Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (GC)

Yuuki here to do my review of the newest installment to the great Harvest Moon series. Let me simply say this...ZOMG I LOVE THIS GAME. In former versions there were usually a few bugs that everyone just ignored cause the game was still good. In the newest installment the designers have made a near flawless game.

Gameplay: Simple controls as always. Harvest Moon is by far not a complicated game in the sense of controls. Your basic day can consist of a great many tasks and adventures. These can range from the more obvious things such as farming, clearing land, tending to animals. Some nice new features are things like the friend page in the menu which tells you how much friendship you have with everyone not just possible husband/wives. You also have rival that you try to beat out by shipping more each day, this doesn't really gain anything but a sense of satisfaction. My only complaint would be the occassional glitch when you accidently feed something to your animals when you were clearly aiming for the shipping box. 5/5

Story: Ok so your happy Rancher boy/girl depending on which you choose. You come to this little town to start a life hurray! You'll have the choice of 3 plots of land 1 is good for animals and is reallly big but has bad soil, 1 has good soil and is a medium size, the last is quit small but has really good soil and is near the river where its easy to fish. Most would suggest the last as its really the best but choose as you will. From there you go about your new life building freindships upgrading your farm. Though there is a slightly deeper plot. The most beloved Harvest Goddess has been turned to stone and its upto to you to save her. This is simple enough as all you have to do is find the magic notes which are gained by preforming most of your everyday tasks and through friendship. A few though are a bit more difficult. 5/5

Graphics: Harvest Moon has always been a friend to the cute big head characters and this is no different. The joy of this isn't so much that the graphics are bright and pretty its more that all your favorite characters from previous games return as well as some new ones. You won't walk around for hours marveling at the awesome depth of the graphics but they are quite pleasant and fit right into the cute little world of Harvest Moon. 5/5

Audio: Characters have voices though they only really consist of a sorta "Hi" or something to that affect said when conversation is started or their little sounds of Joy when you give them a gift they like. Most days will be filled with the light calming BGMs and they sounds of animals and such. Nothing grand but, again its Harvest Moon so it all just fits well together. 5/5

Replay: If your an insanely dedicated and committed person with a strat guide you can find all 100 notes by the end of the second year. Even if you aren't you'll probably want to play through at least twice or more just to try out different spouse and differenent land plots and such. Theres alot to this game more than I could talk about here so I would definately say play it at least twice. 5/5

Overall: Its Harvest Moon people they basically coat the game cases with crack you have to buy it. I'm sure there are people out there who aren't fans of the series I just haven't met them. So even with the glitches which are few and far between so much that I really can't remember any being really annoying, this is totally a great game and in my opinion better than even the well loved N64 version. Pick it up and pass it around you'll be glad you did. 5/5