harvest moon Archives • The Lifecast Network

My Top 5 Most Replayed Games

November 27, 2016 Kennedy

The idea of a game’s replayability being one of its main selling points is, I think, a really interesting idea because the standards for replayability have evolved with the standards for video games in general. After all, when you say you want replayability in a game, do you mean that in a sense that it’s fun and you’d like to relive the fun? Perhaps you skipped some content in the game that you’d like to go back and find? Maybe you want to take another look at the writing in the game now that you know the conclusion? Or are there multiple endings that you want to discover? Or perhaps you’re playing a game in which you make very important decisions and you want to experience the game from other answers? Perhaps it’s something else entirely? Regardless of reason, there are several reasons one could have for replaying a game. Admittedly, I probably don’t replay as many games as I should. Moreover, most of the games I’ve replayed I’ve only replayed once–maybe twice if it was short. Yet I also think that gives more gravity to the games that I have replayed more than once or twice because it speaks in volume on behalf of their timelessness. The only stipulation that I’m putting on this list is that there’s only 2 games on here that I can recall the exact number of times I’ve beaten them–the others are approximations which will be listed.

5. Harvest Moon: More Friends in Mineral Town

“Beaten” 3-5 Times

via gamefaqs.net

I have the word “beaten” in parenthesis because you don’t necessarily “beat” Harvest Moon–you just get to a point where you’ve done pretty much everything, so you start over and try something new. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with my first and favorite Harvest Moon game, More Friends in Mineral Town. I’d usually get to about a millionaire status before I’d start to get bored of my farm and want to try something new–making new friends, making them at different times, trying new crops, trying to get certain events, although I never did marry anyone else since Cliff was my waifu4laifu. Outside of marrying everyone, I’m pretty sure I’ve otherwise done everything there is to do in this Harvest Moon entry.

4. Kingdom Hearts

Beaten 4-6 Times

via wikipedia

I’ve made no attempts to conceal the fact that I’m a JRPG junkie. The first JRPG I ever played was Okage Shadow King, but the first JRPG that I fell in love with and even beat was the first Kingdom Hearts. Regardless of how I feel about the franchise now and what it’s devolved into, it will still always hold a special place in my heart for being the JRPG that got me into JRPGs. I got Kingdom Hearts shortly after it came out in the States, but because I was so young and such an inexperienced gamer, I could never even figure out how to beat the ambush on Destiny Islands. It wasn’t until a few years later, shortly after Kingdom Hearts 2 came out, that I would decide to revisit it to see what all the hype was about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I made it a point to replay it at least once every other year or so, eventually. And when the 1.5 Mix came out in the States, I replayed it yet again. Because I’ve replayed it so much, I know what to expect and exactly what to do anytime I enter the game now, and replaying it now has become very relaxing for me.

3. Devil Survivor 1 and 2

Beaten 6 times each

via eurogamer.net

I didn’t expect to fall as in love with these games as I did, yet here I am: Having played each to 100% completion. These games are oozing with moral ambiguity–who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? You can just as easily argue one over the other–and I adore not just games, but any kind of story like this. Antagonists who are arguably more justified than the protagonists, protagonists who may or may not be in the right depending on how you look at it–I think stories involving these kinds of factors add a HUGE layer of interest and involvement to the story, especially if it’s a story in which you’re in charge of several important decisions, as you are in these games. Because I got so interested in the story, and more importantly because I thought each side was equally right and I wanted to see what would happen had I sided with one over the other, I ended up getting all the possible endings to both games: 6 in each.

2. Spongebob Squarepants Battle for Bikini Bottom

Beaten countless times, but less than the #1 game

via youtube.com

I can’t tell you how excited I was for Christmas 2003 when all I wanted was a copy of this game–and lo and behold, my amazing parents got me a copy. The ad made it look amazing, despite all the technical problems of Revenge of the Flying Dutchman I still had lots of fun with it, and most importantly, I was 9 years old–I loved Spongebob. There was no reason for me to not be excited about this game. Needless to say, upon playing it, it exceeded my expectations. With a wide variety of levels, collecathons that added a lot of replayability to the game, and just plain being fun, it’s really easy to understand why anyone would replay this game as often as I did. Like many of the other games on this list, I didn’t want to stop until I’d hit 100% completion–which, by the way, was no easy task for me in light of just how much there is to do in this game. It’s aged incredibly as well, on top of that. To this day I’ll re-play it if I want to play something more relaxed even though there’s nothing new for this game to offer me–it’s just that fun.

1. Jak & Daxter

I’m not sure numbers go high enough to reach the amount of times I’ve beaten this

via wikipedia

Ask any passionate gamer about the games that got them into gaming and they’ll usually have one or 2 particular games that turned them from someone who casually enjoyed video games to a full-blown gamer. This, to me, is that game. The first console I ever had was a PS2, and at first, we mostly just had racing games. This was the first non-racing/non-puzzle game we owned and my sister and I fell in love with this highly-praised platformer immediately. I didn’t know games could be this fun–and so, both my sister and I would play it endlessly. We wanted to experience everything this game had to offer. And when we did, we wanted to do it all over again. And again. And again. There’s so much variety in this game that it definitely never felt repetitive–an absolute must for any games hoping to have any replayability to them. I still replay this game every so often, in fact–hell, I can still 100% the game in a few hours, no problem. It’s aged wonderfully. There aren’t many games that have enticed me as much as the colorful world of the first Jak & Daxter game–mixed with the nostalgia I have for it, this is a game I’ll still be replaying in years to come.

As always, feel free to comment with your most replayed games and why you’ve replayed them so much! Do you think replayability is important for a game to have? How much replayability is too much?

