Challenges in Island of Happiness

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Every Harvest Moon game is challenging and very few can be explored fully in less than five years (Harvest Moon time!) but I really have come to the conclusion that 'Island of Happiness' is by far the most challenging game of all. Imagine a game where you have to unlock many of the Eligible Girls/Bachelors... Imagine ordering a Bird Barn or Animal Barn that does not contain a full set of feeders or any shipping containers. Imagine a 'Maker' that requires 20 Adamantite instead of only one and a Maker Shed that must be expanded before you can order some of the 'Makers'. If you wish to order Accessories, you may need 10 to 60 pieces of Orichalc rather than 1.

Suffice it to say that I cannot imagine any player sighing regretfully that he/she completed all goals too quickly! Every aspect of this game is challenging. You have to unlock new areas on the map if you wish to meet vital characters and ever gain access to a Mine.

Festivals are unlocked as well. As you move forward in the game, you will be able to participate in new Festivals.

Items do not have a single value either. Each item has a Rank as well as a grade in terms of Quality, Size and Freshness. When you are mining or fishing, in particular, you need to be aware constantly of the number of empty slots in your rucksack. Unless the items are identical not only in type, but in Rank, Quality, Size and Freshness, they will occupy different slots. You can stack items of different ranks and grades but this must be done manually. The resulting 'stack' will contain items of rank and grades that represent an average of the original items.

New 'advanced Makers' that require an upgraded Maker Shed include a Thresher and a Flour Mill. In a previous post, I wrote about the New Year Festival, where my character actually participated in the ritual of pounding the rice for rice cakes. Little details like this astound me. The obvious time and energy that went into the creation of Island of Happiness make it a labour of love.

For fans of Harvest Moon, it is wonderful to be able to encounter characters from other games like Cliff, Trent, Karen and Popuri. (When they visit the Island in IoH, they are married to your old 'Rivals' from FoMT/MFoMT.)

The characters from Mineral Town speak of their spouses and of others as well. For example, Trent will tell you that Mayor Thomas arranged for his room at the Inn on the Island. Other characters play a role even when they are not present in the flesh. The Gourmet is an important character in one of Pierre's Heart Events.

As in most Harvest Moon games, you need not be the best farmer, rancher, miner or fisherman/woman in order to live a fairly decent life. You won't perish if you fail to meet all the goals in the game. Discussing some of the 'challenges' in IoH therefore should not discourage players who mainly play Harvest Moon games in order to marry and have a family. That goal can be one of the easier to attain, depending on the Eligible Girl/Bachelor you wish to court. There are Eligible Girls/Bachelors who will not appear on the Island if you do not attain specific goals but there are others who are available for courtship from the start of the game.

Without being too specific about Tree of Tranquility, the upcoming Harvest Moon game for the Wii, you will not be able to meet all the Eligible Girls/Bachelors at the start in that game either. At the very earliest, you will be able to unlock every possible character only halfway through your second year. In other respects, however, it is very different from Island of Happiness. It has a very detailed storyline and plot, casting your character in the role of hero/heroine. In that sense, it reminds me a little of Rune Factory, although there is no combat in ToT. In many Harvest Moon games, you are called upon to rescue the Harvest Goddess, but the plot in ToT is far more complex than that. There is a 'next generation' option in ToT that is rather wonderful. I certainly recommend that game as well wholeheartedly!

Heart Events and Rival Heart Events in Island of Happiness can be touching, dramatic or hilarious. Courting every possible candidate for marriage BEFORE you decide on a wife/husband is worth the effort because the Events are wonderful.

I think a player could spend six (real time) months on Island of Happiness without exhausting half of the possibiities. Through Harvest Moon, one can live more than one life but there always is that pesky problem of real time...

Island of Happiness Preview

Island of Happiness, a new Harvest Moon game for the DS that will be released in August, promises the player excitement, new characters and a multitude of new challenges.

