Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town

The original Harvest Moon game for Gameboy Advance was one that quickly captured the hearts of gamers everywhere with a fun simulation-style farming game that provided relaxing gameplay while you worked against the clock to get your farm up and running. Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town is essentially a repackage of the original Harvest Moon game in that it provides all of the same experiences, objectives and even similar characters to play as; if you've already given your time and money to the original game, you might not get much out of playing More Friends of Mineral Town. But, hey, maybe you just loved the endless replay value of the original game so much that you just want to experience it all over again in a slightly new manner, and if that's true, you'll love this fun little game.

Objectives of Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town

Much like the original game, you start out as an aspiring farmer who purchases a farm in disrepair from an old man who passed away a while back. You have all of the tools and equipment you need to get started, but in order to get the farm ready to work, it's going to take a lot of effort on your part. This means having to spend money to make money, and you'll need to buy things like sheep for wool, cows for milk and chicken for—you guessed it—eggs. Shell out even more money to get food for these animals, shelters for them, upgrades to the barn and more to start producing so you can generate income.

The only real enemy in this game is time, as one whole day can pass in only ten minutes of real-world time, so you'll need to work smart and hard to till land, harvest crops, water the earth and more. The seasons change every thirty game-days, so you'll have to accommodate for the new weather and conditions there as well. With all of the time crunches, you can befriend little creatures like sprites that will help you man the farm in exchange for gifts to keep them liking you enough to work for you.

Pros of Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town

• Endless replay possibility
• Rewarding gameplay experience
• Relaxing game model

Cons of Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town

• Nearly identical game style and play through as original Harvest Moon games

Bottom Line

Lovers of the original Harvest Moon will get a kick out of this continuation of the first game that presents them with similar challenges and elements delivered in a repackaged way that changes up the graphics enough to keep it fresh without straying far at all from the original game. Overall, it's a great game that can be recommended for any lover of farming simulators, whether or not you have played the original—something that you can't say about many other games.