Harvest Moon 2 GBC

For its time, Harvest Moon 2 GBC was a charming and very well made farming game on the Game Boy Color. Granted, this has been surpassed many times by games that have followed it from this series and of course, story of seasons, but there is a real charm to this game. It is simple, but at the same time, it has many of the features that you would expect from a game in this franchise. At the end of the day, it does what a good sequel should do and that is take what worked with the previous game and expand on it.

Farming Not Playing

There is a charming little plot here in Harvest Moon 2 GBC. You have taken over a farm and there is a desire by some to turn this land into an amusement park! In order for that not to happen, you have to work hard, make sure the farm is thriving and impress the mayor when they come to visit to check up on you. If they like the progress you have made, you get more time, if they do not… it is game over and you have to start again.

Tending To The Crops

As is the case with most Harvest Moon gams, making money is mostly done by your crops. You have to get seeds, plant seeds, water seeds and tend to them to have a good haul that you can then sell. One of the things that I would advise is building a hothouse as soon as you can as this way no matter what the season is, you can still have a steady source of income from your crops. There are some mini-games to mix things up a bit as well as various tools and items to collect as well. It always feels like there is something to do or something to be working towards in this game.

The Beastmaster!

Remember the awesome 80s movie The Beastmaster? Harvest Moon 2 GBC has nothing to do with that, it just popped into my head as I was thinking about how this game deals with animals. You can now tend to chickens which is fun, building the coop and then looking after them. You can go fishing and there are many species of fish in the game to catch. You can use a cow to make milk, sheep produce wool and chickens produce eggs.

You can also pick between a cat or a dog as a companion and these are more than just cosmetic. They each have a special ability. The dog will protect your livestock from unwanted pests such as foxes and the cat will go and find seeds for you. I found the dog to be more useful.

Pros:

• I liked having a dog as a companion
• I found tending to the animals to be a lot of fun
• The game has most of the features of the HM games of this era
• It has a ton of charm

Cons:

• The music is so bad and repetitive that I turned it off
• It is lacking in comparison to more modern games

It’s not the most obvious pitch for a videogame is it? A man walks into an office in front of all these big cheeses and proceeds to say: "I’ve got this idea for a game, right? Basically, you’re this little guy who looks cute and decides that he wants to run a farm to prevent it from being turned into a theme park. So this guy walks around, plants seeds, sells his wares, buys some livestock and generally just runs this farm for three years. That’s it, that’s my idea! What do you think?" For some reason, this man wasn’t thrown out on the street, but instead was told his idea was innovative and unique. The next thing he knows, his idea has appeared on the Game Boy! So what’s it like then?

Funny Farm

Harvest Moon 2 is a welcome change from all the usual Game Boy offerings and one that relies upon a solid idea and challenging objectives rather than platforms and power-ups. Obviously, running a farm is no easy task and possibly one of the hardest things about this game involves actually getting started because once the initial set-up has been established, you are basically left to your own devices to carry on with the game. By buying, selling and trading you must build up a strong relationship with the other townsfolk and, of course, other traders to ensure that your farm becomes bigger and better. Making your farm work properly takes a lot of patience and time, and if you persevere, the game rewards you accordingly.

Barn Storming

There are a few major gripes with the whole thing. One is that – once the initial set-up of the game has finished – you are then pretty much left on your own to carry on any way you like! While this offers a lot of freedom, it would be nice if there were still a few pointers along the way. Much of the information you need to get comes from townsfolk, but a lot of the time this info is useless. Another mild frustration is that, once you have started up your farm with whatever you can afford, it becomes incredibly difficult to build up your finances to buy things like cows and chickens. You know, important things that a farm would look stupid without. Sometimes owning a friendly cat and having a small row of turnips just doesn’t cut it!

HM2 is not an impossible game with a mammoth challenge intended to confound you and if you play wisely you’ll soon see all that hard work pay off. Despite its quite complex control system and fairly leisurely-paced gameplay, HM2 makes a delightful change from all those below-par racers and platform games that the Game Boy market is so full of.

Overall, this game probably won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you are looking for something new that combines simulation with a hint of RPG then Harvest Moon 2 might well be worth forking out for!