Harvest Moon Forever: First Look at Hero of Leaf Valley

Showing posts with label First Look at Hero of Leaf Valley. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Using your Hammer to Forage in Hero of Leaf Valley

In Rune Factory Frontier, one of the early delightful surprises for me was my ability to knock ripe fruit from the Trees using my Hammer. In my first day of explorinng the landscape in Leaf Valley, I discovered that my Hammer could serve the same function in this new game. Using it, I was able to collect both ripe fruits and insects from various Trees.

It is not ALL Trees that can be assaulted in this fashion but only those that display the Hammer icon.

There is a significant difference between Rune Factory Frontier and Hero of Leaf Valley in terms of the yield that is obtained when you use your Hammer to knock down fruits. In Rune Factory Frontier, the two 'Orchards' were rather magical in nature. Each Tree would CHANGE its yield according to the Season. Thus, every Tree in RFF Orchards yielded the same Fruit in a specific Season but would yield a different type of Fruit every Season.

Hero of Leaf Valley is more realistic in that the identity of the Tree determines the type of Fruit that it yields. The trees do not change their identity and thus an Apple Tree will yield Apples and an Orange Tree will drop Oranges. They are seasonal to some extent as well, so if you use your Hammer on a Tree that is not in a fruit-bearing season, you will obtain only insects.

Fruits thus are location-specific and, to some extent, season-specific and so are insects. Certain insects tend to hover in certain areas of the Map. You will need a Net if you wish to catch flying insects, but those that are earth-bound can be knocked out of Trees with the Hammer.

Tip for Players who tend to be confused by camera angles: The landscapes in Hero of Leaf Valley are breathtaking but the camera angle will shift on you quite suddenly sometimes. This is very artistic and enjoyable as an observer, but if your Character is trying to find his way about town initially, he may become hopelessly lost, entering and exiting the same building or area countless times in utter confusion.

The trick is to learn to use your Controls to change the camera angle again. You can centre the camera angle with the Triangle button or use the Directional buttons to move the camera until you find an angle that suits you.

The most foolish thing I did today in Harvest Moon was to keep my DS stylus in my hand thorugh the first few hours of playing Hero of Leaf Valley. It has become so much a habit in the past fortnight or so while I was furiously going through Sunshine Islands to bag as many events as I could that I forgot that the PSP did not have a Touchscreen.

Being an Anti-Hero (Temporarily) in Hero of Leaf Valley

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When you write a guide for a game, it is your duty to perform unpalatable acts, giving the 'wrong' response, the 'bad' response and otherwise exploring dark avenues instead of patting yourself on the back as you unerringly always choose the 'correct' and 'good' response that takes you forward.

'Hero of Leaf Valley' will draw you into a scenario that will be somewhat familiar both to players of 'Save the Homeland' and 'An Innocent Life'. Your Character must assume the role of saviour of the village...

At the start of 'Hero of Leaf Valley', the Harvest Goddess will quiz you to determine your aptitude to wear the mantle or cape of the Hero.

Her three questions:

A puppy is abandoned in the rain. What do you do?
Take it home.
Ignore it.

There’s trash on the ground. What do you do?
Pick it up
Leave it.

There’s money on the ground. What do you do?
Take it to the police
Keep it.

Every player will know the responses that are expected of him/her.

What happens if you give the 'bad' responses to all the questions?

For me, exploring ALL the possibilities is part of the thrill of working on a game guide.

It so happens that you can give any response you wish and you still will end up being the 'only choice' to save the land...

Thanks to a friend who is helping me to log the responses, I was able to do the negative ones without being forced to start over to log the positive responses. I had a feeling that your Character's choice of responses could affect Friendship Levels of other individuals in Leaf Valley.

As it transpires, they DO, but as in other Harvest Moon games, even 'negative' actions or responses appeal to SOME Characters. For example, littering sometimes will endear you to the Witch Princess...

Evidently, Friendship Levels are affected as follows:

If you give the 'positive' response or first response to each of the three questions
of the Harvest Goddess, you will earn +15 FP with the following individuals: the Harvest Goddess herself, Dia, Louis, Bob, Joe, Wallace, Chester and Nak.

If you give the 'negative' or second response to each of her three questions, you will gain +15 FP with Katie, Gina, Kurt, Ronald, Charlie, Renton, Rudolph and Nik.

If you give a combination of positive and negative responses, you earn +15 FP with Gwen, Lyla, Aurelia, Alice, Parsley, Tim, Woody, Martha and Flak.

None of this causes irreparable results, obviously, but if you have a specific target in mind in terms of Courtship or Friendship, you may wish to plot your responses accordingly.

I simply did not much like the responses Freyr gave in MY game and believing now that it could have an impact on the friendship levels of the people he would meet, I explored things a bit for two days and then reloaded... In any case, it is important to prove that players CAN give negative responses to all the questions and still assume the mantle of the Hero to move ahead in the game...

Even if you reject the idea of saving the land from the very start, the Harvest Sprites will forge ahead.

Flak: Yeah! Maybe you can help us save this land! Will you hear us out?

Your choice now:
Yes
No.

If you choose No:

Nac: What?! Don’t say that! We just want you to listen!

The Harvest Goddess then will make her appearance to quiz you further.

The negative responses sometimes lead to the most entertaining Dialogue, which is another reason to log them.

In this case:

Nic: W-W-What are we going to do? He’s a bad person! Terrible!

What is interesting here is that the Harvest Goddess will put a 'positive spin' on the negative as well as the positive:

H.Goddess: Calm down. He might just be the first honest person I’ve met. And I know there’s a good heart beneath that rough exterior.

Nic: Well, he can see us.

Flak: Yeah. He’s probably the only person we can ask anyway.

It takes me awhile to adjust to the controls of the PSP after using the DS exclusively for a few weeks... The PSP may be clunkier and heavier, but the graphics certainly are magical. Mind you, I love miniatures and the exquisite detail of Harvest Moon games on the GBA and DS continue to enchant me... Returning to FoMT yesterday reminded me of how marvelous THOSE graphics were even in the pre-DS era of gaming.

Later: Now that I have explored some of the requirements for the various Storyline Quests in HoLV, I can see that your Responses to the three Questions at the very start of the game can make a big difference if you wish to complete a particular Story.

Often, in order to trigger the first Event of some of the Story Quests, you need to have at least 30 FP with a specific Character. Your Responses to the three Questions, by giving you an instant boost of 15 FP with a group of Characters, make it far easier to begin certain Story Quests far more than others.

'Meeting and Greeting' a Character givea +1 FP. Giving an item he/she likes gives +1 to +3 FP, depending on the nature of the item. In some cases, the first Event in a Story Quest must be triggered before the end of the 1st Spring. With 15 FP with a pivotal Character before you even start the game, you would have a far easier task ahead of you...

A good strategy, therefore, for any player who would like to complete all the Story Quests, would be to start three different games. In each, begin with a different set of Responses and then branch off in that slot towards the Story Quests with Characters whose FP has been increased by your Responses.

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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!
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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'.