Nostalgia and brand recognition is literally all they have. Changing the logo would probably be suicide.
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Harvest Moon: One World announced for Nintendo Switch for 2020
- Thread starter MauroNL
- Start date
I can't play the new HM games anymore, regardless if they are called harvest Moon or Story of seasons. Anything since Harvest Moon PS2 ("Wonderful life", I think?) was subpar.
The only real successor is Stardew Valley and it destroys anything HM related in the genre in the last 20 years.
The only real successor is Stardew Valley and it destroys anything HM related in the genre in the last 20 years.
Even just looking at the logo you can tell it's not going to be high quality.
Hope the actual series, Story of Seasons, does a Wonderful Life remake soon, I absolutely loved the GameCube game and think it'd work well as a modern title with a few changes and additions.
Hope the actual series, Story of Seasons, does a Wonderful Life remake soon, I absolutely loved the GameCube game and think it'd work well as a modern title with a few changes and additions.
Yeah I am sure they'll get to it if they keep up the remakes but I get why they would start with this as the GBA/PSX title is the most beloved one in the franchise so it made sense to start there. I Imagine A Wonderful Life would be the next they would remake if they do more remakes.
So as someone who poured almost 300 hours into Stardew Valley but sort of petered off on Animal Crossing after a few dozen hours (and really only went that long because of a feeling of obligation and the length of time it takes to do things in that game), would Story of Seasons be fitting for me? Should I try a recent Rune Factory instead? An old flame of mine really loved Harvest Moon a decade or so ago, and I never really understood it, but I feel like Stardew might be my gateway drug into some other games in this genre.
I still don't understand how the heck this happened.Reminder, this isn't actually Harvest Moon. It's a cheap knock-off that has the old branding rights.
This is the next real Harvest Moon title:
I know the series' creator left and founded Toybox, but it's not like it was a studio change, just personnel turnover. Speaking of which, I do wonder if Hashimoto is still in charge of new games in the series. He created his own company (although it is still part of Marvelous), but is still working on Rune Factory.
I hope they don't make more remakes, I'd rather they make new games. I loved Trio of Towns, and was excited to see a follow-up to that.
Marvelous acquired XSEED to do their localizations for them in the west, possibly at least partially because of their amazing work in localizing games like Rune Factory Frontier, which Natsume was too busy to do or something. The leap in quality for the localization and voiceover was significant, and a lot of the fanbase noticed. Assumedly, Marvelous took notice too.
After Marvelous stopped licensing their games to Natsume, Natsume became a sort of jealous ex and is using the old name to fool people, and are constantly lying by saying "their" series has decades long history in spite of Natsume's first faux-"Harvest Moon" game releasing in 2014 and with not a single one being well regarded. Natsume intentionally obfuscates their involvement with the classic games on a constant basis, which they're still doing with press releases about this latest game of theirs citing "decades long history" for a game series they only started making about half a decade ago.
Marvelous is also working on a new mainline game that's not a remake.
Not quite, Natsume did produce some entries in the series themselves before that, although IIRC a reversal happened and Marvelous localized them to Japanese under the Bokujo Monogatari name.
For sure, I'm just not too interested in remakes, and rather they devote more resources to new entries.
I guess you can count the games like Puzzle De Harvest Moon and Frantic Farming, but as those weren't mainline simulation games. It still doesn't feel like they're really relevant to Natsume talking about the legacy of the series as if they made the old games people loved instead of localized them.
I'm starting to realize there's a lot of Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games on the Switch...
I wished I can play them all, but I don't know how much I can invest in them... :(
I'm still playing the Doraemon: Story of Seasons, and I've yet to finish the game. I still have other tons of backlogs... and that's just the Switch alone...
I wished I can play them all, but I don't know how much I can invest in them... :(
I'm still playing the Doraemon: Story of Seasons, and I've yet to finish the game. I still have other tons of backlogs... and that's just the Switch alone...
you do not want to play the games that have "harvest moon" in the title.
Reminder, this isn't actually Harvest Moon. It's a cheap knock-off that has the old branding rights.
This is the next real Harvest Moon title:
Holy shit, this explains so much. I was wondering why all the HM games have looked like garage compared to what I remembered from my childhood.
At this point the majority of the fanbase has adjusted to the real Harvest Moon being called Story of Seasons so I dont think they'd want to change it again. It would make things even more confusing I think haha.
Then they would not be able to profit off of those unaware that they no longer are localizing the Bokumono games as Harvest Moon but are instead developing their own titles under the name. Also Natsume still has the rights to all the virtual console/digital download releases for the games up through A New Beginnings. Considering how many titles that encompasses I would not be surprise if those make up a good portion of their revenue each year.
lol, true. if the real games started using the harvest moon name again there'll be a 2 or 3 year period where people have to explain "no, this is not the crappy flash game looking harvest moon, this is the ex-ex-harvest moon".
Toybox technically made HM64 too actually, it was Wada's production group at the time even while he was working at Victor. He took the name (and a lot of staff) with him when he left.
