasn’t dumb. They did this by introducing Ring Power. Ring Power allows for a lot of cool gameplay elements. Ring Power lets you call your partner to you, allows you to have your partner stand still and lets you use them as a sling, and even makes it possible for you to reach high places. But it makes the AI second player pretty much do nothing but follow you around, which, while it sounds awesome, is actually kind of annoying. You could at least count on hilarious Tails deaths with Sonic 2, right?

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

So again, not so much with Knuckles Chaotix. You get to choose from Knuckles, Mighty, Espio, Vector, and Charmy, but if those names confuse you, that’s because these characters are actually from the Sonic Comic series. Yes, there are hundreds more Sonic Furry Pals (TM) that have yet to be seen in the games. For all of you wondering, here’s a picture of what you’re missing:

Also Robotnik is dead and Eggman is a computer version of him from an alternate universe (not pictured)

“Gee whiz,” you say, presumably because you’re from like, the 1950s, “I’m learning a lot about Sonic today, but not too much about Knuckles Chaotix. How about you do your job there, bucko?”

Right, well. About Knuckles Chaotix... Despite it being connected to the Death Egg Saga, it is NOT a part of the Death Egg Saga. (The Death Egg Saga are those games having to do with the creation and use of the Death Egg by Dr. Robotnik.) This game takes place after Sonic and Knuckles, which takes place after Sonic 3, which takes place after Sonic 2. To recap: Dr. Robotnik builds a Death Star-- the Death Egg-- and then is like, “Man, I should totally take over the world,” in Sonic 2. But as it turns out-- if you beat the game-- Sonic doesn’t let that happen.

As it turns out, it wasn't unstoppable.

But, on his way to assured death by falling in Sonic 3, Robotnik’s Death Egg happened to hit Angel Island, a floating island that normally floated over the oceans, covered by clouds to prevent others from noticing its existence. There’s a lot of stuff having to do with legends in the Sonic universe here, but suffice it to say that Knuckles is not stupid, but he IS sheltered. He believed that the Death Egg might have been an egg in a legend, so he (for the most part) pretty much just leaves it be. He’s busy checking the Chaos Emerald Alters when he runs across Robotnik, who REALLY wants to use the Chaos Emeralds to get the Death Egg back into space. To do this, he tricks Knuckles into attacking Sonic, saying something along the lines of “There’s this blue hedgehog and he’s mean and stuff. Also I guess he wants the giant emerald on your floating island and all the other emeralds too, but I totally don’t and in no way am I evil. PS, I came here for the science. PPS, I really like what you’re doing with your quills.” So Knuckles falls for it and tries to stop Sonic from saving the world, but he fails (unless you never beat the game, in which case, he’s waiting for you).  

Sonic and Knuckles deals with the ramifications of the Death Egg hitting the ground, or more specifically, the ramifications of not destroying the Death Egg before. It’s pretty hard to get rid of without someone like Luke Skywalker around.

So anyway, in Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic learns about the Master Emerald, which is what made Angel Island float before Robotnik came along. Also, the Chaos Emeralds, using the power of the Master Emerald, become Super Emeralds. The Super Emeralds are kind of screwed up, so Sonic decides that he will save the day (yet again) and stop Dr. Robotnik’s evil plans, sort of with Knuckles’ help, although there’s no indication that they actually spoke with each other about this, unless you read the comics, which all are loosely based on the games for this particular saga. The Death Egg Saga is completed in Sonic 4, which SEGA is currently butchering as we speak. Anyway, Knuckles Chaotix’ tie in is that after the events of Sonic 3 and Knuckles, a mysterious island shows up and kind of sort of has something to do with Sonic 3.

Behold, we are awesome (and yes, the gray one is missing here)!

A part of the story I skipped in Sonic 3 is that Sonic finds a ring inscribed with mysterious writing, which is what alerts him to the presence of Angel Island, in a really roundabout fashion. Chaotix features those rings as “Chaos Rings,” rings imbued with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. Most of the cast in Chaotix outside of Knuckles go to the new island because... but Knuckles goes because he’s interested in the island that showed up.  Fortunately for Knuckles, but unfortunately for literally everyone else involved, only the new characters are caught by Dr. Robotnik and placed in the Combi Confiner, which freezes them in time. Knuckles first runs into Espio and after saving him, the two of them sally forth towards adventure-- and also they’re going to go defeat Robotnik.

You select a character to use via the Combi Catcher.

There’s a lot you can say about Knuckles, but one of them probably isn’t “he’s immortal.” But in this game, he sort of is. Knuckles Chaotix doesn’t feature lives, and as such, Knuckles and his partner never really die, perse. If you fail super, super hard, then you get sent back to the game lobby, where you save, exit, and switch partners.

Also, you select the stage there.