In this game, items, new options and characters, including some of the Eligible Girls/Bachelors are unlocked gradually, and in most cases, depend on your own achievement of goals.

The graphics are wonderful. Events are accompanied by a title screen on the upper screen of the DS that gives them a picturebook quality. Whenever you speak to characters, instead of a static portrait on the lower screen to accompany the dialogue, the eyes on the portrait actually blink!

In terms of farming, there is a new option to grow Rice in rice paddies in the northwest corner of your farm, but you must unlock this before you will be able to buy the seeds or enter the Rice Paddy area.

As in Harvest Moon Boy & Girl and the original Magical Melody for the Gamecube, you have an opportunity to play the game either as a boy or as a girl. There is a wide selection of eligible Girls/Bachelors in terms of courtship and marriage.

Most of the characters are new, but players of FoMT/MFoMT, HM Boy & Girl and HM DS/HM Cute DS will be delighted to find visitors from Mineral Town in this game! Karen and Popuri visit in certain seasons and when they return to Mineral Town, Cliff will arrive on the Island. None of these characters are eligible for marriage. In fact, they will have married your Rival in the Mineral Town/Forget-Me-Not Valley games and will speak of their spouses while visiting the Island.

There is a character from HM DS/HM Cute DS in Island of Happiness who is eligible for marriage if your character is a boy. The mischievous Witch Princess lives on the Island with her large collection of bears!

Much more to come in future posts...

Incidentally, I have been working on my guides for Island of Happiness and they should be published on IGN when the game is released in the U.S.

Harvest Moon Gender Discrimination

There are those who claim Harvest Moon discriminates against women by not allowing the woman to continue her game after marriage in Harvest Moon Boy & Girl. I do not think it was a deliberate form of discrimination but probably based on a smaller allotment of time to the creation of the Girl version.

The Girl version is rather strange in many respects. Many of the Heart Events of the eligible girls in the Boy version have been retained in the Girl version for no apparent reason. It is almost as though the individuals who were responsible for making the decisions in the Girl version were not familiar with courtship rules in Harvest Moon. Furthermore, some of the events are backwards. One experiences Elli's Third Heart Event BEFORE one experiences her Second Heart Event when playing as a girl in HM B & G. It is as though they simply decided to include X number of events from the Boy version irrespective of the significance of those events...

I find it maddening that romance in HM Boy and Girl, both when playing as a Boy and when playing as a Girl is based on the individual with the current highest heart level. Perhaps it makes sense but I don't like it. I always tend to use Romantic festivals as a means by which to raise the heart level of the girl or bachelor who has the LOWEST affection for me at that point in time. In Boy & Girl, the game decides the individual with whom you will be allowed to spend the festival.

There is a point where gender discrimination does occur, however, and that is the Fireworks Festival. If you play as a boy and have all eligible girls at a decent level, you can invite any of them to join you to watch the show. It is YOUR choice for once. If you play as a girl, however, the game intervenes and controls your life. Only the bachelor with the highest heart level will give you the option of watching the event with him. I had both Grey and Cliff almost at orange heart level, but Cliff's heart level was slightly higher and thus, he was the one who asked. The first time I played the event, I thought it would be the same as the Boy version and refused Cliff, thinking I then would be asked by Grey, but refusing Cliff forced me to watch the event alone at the end of the pier...

It is curious that Cliff's heart level has mounted steadily, even though I stopped giving him items some time ago, realising that I could not experience any more Heart Events until he had the Winery job. I have given Grey gifts each day and yet, his heart level is slightly lower than that of Cliff.

It will be interesting to see if Cliff is at red heart level even before I have any opportunity to offer him the Winery job. I almost would be willing to wager that it will be, even if I never give him another gift.

