Even though your character has zero farming knowledge and has literally just arrived in the area, you’re tasked with raising $50,000 in two years or else the community is doomed. Fortunately, coughing up the cash is only one way to save your newly inherited home; there are 16 possible pathways to put the kibosh on FunLand’s park. If you successfully complete related storylines, you can help turn the town into a tourist attraction or a nature reserve.
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Regardless of how you rescue the land, you’ll need to work odd jobs, plant crops and raise animals in order to make money and maintain a cushy lifestyle. Fishing, mining for ores, chopping down trees for lumber, cooking noms and tending to livestock are the basic ways to make some dough in Leaf Valley.
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Now, I’m aware these activities sound extremely mundane, but there’s an addictive element to the Harvest Moon series that’s hard to pinpoint. All of the mini-games are fairly mindless with the exception of cooking for Martha — she requires you to figure out recipes through trial and error and then remember them the next time you come around — but it’s satisfying to find a rare metal or giant Tuna or acquire a lot of lumber from a tree.
Working is only half the battle, though. In order to get anywhere in this town, you need to make nice with your neighbors. Give them gifts from your farm and they’ll be friendlier toward you. Building positive relationships with people also opens up the aforementioned side storylines to help save the town. My major annoyance with these side quests is that once they’re initiated you can’t manually progress them. For example, Chester the town priest instructs you to return to the church another day to help him solve a mystery. I returned over and over and over, just waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. Eventually, the second cutscene played, but it’s a bit frustrating to have little control over how the story moves along.
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Like other Harvest Moon games, you’ll be able to marry one of the many townswomen after the FunLand threat has been eliminated. A majority of the girls are easy to woo, but two in particular present more of a challenge than the rest. Alice, the CEO of FunLand and the Harvest Goddess are two brides designed for veterans of the franchise.
for PSP 5.50 GEN-D3, 5.03 GEN-C
Screenshots of Harvest Moon Hero of Leaf Valley [psp] [eng] [fullsound]