Marvelous has had so much changeover since then though, they're technically not even the same publisher today.
That hangs a lot on the "technically" part. They're pretty much the surviving element from all those mergers.
I agree but to the casual crowd, they can't tell the difference between Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons name and logo. I think it would be best of Natsume sold the name or tel Marvelous that this is the price for the IP name. After Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon (Actually Story of Season) needs a resurgence and sales
Good lord, that logo...
For one, just update the actual logo to use a graphic that isn't from the 90s. You can see the polygons!
And then change the font of the subtitle...It's barely legible, and the colour choice adds to the difficulty.
For one, just update the actual logo to use a graphic that isn't from the 90s. You can see the polygons!
And then change the font of the subtitle...It's barely legible, and the colour choice adds to the difficulty.
Are we including RF under that banner? Factually and 100% objectively wrong if so. RF4 is easily the best farming Sim-esque game.
Also likely day one for FoMT. For this, I dunno, maybe I'll be surprised, but their last effort left a lot to be desired.
The premise sounds pretty interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on this one. I'm not worried since there's a new Rune Factory AND a new Story of Seasons in the works anyway.
I mean, not really, it's been a pretty big tumultuous journey. Pack-In-Video -> Victor Interactive Software (1996) -> Marvelous Interactive (2003) -> Marvelous Entertainment (2007) -> Marvelous AQL (2011) -> Marvelous Inc (2015). Saying this isn't really the company from the late 90s (Victor) is totally fair and exactly zero staff who worked on HM64/BTN are still with the company today from what I can find. The last vestiges left with Wada after Animal Parade.
Funny enough though Natsume still has staff today who worked on HM64/BTN.
That's weird, since the new director on Doraemon Story of Seasons and Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Hikaru Nakano) did work on Harvest Moon 64 and has special thanks credits on Back to Nature and Animal Parade as well as credits on other BokuMono titles... Still, Natsume stans are fond of pretending like changing a company's name a few times due to acquisitions and mergers and people gradually retiring or moving on after training their replacements up over the years (as they do in many industries) means that there is no farming sim goodness or BokuMono "legacy" left at Marvelous either. So weird because Trio of Towns was absolutely of the same caliber of Wada's last BokuMono games and Natsume has yet to publish anything that I'd personally rate above a 5/10. I mean, Yoshifumi Hashimoto was only Wada's hand-picked replacement who somehow managed to put out quality BokuMono and Rune Factory titles out at the same time and only "left" the team because he gets to make Rune Factory again. (Note that we don't know if Hashimoto and his team at HAKAMA are actually not going to be working on the next, non-remake Story of Seasons. We only really know that Hikaru Nakano wants to make more Story of Seasons remakes and that a mainline, non-remake Story of Seasons is being developed.)
It isn't like Natsume even makes these new garbage "Harvest Moon" titles, many (if not all) of them were made by APPCI aka Tabot Inc. Natsume's in the same business as always, publishing. They're just covering it with a great big old heap of lies about their series being the "true" farming sim series with a long legacy. Deleting and blocking anyone who tries to inform others about the split on social media. Bribing people in the pro-Natsume contingent of the farming sim community with free copies (among other stuff) to give them good reviews. Having their staff post positive reviews on mega online storefronts (such as Amazon).
I honestly tried to give the new Harvest Moon games a chance even despite how much I hate liars, but they let me down hard with every single aspect of "their" games and I haven't seen anything yet out of this game to indicate they're trying to improve the quality of the titles they put out. They're literally drowning the market in shovelware and trading on a name to trick people into buying it.
Such a shame, there could have been two quality farming and life sim game series, and now there's only one. As for me, I consider the true successor to Harvest Moon's NA legacy or spirit or whatever you want to call it... that is divided up between several exceptional indie games that are done or currently in development. None of which is going to spawn a 25 year+ series. Even though I don't personally enjoy Stardew Valley all that much, I regard it very fondly for being so successful that this niche I so love is absolutely one of the fastest growing genres for lower budget, smaller studio games.
There hasn't been a truly good harvest
moon/story of seasons game in a long while (not counting remakes or a spinoff)
Almost none (if none) of the people that worked on the early Harvest Moon games are still working on the series.
The last harvest moon with the old staff was Animal Parade
This too. No excuses are good to me now that the FoMT remake is putting it in, fully equal dating, romance, and marriage without mincing words. This is the one thing Natsume could have demanded from their devs that would have made me champion their new series yet mysteriously they never seem to include it for reasons... homophobic ones, if I had my best guess given their history and continued path of action.
You're right, one background artist from the classics is still with Marvelous. I misspoke, I should've said design leads.
Also you seem confused about my preferences. I don't like the Natsume titles, they're manifestly worse than modern SOS in about every respect (and that's frankly a low bar to begin with). Me pointing out near zero staff continuity at Marvelous isn't me stanning Natsume, it's just me pointing out reality.
The 3DS Story of Seasons games were decent I think, although noticeably worse than the better ones in the franchise.