Stardew Valley: A Better Harvest Moon Experience than Harvest Moon

May 29, 2016 Kennedy

The first game I had on the Gameboy Advance was Pokemon Ruby. For many months, it was also the only game I had on the Gameboy Advance. After I had thrown about 300 hours of my life into it I started to think, “Wow. Maybe I should look into getting another game or 2 for this.” Lucky for me, my best friend at the time had been playing this “Cool new game!” called Harvest Moon: More Friends in Mineral Town. Being only 11-years-old at the time, I thought it sounded stupid and I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around how she was having so much fun with it. That is, until I played it myself. It had a very addictive quality to it—there was so much to do and you wanted to do it all. I couldn’t put it down and at the time I never quite pieced together what about it made it so charming. That is, until I played Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley is a country-life RPG/farming simulator game made by ConcernedApe (Eric Barone) back in February of this year. More than being simply Harvest Moon inspired, Barone has said in multiple interviews that the original idea for Stardew Valley was to be something like his perfect Harvest Moon game.

The inspiration taken from Harvest Moon is clear right from the start of the game, as it shares a similar premise to most in the franchise: You’re growing bored of modern life and you’ve suddenly inherited a farm. Now go be a farmer. The originality this game has it also clear from the beginning of the game, however, as it does something that no other Harvest Moon game does despite many fans wishing it: It allows you to customize your character entirely, which is a very nice touch and only deepens the feeling of this game being so personal.

Image Source: Game Informer

Perhaps the best thing about Stardew Valley is the freedom this game allows you. Although the game encourages you to be a farmer (by, well, giving you a farm) there are plenty of other options available to the player: Mining, fishing, forging, and adventuring, for instance. Right off the bat, this game sets you loose in a world with dozens of new things to try and in any order and for however long you please. This freedom ensures that no two players will play this game exactly in the same way and adds a layer of interest to this game and discussions on it. There’s no linearity in this game whatsoever: You do what you want when you want. As for gameplay for these different activities, it’s kept very simple and minimal—as it should be in a relaxing game like this.

If the sense of freedom in Stardew Valley isn’t the best part of the game, then the characters are. The idea of Stardew Valley is, “You’ve moved into a farm in a small town. Make a living.” so naturally, making friends comes with that—you can even get married in this game. (And for bonus points, all the marriage candidates—both men and women—are available to you regardless of your gender) All the characters are written to be both incredibly unique and incredibly realistic. The more you talk to them and give them gifts, the friendlier they’ll be toward you (as measured by the hearts in the game’s menu) and their dialogue reflects that. All the characters have different events that can be triggered when they like you enough, as well.

The events are easily the next biggest highlight of this game—every character has very unique events, all which help you learn a lot more about the character. At the same time, all of the events seem pretty realistic, and like something you’d do with a friend in real life. Non-marriage candidates don’t have as many events as the potential marriage candidates, in fact some characters only have one event, leaving much to be desired in their character development. As characters grow to like you their dialogue will change to reflect this much more friendly atmosphere you now share with them, but that still only leaves the player starving for more time with them and to know more about them.

Image Source: Stardew Valley wiki

The only major problem in the character writing in this game comes from after you get married. After you get married, you can no longer get the other marriage candidates any farther than 8 (out of a possible 10) hearts full in the menu. (If it’s not already obvious, 10 meaning that you maxed them out.) Not only this, but if you want to give any of them gifts for any reason, including their birthday, your spouse—regardless of who it is, what day it is, of anything—will get angry.

Most of this games problems lie around the same area. As mentioned before, there’s a lot to do in Stardew Valley and you’re free to do it in any time and order you so please. That said, most of it can be completed within ~50-60 hours. It’s around that time, around the ~30-40 hour mark, that you’ll start feeling bored of the game since you’ve likely discovered all the surprises and events by the time. By this time, you probably know exactly what your favorite townspeople are gonna’ say on certain occasions. You’ve probably done most, if not all, of the achievements you wanted. You’ve probably tried everything this game has to offer by this time, and the game starts to lose its freshness very quickly.

Barone realizes that this is a common complaint with the game, though: Earlier this month, he announced that he’ll be working on patch 1.1 which will give you more dialogue with your spouse, create more events with non-marriage candidates (and even add 2 marriage candidates), add more secrets and surprises to the game, and even add a multiplayer version of which we still know nothing of. Arguably the most notable thing he said he was in the process of doing was getting a console release of Stardew Valley.

In the spirit of (most) Harvest Moon games and Animal Crossing (from which it also takes a lot of inspiration) Stardew Valley should absolutely be on a handheld console—more specifically the 3DS because the layout could be transferred easily (I imagine you can just put the menu and the backpack on the bottom screen). Being such a personal game, playing it on a hi-def TV with a PS4 would feel too grandiose for the modest and charming world of Stardew Valley.

Image Source: Steam Community

With having so much to do and total freedom in when and how you’ll do it, it’s no wonder that Stardew Valley is such an immersive and addictive game. It’s a game that you can play entirely how you want, and beyond being incredibly fun, is also incredibly relaxing. It’s major flaws come in its little late-game content and the occasional bug—usually nothing major, however, there has been multiple cases of people (including me) losing their save data on more than one occasion toward the game’s beginning. As long as you back up your saves though, this isn’t an issue.

As it was intended to be, this game truly feels like an improved Harvest Moon game–so much so that it shouldn’t be called a Harvest Moon game since they have many major things that set it apart. (EX: The lack of linearity and customization options Stardew Valley has) An incredibly solid, well-crafted game, and downright charming game, I’d give Stardew Valley an 8/10: Something I’d absolutely recommend to anyone who needs to relax for a bit or enjoys Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing-esque rpgs.