Harvest Moon Forever: A Few General Game Tips

Monday, November 12, 2007

A Few General Game Tips

My friend Shaggy told me he had purchased Sims2 Castaway so I decided to take a look at the game myself. I borrowed a copy from a friend simply to determine whether or not it would be a suitable future project for me.

My experience with the business of STARTING a new game made me aware of a tip I would like to share with other gamers.

Whenever you play a PSP game, you have a wonderful resource that is not available where DS games are concerned. It usually is available on most platform games such as GameCube or PS2 games as well. You will have the ability to save your game in more than one slot. DO IT BEFORE YOU BEGIN THE ACTUAL GAME!

'Valkyrie Profile Lenneth', 'Harvest Moon Innocent Life' and the 'Sims2 Castaway' games all have long introductions. In the case of Sims2 Castaway, it is not so much an introduction as the rather endless business of creating a crew. As a new player, you have few choices in terms of real customisation. It therefore is rather a tedious business at best. If you save the game in more than one slot afterwards, you can skip that process to begin a new game effortlessly if you do something in your active slot that you later regret!

With a game like 'Valkyrie Profile Lenneth', there are many choices in terms of transferring heroes to Valhalla. By saving your game in multiple slots in different chapters, you can change the outcome, branching off from the original game to make new choices. Innocent Life is more linear than most Harvest Moon games, but you can save your game at different stages if you like. You really are not going to change the outcome, however. There is no marriage option and your character never progresses. In 'Harvest Moon Boy & Girl', however, it is well worth saving your game in different slots BEFORE you choose a spouse. You then will have the benefit of all your hard farming labours and a means by which to experience different marriage scenarios.

'Magical Melody' is a game that was created for the GameCube platform, allowing one to utilise the same strategy of saving in multiple slots BEFORE you marry. This will give you a rich and varied experience of outcomes without forcing you to replay all the chores of creating and expanding your farm.

As I write this, I still am working on 'MySims' for the Wii platform. I have discovered a number of time-saving tips for this game, but will add them to the guide as they are specific to the game. I will say, however, that it is very useful to be able to copy a piece of furniture BEFORE you place any Essences on it and then stash the copy in your house or some one else's house for future use in other Tasks. For example, more than one Sim will request a chair or a sink. When you create a chair, make an extra copy WITHOUT Essences and stash it somewhere so that you can copy it again and again. You can alter the copy and customise it if you wish to create unique designs each time, but you will not be forced to build the basic chair more than once if you utilise this strategy. Building is fun, but building a mirror again and again could become rather tedious!

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For all Harvest Moon fans and players

As Freyashawk, I have written about 150 guides for games, most of which have been guides for Harvest Moon games. These are published on IGN. IGN has given me the title of 'Mistress of Harvest Moon' and I strive daily to earn the right to maintain that title. Although there is a link page on IGN that lists all the guides published there, they are not organised by game, but rather given in alphabetical order. I therefore created this page in order to provide links to the guides I have created for each Harvest Moon game. If you access the General Guide for any game, links should be included to all other guides for that game in a section at the end. I will try to add links to ALL guides as time permits, but until I do, you always can refer to my user page at IGN for the complete list.

I wrote the Official Strategy Guide for Tree of Tranquility for BradyGames as well.
Harvest Moon Forever!

How to Use my Guides

I write three different basic types of game guides. I usually write a General Guide for every game, which is fairly comprehensive and deals with all aspects of the game. It may or may not be in the form of a Walkthrough, dealing with game aspects as they occur. My Innocent Life General Guide is an example of a General Guide that is organised as a Walkthrough.

After writing a General Comprehensive Guide, I often write a Calendar Guide giving birthday and festival dates, with additional information that may be helpful, such as favourite gifts for each individual. For all Harvest Moon games, I usually write a number of 'mini-guides', such as Events Guides for each year of gameplay, or Recipe Guides that give all recipes one can make. Fishing, Mining, Shipping or Item Value Guides are other mini-guides that can be very useful when playing Harvest Moon. Character Guides give detailed information about every character in any specific game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is devoted to all aspects of Courtship and Marriage, including schedules of Heart Events, Rival Heart Events and the likes and dislikes of every Eligible Girl and/or Bachelor.

Although this site is devoted to Harvest Moon, I have included links to game guides for other games. I created a separate link section for Animal Crossing Wild World as well, because I wrote more than one guide for that game.

N.B. All my game guides are published by IGN. This webpage has been created simply to allow players to find links to all my guides more easily.

Copyright Infringement Warning

It is really sad to discover that there are individuals who are willing to steal my guides and to attempt to publish them under their names. Fortunately, there are many players who recognise my guides when they see them anywhere on the internet and who are willing to alert me when some one tries to steal my material. I want to thank all those players for their help in these cases.

Some one stole one of my guides and tried to publish it on Gamefaqs under his/her name. The guide has been removed and the poster has been banned. I now have a contact in the Legal Department at CNet. I spend many months sometimes writing a guide. They are available for the private use of any individual without cost, but they are not available for theft!
If you want permission to include a link to one of my guides on your site, please contact me directly.

Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town

You will notice that I wrote far more guides for More Friends of Mineral Town than I did for the original 'Friends of Mineral Town'. At some point, I would like to publish more specific Events Guides for Friends of Mineral Town, but players should be aware of the fact that ALL Calendar Events Guides for MFoMT can be used when playing the original FoMT. The Events are the same in most cases in both games. If, therefore, you are playing FoMT and you wish to know the events that can be experienced in the third year of gameplay, refer to the 'Third Year Calendar Events Guide' for 'More Friends of Mineral Town'.