Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

           In case you haven't played any past Harvest Moon games, or you don't know the idea behind the games, this first paragraph will be about that:
          The Harvest Moon games are about a boy or a girl who inherits/buys a farm in a small village. After meeting all/most of the villagers, the character is supposed to clear his/her field of debris and collect various naturally growing plants in the forests to make money or give to that special someone. The character can also farm the field given to them, buy and take care of various livestock, befriend villagers, get married and start a family, mine for ores or gems, fish, and upgrade the farm so that you profit more. There are usually festivals in the games, some in almost every game, some unique to the game.

         
          I shall try not to spoil the game so here we go: the storyline for this game is you have moved to a village, either boy or girl, where you choose a property from the three the mayor lists. While all this happens, the Harvest Goddess turns to stone because the villagers have forgotten about her; Jamie (your rival, opposite gender than you) vows to bring her back. Cue to you waking up only to find Harvest Sprites outside your door. They ask you to follow them to where they bring you to the Harvest Goddess's Shrine. They proceed to ask you to collect "notes" to bring the goddess back. Basically, that is the story. That, and you finding them by playing the game. They're basically like achievements or trophies. For more information: Click here.

         
           What's an interesting new concept or idea in this game than previous Harvest Moons?

• While previous games have had minigames, they are usually built within the game or involve the Harvest Sprites. On this game, it's located in the menu before you start/load your game. While they are minigames, they are a little bit entertaining and can be played up to 4 players.
• You can buy up to 20 pieces of land throughout the town. The only benefit to buying them is to get notes and building on that land. You can farm on land that is "community" labeled, or green land (press the Z button to view).
• In previous games, if you dropped something, it broke and was lost forever. So this new item drop is awesome for clumsy me. If you drop an item, it will slowly shrink into the ground until it is gone. Once it's gone, it's gone for good. However, you can pick it up as it is shrinking.
• After a while of not shipping a certain item, you will have a villager leave town. ie: If you don't ship enough carrots, Gwen will leave. However, like in every other Harvest Moon game, Basil will leave during winter and come back in the spring.
• In this game, there are wild animals like a cat, a duck, birds, et cetera. You can befriend them and obtain a note! Befriending the dolphin has a special perk to it.

          I personally like:

• Villagers will greet you by saying a form of "hello" out loud when you talk to them. ie: Joe says: "Yo!" Except maybe Dan's greeting. I just find his annoying.
• It's easy to tell what emotion the villagers/your character feel. The heart means love, the green fence means happiness, and the classic angry veins mean anger.
• This game is the most adorably cute one out of all the Harvest Moons I've ever played (I've been playing almost every game since the 64 version came out). The storyline is cute, the characters are cute, the animals are cute, even the vegetables you grow are cute!
• The cooking is easier to use. You just put an ingredient in the frying pan, pot, oven, whatever and it says what dish it will turn out to be or if it will be a failure.
• Like I mentioned before, the item drop is awesome. No more losing crops thanks to your clumsiness!
• When you ship an item, a green number will pop up. This indicates how much money you will earn for shipping that item. This is incredibly handy; I used to have to go online and look up how much I would earn for items.
• In past games if it was a festival day, you would have to wait until the indicated time for the event. ie: if it started at 6pm, you must arrive there around 6pm. In this game, you can go any time of the day as long as it's not after 6pm.
• The minimap! I used this constantly when I first started playing. In past HMs, I would get lost my first couple of days, not with this game. All buildings, except your barn and coop, show up on the map, and all villagers, your pets, and your livestock show up on the map.
• While it is in the newer games, the health bar is so handy that wasn't available in the original games. Like other games, you can remove it from screen and increase it by eating power berries.
• While trees aren't transparent, you can see weeds, animals, villagers, and yourself through them. It's just all around a great idea.

          I personally dislike:

• Harvest Moon creaters fucked this game up bad with the rival marriages (in the American version). The rivals will result in a cut scene of them declaring their love for each other, however they will never get married. You can get married, just not them.*
• I've never liked having to unlock villagers in any game, but this one seems to pose more problems to me than most. If you're looking to unlock them without looking online for how-tos, too bad. I would have never gotten Lyla's shop if I didn't.
• The storyline is very meh. While HMs don't typically shove the storyline down your throat, I would rather it be more involved than this game was. Basically, you win if you get just 50 notes out of a 100.
• Like I mentioned before, the villagers leave. This sucks badly if they leave the season after you can grow their specific item to be shipped. ie: Gwen with her carrots. You must ship 30, and you can only farm them in the fall.
• I usually don't mind the fatigue animations, but with the item drop thing happening in the mines whenever you find an ore or gem- let's just say that it's annoying when you find a diamond and the final fatigue animation takes so long that you lose the diamond.

Ratings go as this:

0.0-0.5 I hated it

1.0-1.5 I disliked it

2.0-2.5 It was mediocre

3.0-3.5 I liked it

4.0 I loved it

Sub-ratings:

1. Minigames: 2.0
2. Storyline: 2.5
3. Farming: 2.5
4. Ranching: 2.5
5. Fishing: 3.0
6. Mining: 3.0
7. Festivals: 3.0
8. Replaying: 3.0

Overall rating:

Overall, I love this game, but it's not the most fun to play.

I play it for the:

It's also available for the:

**

*I'm not sure if they fixed this horrid glitch on the Wii version. Please comment below if you know otherwise.

**In the Wii version you can only play as a boy.

Thank you for reading! I hope this helped you in your decision on whether to buy the game. Check other people's reviews to get a better idea on whether you like it or not. Also, if you buy it used at Gamestop, you can return it with the receipt in 7 days if you don't like it. It might be difficult to find the Gamecube version, check everywhere if you wish to buy it instead.