Other Sonic games are separated into Zones and Acts, but Knuckles Chaotix is separated into Attractions, of which there are five. The reason-- I think-- they’re separated into Attractions is because the Westernized version of the game screwed up the story big time, forgetting that Knuckles guards Angel Island and not Carnival Island. The Western version goes on to make Carnival Island a high-tech amusement park powered by the Chaos Emeralds, which means that the island definitely doesn’t work because Knuckles shouldn’t have the emeralds at this point. Anyway, my point is that a amusement park has attractions, thus the naming convention of “Attractions”. But despite the name, the Attractions are pretty much just Zones, and they’re really weird ones at that. Like I said, there are five Attractions and each Attraction is split into five stages. The time of day changes from stage to stage (depending on the amount of time you spend in the level) but I’ve never had three instances of any particular time of day. There are four different times of day-- Morning, Day, Evening, and Night-- and it only really affects the boss of the stage, if there is one, and the placement of the enemies in the stage, as well as the number of enemies in the stage (somewhat, this probably also has to do with placement). The boss always occurs at the last stage, though.

Marina Madness in the Morning!

The Special Stage occurs at the end of each level, and, for the most part, these special stages are like the sphere special stages in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. They’re fun because they’re in 3D! Of course, this means you can fall off of things and eventually die. So in that sense, not fun. But I like them! The object is to get a Chaos Ring.

On top of special stages, there are bonus stages, which occur when you have 20 rings. It’s pretty cool, but I almost never reach it-- I always have way too many rings by the end of the level-- but it reminds me of a part of Sonic CD that connects this game and Sonic CD in yet another way ( most of the dev team that worked on Sonic CD worked on this, too).

The ring mechanic, which is what makes this game the oddity that it is, is the main focus of just about anyone who talks about the game, mostly because it’s SUPER weird, as far as Sonic games go. You can use the ring, like I said, like a slingshot. Also, it’s used to push down buttons-- one character must stand still while the other pushes the button-- retrieve rings, toss your partner or yourself to new platforms, and so on. But, probably the weirdest thing is the Ring Recall, as I like to call it. The Ring Recall allows you to call your partner when he/it is far away (there are no girls in this game). It is possible to lose your partner, at which time, this move becomes necessary. When you lose your partner and you have no rings, that’s grounds for being sent back to the main room. But, you can call your partner without having rings. When you do this, the ring counter starts showing negative numbers. You can have up to 99 negative rings before the game penalizes you.

Man, these are a lot of words that still don’t really tell you much about the game... well, to be honest, Knuckles Chaotix is just a game you have to play to get. I mean, I can tell you all sorts of things about Knuckles Chaotix, but you won’t really understand it until you play the game-- seriously. Ah, well, I guess we can talk about Metal Sonic. He’s pretty cool and this is the game that followed the release of Sonic and Knuckles and we haven’t seen Metal Sonic in ages so... yeah, let’s talk about him. But from here on out, serious spoilers, you guys.

I assume that Dr. Robotnik (read: the producers) might have actually expected Sonic to be in this game and thus, did not make a new metal creature, like Metal Knuckles or something. But he only exists in Sonic R, which came out after this game. As such, the final boss is totally not Metal Knuckles or Mecha Knuckles (introduced in Sonic Advance and then discarded). It’s Metal Sonic, being badass, you know, because he can. Anyway, it would be SO BORING if it was just regular Metal Sonic, am I right? So SEGA pulled Emperor Metallix from the British Sonic the Comic series and renamed him. Well, he can’t be so bad, I mean Metal Sonic was menacing, but in the same way that an angry puppy is menacing. So Emperor Metalltix must be--

OH SWEET JESUS, HE'S HUGE.

Okay, okay. He’s huge, but he still looks like good ol’ Metal. He’s just red, with some shoulder pads. Plus, they’ll probably tone down the size for the game and--

OH GOD, WHAT ARE YOU

And he is every bit as huge as you think he is. In fact, in this picture, his body and legs are connected but that’s not how it is in the game. He’s actually bigger. Also, I guess this:

YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE HIS WHOLE BODY.

“Question,” you say, shaking your head at the screen. “How is this even possible. Like, as a boss, I mean.”

Oh, as a boss? He blows as a boss. What did you expect, he’s giant and unwieldy.

Metal Sonic Kai mostly just flies around looking super dumb, which is a huge letdown in more ways than one. I mean, teeny-weeny-super-cute Metal Sonic raced Sonic to his death (or Sonic’s death, if you never finished that boss battle) but this guy is like, “Eh, I could kill you guys, but I’m not in the mood. Maybe if you stick a cotton swab on the end of a broomstick and use it to pick my nose?” I’m not going to ruin the final battle for you, but I will tell you this: don’t pick Vector. Seriously, there’s one part where literally any other character does all of nothing and you still will win the game, but for Vector you actually have to push a button. Sad.

We can also talk a bit about the music and the graphics, but there’s really no reason to. You can probably tell from the screenshots that this game looks amazing. Also, SEGA normally writes phenomenal music for the Sonic series, culminating in the soundtrack for Sonic 3 that featured Michael Jackson. I don’t even know how they managed that, he was one of the biggest stars at around that time, wasn’t he? Now, Knuckles Chaotix pales in comparison to the original quartet, but the music is still good. It’s not as catchy as, say Chrome Gadget was, but it’s got it’s own charm to it and all of the music fits the feel of the game. That being said, this game feels like a grand adventure, which might be why it was so hard for me to explain it. It’s a huge, huge game filled with plenty of color, tons of stunning visuals, and a pretty fun game mechanic. All in all, Kunckles Chaotix is a funny little game that came and went, but it definitely deserves a look!