You know, there's a bit of a problem with having your birthday in the middle of winter - if your plans aren't being snowed off, then everyone's off celebrating a festival instead. Whilst no-one we know really celebrates Burns' Night, the people of Echo Village sure love their Starry Night Festival - so much so, the won't dare break from their predetermined routines to even wish their star farmer, who's totally helped revitalise their flagging village, a happy birthday. Sniff.
For a franchise that has been going for almost 20 years now, things haven't actually changed much at all in the world of Harvest Moon. In pretty much every one your time is divided between watering your turnips, caring for your animals and chatting to the other villagers, before eventually marrying a special someone and starting a family. The fundamentals may be the same, but each one manages to add a few new bits and pieces to keep things interesting - the theme for this year's game? Customisation.
Also new: crops as big as your head.
When you first boot up your game, you'll be greeted with the character creation screen, with which you can assemble your little farmer from a choice of skin, hair and eye colours and styles - it's nothing especially deep or fancy, but it makes a nice change from the usual binary boy/girl choice you normally get. From there on you're unleashed on the struggling town of Echo village, which is stuck in a bit of a rut - a distinct lack of peoples means less jobs, and as such people keep moving away. In fact, when you turn up to take over the farm land you've inherited from your parents, there's only three other people left - town leader and family friend, Dunhill, shipping lady Emma and an old woman called Hana who runs the general store. As is always the case with the Harvest Moon games, it's up to you to save the day by farming like you've never farmed before.
The problem is though, that A New Beginning takes an almost painfully long time to get going, you may find tedium setting in well before the Summer kicks off, which is when things start to get a bit more interesting - unfortunately, it takes about ten hours of hard graft to get there. The first day you spend picking up ten weeds and rocks from around your farm and then going to bed, while the second day you do nothing else but get introduced to two other villagers. By the third day you're finally allowed to plant some turnips, but even still you struggle to fill in an entire day, heading to bed by dinner time just to try to speed things on a bit - midway through the second week you get yourself a free cow, and your days start to fill up a bit more, with foraging for stuff to sell from the forest taking up most of your morning. But still, very little actually happens during most of the first month - especially when it's a rainy day and you're thus relieved of your crop-watering duties - and things definitely start to drag.
That is until Dunhill reveals to you his master plan to help put Echo Village back on the map - his five volume Town Restoration Plan. With a flavour of Animal Crossing: New Leaf about it, each book has a number of tasks for you to do to pretty up the town, hopefully to attract some new inhabitants - things such as planting five ball topiaries around town, erecting a few street lights or placing a number of benches about the place. Of course, none of the other inhabitants lifts a finger, so it's up to you to comb the forest for raw materials and construct the amenities inside your studio, a little room tacked onto the side of your house. As time goes on, Dunhill's plans will involve erecting new houses, shops and town buildings too to help attract more people to the struggling village.
After building the travel agents, you and your family can head off on holiday
Midway through spring, you'll be woken one morning by a strange little man - a harvest sprite called Alan and his rather grumpy sister, Alice. These pair are the guardians of a set of eight musical tree stumps, and enjoy making you do the run-around to find a set of musical scores, which unlock new areas, open up a few shortcuts and grant you some exclusive blueprints when played. The first 'training' tune is a straightforward scale hidden in Dunhill's bed that unlocks a bouncy mushroom shortcut in the forest, after which the sprites get a tad predictable, contacting you the day after you build each new house/shop to say they've hidden the next blueprint - in the very same building you've just built.
The final part of Dunhill's plan to put Echo Village back on the map is reinstating festivals - these special events have always been a staple of the Harvest Moon games, whether it's giving gifts to people to show you appreciate them, showing off your prize turnip or wishing on a falling star with your current squeeze, they help break up the daily grind. Thing is, we didn't actually find out Echo didn't do festivals until the 21st day, despite every single one being marked on your calender from the get go - if only Dunhill would have told us when we moved in, he might have spared us from a rather embarrassing Spring Harmony Day. Described as "a day for giving girls treats to show you appreciate them", we trotted over to see Neil, the only eligible bachelor in the village at the time, expecting to be showered with cakes, chocolate and other sweet things for being the most desirable farmer in town - only to be greeted with a "Oh. It's you. I'm busy. Can you leave me alone?". Thanks Neil.
On the subject of gift giving, the people of Echo Village are just as materialistic as in previous games, with presents being the fastest way to a persons heart, with grateful villagers often giving you useful stuff in return. But try as we might, we've not managed to find an easy way to check your relationship levels with the other villagers - usually you have a list of everyone you've met, with a number of hearts or smiley faces next to their name to indicate how well the two of you get on, making it easy to tell who you were best buds with and who you needed to get to know better. For some reason though, they've decided to scale it back a lot for A New Beginning, make it much more subtle and limited only to potential marriage candidates. When talking to someone, you may notice a little coloured heart in the corner of the text box - which works it's way through the rainbow in reverse as the pair of you grow closer, going from purple to red as you start to see them as marriage material, unlocking exclusive events and conversations between the two of you as you go.
Sleepy sheep.
The first month or so may be painfully slow, but once things start to settle into a routine, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning opens into another solidly addictive entry in the farming/friendship series we know and love. Despite a few questionable design decisions, the magic is in the interlocking parts - whether you're spinning your traditional turnip farm off into a lucrative honey making business, spending your time prettifying the town or cultivating your busy social life, the game quickly turns into a time sink of mammoth proportions. With this iteration in particular, patience is definitely a virtue.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS
