Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (Nintendo GameCube, 2006)

As the owner of nearly every Harvest Moon game alive, I feel that I have found the best one yet and need to share my thoughts with other fans!...

+++ Positives +++

A STORYLINE:
Even if you don't enjoy raising crops or animals, this HM comes with a plot! Your mission: to collect 100 notes by performing various tasks. Anything from crushing rocks to attending festivals will give you the opportunity to earn a few. Collect them all to rescue the Harvest Goddess who has turned to stone. Regular Harvest Moon fans who aren't interested in this will be pleased to know that it's not a requirement...more of a side quest.

EASIER TO MANUVER:
Unlike its predecessor HM: AWL, HM: MM has made moving around and performing tasks MUCH easier. In fact, it seems to parallel the original HM64 days with a fixed perspective and simpler graphics. A 'hot box' can tell you where you about to perform an action, making it easier to hit intended targets. Also, there seems to be a '5 second rule' for dropped goods. Instead of fading away into oblivion, when you drop an item, it gradually fades away, allowing you a few seconds to pick it back up before it disappears. A WELL-NEEDED upgrade!

MORE TO BUILD:
Aside from upgrading your house to more levels, you can also buy furniture (and even rearrange it!). Also, HM: MM makes you earn your chicken coop and barn (if you choose to raise animals at all!). You can even buy as much as 20 plots of land to build houses or raise animals or crops on! So much variety and a BIG incentive to earn a lot of cash.

A RIVAL:
Now you have someone to compete against. Your game keeps stats on how well you're keeping up with your rude rival on a daily basis. Another great incentive for working hard in this game.

MORE MATES:
While the original HM and HM64 had 5 potential mates (and the 'more impressive' HM: AWL had only 3), HM: MM has 11 future spouses for you to choose from (whether you play as a boy or girl).

--- NEGATIVES ---

LIMITED DIALOGUE:
Those expecting waiting for the kind of talkback variety that Animal Crossing provides can forget it. Similar to most HM games, the conversation from person to person is usually limited to a few different lines. But, with so many people to talk to, it's not really much of an issue this time around.

LACKLUSTER FESTIVALS:
With the exception of a few of them, festivals just don't seem to have the pizazz they did in HW: FoMT or even HM64. I don't like that you can't bet on horses, even though you can still race yours. Some festivals require nothing more than showing up and talking to people. Boring.

*** IN CONCLUSION ***
With the exception of a few minor negatives, this Harvest Moon has got more playtime, features, and lasting appeal than ANY other one on the market. There's more to do (so much so that it's tough to decide what to do at first) and more to see. Easy to manuver, lots of side quests, and simple graphics make this a must have for Harvest Moon fans!

This game is like the other Harvest Moons except the graphics are different, I had to get used to getting items from the rucksack. Moving things around to be able to pick the actual item that I'd like to use. In this game you can do the same things like the other Harvest Moon games where you have a farm, grow crops, raise animals, and go fishing. The Mini Games are fun to play so I like that part. I rate this game 3 out of 5 stars because I like the other version Another Wonderful Life much better then this one.

Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is a wonderful game for fans of the series.

Magical Melody tells the tale of a young farmer (male or female) that must own a farm in a new town, making renovations to it to make it the best farm possible. You can grow old, get married and have a family, create a very prosperous farm, and overall have a lot of fun.

In this town, there is a spring that the Harvest Goddess lives in. One day the Goddess gets turned into stone, and it is up to your character to reverse this awful transformation by collecting musical notes. These are obtained through certain tasks, such as finding things outdoors, getting married, and befriending others. Hence the name: Magical Melody.

The most noticeable change right away is the Art Style. Magical Melody takes a step back from it's predecessor Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, using a more top-down approach to make it more like the traditional Harvest Moon games. The second most noticeable is that the art direction, although still Japanese Anime/Manga based, is now Chibi (large head and eyes, small body) giving it a more kiddy feel.

This game is very much so traditional to the original Harvest Moon games. This game is also a lot larger, and more time consuming (that the series is known and loved for) than Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. You can marry almost any person of the opposite gender in your town (that is near your character's age of course) as compared to only 3 in A Wonderful Life. With the added feature of collecting musical notes to advance the game further, in addition to the already established mechanics (farming, raising animals, mining, fishing, interacting with others, etc.) you get a really deep game for such a simplistic style.

This is where the Strategy Guide comes in handy. With all of the collectables, people you can marry and befriend, things to do, and plots to advance, it can make it very difficult at times to figure this out on your own. In addition to be a collector's item, the strategy guide allows you to have all of this information at your fingertips. You have images to show what you're looking for, and not just text that vaguely describes everything as with online guides. Although fairly expensive now for the Game Cube version of this game, the guide is a great thing to have if you're a true fan of the series.

Overall Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is a great game. If you're a fan of the Harvest Moon series, want to try a new farming game that's simplistic yet deep, or just looking for something a younger audience would enjoy, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is a great choice.

Overall I give this game an 8.5/10.

I think of this game as the best in Harvest Moon series. I never get bored playing it, unlike some of the other games, and I never feel like it's taking me forever to earn money or achievements ("notes" in this case). The music can get repetitive and unlike Harvest Moon games such as A Wonderful Life, you can't really change that. However, the music is still quite nice for the first few hours of playing it.

I rate Harvest Moon as 4/5 because I'm keeping non HM fans in mind. If you are a fan of HM, this is a welcome addition to the series, wonderful and fun and not too intensive. Great for playing a few hours of every now and then, and easy to pick back up. For non HM fans, you may find it slow paced or boring, although this game is one of the more involving/interesting ones in my opinion. Fans of shooters and constant action probably won't like this game, but RPG fans will find this a nice distraction.

This is my first harvest moon game not on a gameboy and it is amazing! It took me a while to get started because I was totally lost but within a week you should be making some good money. The festivals were a little disappointing, most of them you show up, talk to everyone and go home, what a rip off! There are two basic points to this game, 1) the free the harvest goddess, and 2) get married. Unlike HMDS, the goddess does not have to be free for you to get married, and you only need 50 notes to free her. The days seem to go by so fast in this one, and they have changed where the clock moves. Now when you are in the cave the clock will keep running, but it will not whenever you are in a building (your own or another person's). I also love that you get to choose to play as a boy or girl instead of being forced into one or the other, unfortuneatly your child still stays a toddler forever, bummer. Another aspect that I liked was that you chose where you wanted to live in the begining, and could purchase additional land as the game progressed. Overall, still an amazing game from the Harvest Moon series, and a game anyone can enjoy