Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life gives you the ultimate role-playing challenge -- take a simple farm boy and help him build a happy, successful life!

Decide what sort of life you'd want to live, as you choose which vegetable to grow, which animals to raise, and more -- six amusing and interesting chapters that span across 30 years

New Event System and wide-open game world for all-new adventures -- no matter where you go, or what you do, something new WILL happen

Interact with 40 unique characters and build solid friendships and alliances -- your success in the game could depend on them

Great new marriage system and the ability to raise a child, bringing your character's life full-circle

Connects with Harvest Moon - Friends Of Mineral Town for Game Boy Advance, for extended gameplay and all-new adventures!

Average Customer Review: ( 298 customer reviews )
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It's so nice to find a game that's human-scaled, cute and friendly. And the game arc goes on for virtual years. Compared to a Star Wars game, this is a MUCH greater value.

Water your crops, feed and brush your animals. Find a wife. Raise a child. Grow prize melons, create new hybrids.

This is such a unique game that you've really got to try it out for yourself. My kids (5 and 9) love the game. Some reading ability is necessary to play the game.

54 of 62 found the following review helpful:

Cool Game for All AgesMar 21, 2004
By Sandy Davis
I am an "old woman" according to my children (I'm 40).

I have been playing Harvest Moon FOMT on my Gameboy Advance (yes, I have one of my own), and I love it! My husband always laughs at me because I play it all the time. He doesn't mind though, because he just bought the GameCube version for me a couple days ago.

This new game is very intriguing. I love the graphics and the music. The cow already seems to love me, so I guess I'm on the right track. It's a little more complicated than the GBA version, so I'm still learning how to play. What I've seen so far is really cool. I think I've found a new favorite game. Up until now, I have concentrated on Animal Crossing on my GameCube. It's nice to have another fun game for my GameCube system.

33 of 37 found the following review helpful:

Big Game, More Works, Lots of Fun!!Oct 08, 2003
By QQ
Hey,
I just starting playing this game (jp version) for two weeks now. I just want to give more informations to those HM fans who are still not sure how does this game works.

(+) I think the graphic is pretty good. You even can change the music by putting different "music cds" in to the music machine in your house. You now have more spaces in your farm. I think it is very convenient to have a bell in the barn where you can just press it to tell your animate (horse, cow, sheep, ect) to go in/outside. Also, you can get milk from your cow twice a day (2 or more bottles). You can sell your own stuffs in the tree next to the inn, however, sometimes it is very hard to get a customer to buy your stuffs. Most of the time, they want to buy things that you dont want to sell (ex: your farming tools).
I like the way that you can order most of the items in the storage room area (by using the notebook).
Also, you can carry lots of stuffs in your pocket.

(-) On the other hand, you have to feed the cow twice/day, and also, you have to water your crops twice/three times a day. If it gets too dry, it will died immediately.
The day is kind of short, and you get hungry easily at the beginning because the farming tools you have are at the lowest level, where you need to buy a better one later on. The life could be very difficult at the beginning... you need to earn money and also you need to date the girl you like. IF you dont get marry by the end of the 1st year, then you cannot go on to the 2nd chapter... you will stay in the FREE-PLAY mode, instead of the STORY mode.
Moreover, the weather is not stable sometimes, it can rain in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. Sometimes, I leave my animate out and go on for fishing... then suddenly it rains and so I need to work all the way back to call them back.

*** Overall, I think the game is worth to play. ^WORKING HARD & HAVE FUN^ are the whole concept to this game!! I'm highly recommanded you to buy the US version when it comes out in Jan 2004. It is somewhat stressful to play in the JP version.. >.< ...unless your Japanese is very good (which isn't me).

14 of 14 found the following review helpful:

Harvest the Fruits of Fun! Buy!Mar 19, 2004

Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life,HM:AWL continues the Harvest Moon tradition. It focuses on non-violent, and unbelievably addictive gameplay. For Harvest Moon fans, this is a must buy. For those parents or who have parents who worry about game violence etc., and still desire an enjoyable game, this is simply a treasure. The only way you won't enjoy this game is if you're one of those people whose life is 1st person shooters, M rated games or something else like that. As for the specifics on this jewel, observe:

Story:9/10 This is a very non-linear story. The game spans 6 chapters covering 30years. Your father wanted to build a farm. After he died he left his friend Takakura to give it to you. Thus begins chapter 1. During chapter 1 you must get married. As in all HM (harvest moon) you have a choice of marrying one of a few girls. Although most HM games have 5 girls, this game has 3: Muffy, Nami, or (my sweetheart) Celia. However it's only because of the immersive stories revolving around each girl. Each girl has many cutscenes advancing your relationship with the girl. Following marriage, you'll have a kid(don't worry parents, the part about the s-e-x is skipped) and depending on how you treat him (sorry, you can't have a girl) and where you take him as a baby, you'll influence your child's character as a teen and adult. You will even eventuall live to see what he decides to do with his life.

