One of the Biggest Differences between ToT and AP

I know that Mayor Hamilton made a special visit on the 10th day of Spring to WARN me about this, but I always have to test everything myself. In ToT, i was delighted to discover that you actually could grow Crops out of season. Admittedly, when a Crop continued to grow after its designated Season, its growth was much slower, but you still could manage to eke a few out-of-season Crops from your Land. This option was extremely helpful to a new Farmer, especially if you unlocked new Crops rather late in any given Season.

Well, Animal Parade reverts to traditional Harvest Moon form. On the 1st Day of any new Season, all of last Season's Crops still in the ground will wither and die. I have provided concrete proof in the form of a screenshot. Naturally, I didn't subject my own life to this sort of devastation... I reloaded immediately to a safe date where I could harvest all of my Spring Crops before they were wasted...

I confess I rather miss that aspect of Tree of Tranquility though. I only obtained access to Taylor's Seed Catalogue in the last week of Spring. How much more convenient it would have been if I could have grown Wheat in Summer as well as Spring!

Incidentally, I made a very wasteful miscalculation in Animal Parade in the first Spring. If all Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games had Seasons of equal length, this mistake would not have occurred. In some games, there are 30 days to each Season but in others, such as Animal Parade, the Season lasts only 28 days. You MUST be conscious of this if you plant crops late in the season. I had unlocked Level 2 Crops in the last week of Spring and was determined to grow as many of them as possible. I did the Maths, but my calculations ALL were wrong, based on the fact that I allocated a full 30 days to the Season. Most of the new Crops required AT LEAST FIVE DAYS to mature. Planting them on the 24th and 25th, they had only 3 or 4 days to mature and thus were doomed.

This sort of error is easy to make when you are involved in more than one Harvest Moon game simultaneously. I still am working on Sunshine Islands and the Calendar in that game does not match the one in Animal Parade... Very annoying!