N.B. In contrast to Harvest Moon Boy & Girl, the Fireworks Festival in Cute is an opportunity to raise the heart levels of EVERY bachelor, even those who do not give you the option to watch the display with them. Only bachelors with green heart or higher will give you an option to invite them to watch the display but all Valley and all Mineral Town bachelors will be at the beach with the sad exception of Skye. Even where a bachelor is at blue heart level and does not allow you to invite him to watch the fireworks with him, if you speak to him, it will boost his AP by 2000 points. What this means is that, for the day of the Fireworks Festival, you can boost the AP of EVERY bachelor apart from Skye by 4000 points, 2000 points of that for speaking to him at the Fireworks Festival and 2000 points for changing your outfit. What is interesting here is that you will not raise any bachelor's AP higher by choosing to view the show with him. ALL bachelors to whom you speak will have an increase of 2000 AP the next day for your action in speaking to them.

Kai secretly visits Mineral Town in early Spring???

One of the joys of Harvest Moon is the way one can follow characters and the threads of a tale from game to game. Harvest Moon Boy & Girl may be very similar to 'Friends of Mineral Town' and 'More Friends of Mineral Town' in its characters, events and even much of its dialogue but there are some surprising differences and startling new events that delight the true Harvest Moon fan.

In the first week of gameplay, as a girl in HM Boy & Girl, I triggered an event with Cliff at the Church. Carter declared his intention to go to the Supermarket for supplies and asked me if I would watch the Church in his absence. Cliff, half-hidden in one of the pews, overheard and became extremely agitated at the thought of being left alone anywhere with a GIRL. He told Carter he would accompany him to the Supermarket. Both of them went out the door and I was left alone in the Church.

What possessed me to investigate the Confessional rather than simply walking out the door I never will know but I am very pleased that I did.

I was not terribly happy to be in the tiny dark room alone.

'Ugh, this is no fun...' I thought.

I had been there only a moment or two when Kai entered the Church.

Looking for Carter, he thought perhaps that the priest might be in the Confessional. Kai entered and began his own Confession!

I now had a choice either to tell him that I wasn't Carter or simply to go ahead and hear his confession. As dearly as I wished to hear his Confession, I knew that declaring myself was the right thing to do, so I told him that I wasn't Carter.

Outside the Confessional, he introduced himself. Carter and Cliff duly returned, putting an end to this intriguing encounter. Kai said he would look forward to renewing our acquaintance in Summer...

When Worlds Collide... and Nami lies!

The 100 FP event between Cliff and Nami has been included both in the original Harvest Moon DS game and in the new Cute 'girl' version of the game. I personally was outraged by this event when I first experienced it in the original game.

It occurs on a rainy Saturday afternoon after 1.00 p.m. in the lobby of the Inner Inn. Both Nami and Cliff must be at 100 FP. In Cute, I employed a very expensive strategy to raise Cliff to 100 FP while he still was at black heart level in my first Spring. I simply fed him chocolate at a value of 1 FP per gift after the initial chocolate increased his FP by +3. This is not a strategy I recommend to other players. I did it because I like to experience events as early as possible for my Events Guides. There is no particular advantage in experiencing the event early. It does not increase any one's AP or FP.

In any case, the event in both versions of the game basically is the same. Nami tells Cliff that SHE was the one who rescued him in the square in Mineral Town on that snowy day when he fell unconscious to the ground. What a bare-faced lie!!! After all, it was ME who rescued him both in Friends of Mineral Town (as a boy) and in More Friends of Mineral Town (as a girl).

Nami rather cleverly declares that she left immediately after taking Cliff to the clinic because the doctor would have asked all sorts of 'annoying questions' if she had stayed, thereby explaining (albeit falsely) why no one saw her at the scene. Why on earth would Nami say 'such a terrible lie', to borrow Prissy's words in 'Gone with the Wind'. Is it for the glory? Is it because she has secret aspirations to win Cliff's heart, despite her official preference for Gustafa? Why, o why? After all, as Nami declares at the end of the event when she realises that I overheard the entire conversation: 'It's not like me to help people'. Well, I didn't think it was like her to lie either!