Graphics:10/10 The best garphics in an HM game so far. There is now transparent and reflecting water,as well as gorgious sunsets, and realistic shadows. Of course those are just the highlights, the garphics are better in mainly everything.

Concept:8/10 It's the classic stuff. Run a farm. However, as addicting as it was in the previous games, now you must raise afamily and live your life(hence tilte:A Wonderful Life). This makes the game a tiny bit less linear than its procedors. Plus there is a point where the story ends.In some of its precedors, you could go on farming forever. Saddly, here you age and well, travel to the land where your father lies. And of course the concept run a farm is a tiny bit repetitive.

Controls:7/10 This is the one drawback. The controls seam standard at first, but you'll find they used the "action button technique"where one button does a lot of different things. What you do depends on if you have anything equipted and where you stand. And it can get VERY ANNOYING when you for example: milk the cow when you want to talk to it, or examine the sickle instead of using it etc.

Sound effects/music:8/10 To describe the sound effects, I can simply say: standard. Not bad, not that good. The music is mainly bright and cheerful. An interesting feature is that you have a rercord player in your house. You can put records in it and they play in the area near your farm. The insides of buildings usually have music too. One annoying part however is that in many outdoor areas you won't hear any music at all, and it falls to the sound effects. Sure it's natural, and many people easily got sick of hearing the same music over, and over, and over again in the earlier HM games, but it just doesn't feel right to have so many places without music...

Overall:8/10 Sure it has its drawbacks, and whatever, but what you've read here is only the tip of the iceberg. For contrast to HM fans like me, its better than all the Gameboy HMs and STH (Save the Homeland) however, it's worse than BTN(Back to Nature)and 64 (Harvest Moon 64). So this is Nick Dobkin of somewhere in CA,USA saying: Harvest the fruits of fun,its more than worth its cheap (for videogames)...,so BUY THIS GAME!

90 of 114 found the following review helpful:

Great for some people...Sep 23, 2004
By Michael Clarkson
You will either really love this game, or you will find it rather boring.

GAMEPLAY: MEDIOCRE
The gameplay in Harvest Moon revolves around two tasks: managing your farm, and developing relationships with AI characters. I found these two aspects to be tolerable and disappointing, respectively.

Maintaining the farm will take up most of your time. Crops must be watered, animals must be given TLC, and some of those animals must be milked. Taking care of these tasks, particularly if you focus on growing crops, will eat up most of the game 'day'. However, these tasks are EXTREMELY repetitive, and game 'time' goes by so quickly that you might spend an entire 'day' at them. This often leaves little time for exploring the surrounding world, which is good, because there's not much of the surrounding world to see. I found watering crops to be particularly frustrating, particularly since the game's "Weather Channel" has slightly less competent forecasters than the real world. I can, however, imagine that other people might find this to be more fun than I did.

I did enjoy the economic aspects of running the farm; choosing which crops to grow and how many; adjusting livestock populations to maximize profit, and how to best allocate time to make the most money. However, the chores ultimately obscured the more interesting economic problems.

The relationship aspect of the game was, I felt, sadly underdeveloped. The major way in which you build relationships with game characters is by giving them things, which is no sin in most games. However, since it's supposed to be such a major part of this one, this should have been made deeper. As it was, I just found it boring.

Another impediment to my enjoying the game was that (in the early releases anyway) it suffered from a very shoddy localization job. Some words were still in Japanese, some dialog did not make sense, and in one menu 'yes' and 'no' were switched. That does not make for a very enjoyable gaming experience.

The controls were not difficult, but they were twitchy enough to make watering even more of a hassle than it should have been.

STORY: MEDIOCRE
The story is basically that of someone's life, played out over every day of almost every year. As such, there's no plot or anything, no development of tension or conflict. This game could have used some.

GRAPHICS: SUPERB
The game looks wonderful. The landscape, characters, and lighting effects are all very nice. However, the scope of the world is very small, and you end up looking at the same characters and vistas endlessly. They're very nice to look at, but there's not enough to see.

AUDIO: AVERAGE
Music and sound effects are clean, but highly repetitive, particularly if you don't have "Friends of Mineral Town" to link to. If the music and sounds were really interesting, this wouldn't matter, but they're bland and insufficient.

REPLAY: EXCELLENT
To the extent that it CAN be different (given the highly repetitive nature of the farmwork), the game plays out differently each time through. You can choose different friends, a different wife, and different ways to set up your farm.

OVERALL: AVERAGE (64%)
This game looks nice, and it can be some fun. As a nonviolent RPG that focuses on family-building and fiscal responsibility, this is a game that parents can buy their children without regrets. However, whether this game will be provide any enjoyment will depend greatly on the character of the child involved: primarily, how much they like farm animals or the idea of farming.

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