Harvest Moon - Save The Homeland (PS2)

Okay so. Last night, I decided it would be a "good idea" to play... *Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland*. If you don't know... that's a PS2 game. It's in the "PS2 on PS4" section of the games list in the PS4 PSN, and since I had stimulus, I... decided to buy it. And oh boy, did I make a mistake.

So, the first thing you see when you boot up the game after the PS2 / Ntasume logos, is a dog running around a farm of sorts (not your farm mind you.) It then barks and runs up to the viewer, and then fades to black. Literally, no context given, no UI, no credits, nothing on screen besides the dog running around. No other characters. And I'm like, "Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this." As I sweat slightly.

After that, I was greeted with the title screen, which honestly reminded me of RPG Maker games. It had a "START," "CONTINUE" and a... uh... "SETTINGS" selection screen. So, since I've never played this before, I wanted to see what the settings was like. I went in, and oh boy. Two whole settings options. I honestly can't remember what they were, but the settings literally had no bearing on game-play whatsoever, just ON/OFF switches for stuff like sound or something. Not UI options, not controls, not anything useful.

I decided "Okay, let's just go start a new game." As soon as I did, I was greeted with slow as hell text boxes that you could speed up by holding the X Button. (Though you had to press the X Button whenever the paw-print / dialogue progress icon appeared.) It was the basic farming life simulator spiel of a grandpa/father figure saying someone died, and you're tasked with going to collect their stuff/whatever at the farm. You get there, and you look over his things, and in the process, calling something... no joke... "Musty." As well as calling the old tube TV "Old" and "Still having electricity" (Despite your house not being hooked up to the power grid.)

After that, you head to the door, fade to black, and then fade in to these three little elf boy things with awkward red noses. They go on about how they'll have to vanish or move away if something happens to the farm and lake. They don't care about you at first, but you suddenly put your hand on the tiny one's head, so he can't move, and they run off a distance. You let go and they bunch up together asking why you can see them. Oh also, you're a silent protagonist, because of course you are.

Some lady shows up dressed in a robe, with purple hair braided in a fancy ribbon-like design. She goes on about she's the harvest goddess. And asks you three very specific questions:

"What would you do if you found a puppy out in the rain all alone?"
> Take it home
> Ignore

"You find someone else's money on the ground, what do you do?"
> Turn it in.
> Take it home.

And I forgot the third question. Apparently these questions are meant to test your "Purity." Apparently being "Pure of heart" is required for farming, for... some reason. Anyway, she floats up and goes on about how you need to save this land and keep it from rotting and turning into a theme park. As she's doing this, the little harvest elves LITERALLY SAY SHE IS SEDUCING YOU. By saying "She's putting a spell on him." ("Him" meaning You.) She peaces out and you're left alone with the harvest sprites. They tell you they live in some cave.

Oh yeah, before I go any further, I should tell you they did take a "tour" of the place with you, but the game literally did this in the cut-scenes before you went back outside from being in the house. But this time, they tell you how things work. Like where you till the ground in the OBVIOUSLY MARKED PLACES. Anyway, I decided to go back into the house and check a few things to see if there were any other tutorials. I immediately found a few more tutorials about how tools work. Most important of which was telling me that the map can be opened with the SELECT button "When no tool is equipped." This will be very important very shortly when I tell you something goes horribly wrong. The next tutorial states I can use my watering can and finding out how much water is left in it by having it equipped and pressing SELECT.

So, I head outside, bewildered and wondering where my tools are. Turns out they're already in my inventory. So I open the menu with start and OH GOD WHAT IS THIS OCARINA OF TIME MENU SCREEN. There's a big inventory grid on the right, and two slots above it for... tools, I guess. So I go to the "TOOLS" option on the left, and select the tool I want, which is the hoe, because I want to plant the two potato seeds I somehow had on me when I came here, to the village. Since I obviously didn't pick them up by going through grandpa's things. I till two spots, and then go into the menu thinking there's no quick way to change tools, since there was no tutorial on it at all in-game. Then I switch my tool out for the two seeds (since seeds are tools apparently.) I plant the seeds then menu, watering can, then I press square to water, thinking I have water already in it like a dummy, but I don't. So I run over to the well and press Square on it to fill it up. I do this a few times just in case. I then run back over and water the two potato seeds in the ground. Job done, I guess.

Anyway, back during the cut-scene, the harvest goddess told me I should talk to the villagers since I'm here. So, I do that. I go into town, and notice no one around. I check the time, and it's like 10-11 AM or something. Some girl with glasses comes out of the food shop. I talk to her, she introduces herself all nice and proper. She then runs off, and then I talk to the little tiny kid who's like 1/4 my size, and is wearing a complete set of miner gear, and he introduces himself too. Great, smashing start, I guess. I go into the food shop and introduce myself to the store owner, he tells me he can buy things I grow. I then take a look at his shop items, and OH MY GOD WHY DOES A MILK COST LIKE 500 G. (You start with about 120 G by the way.)

I run off from the inflated prices, and then go to the next area, and run up to another shop. It's closed, I look at the sign next to the door and notice it's closed on Wednesdays, and only open between 10 AM and some time in the afternoon. I open the menu, since that's the only way to check what day it is and what time it is, and notice it's Wednesday... the... the third. At about 1 PM now. (Yeah it went from 10 AM to 1 PM in about a minute or two.)

But wait, hold on, why is it the third? I just started this game, and a day hasn't... ...passed...? Well, that's weird. I decided to check the flower shop, and that's where I could finally buy my seeds. So I get a couple breadfruits and a corn, and scurry off to the third area of the town, which is apparently another farm, and looks like it's the farm from the dog running around intro thing from earlier. I look around a bunch, then realize the sun is going down since the sky was getting orange. That may have been because I took a quick stop to the "farm shop" to introduce myself to the "farm shop" owner. Who called me strange when I decided to leave without doing anything. (Since the only option was to do "Part-time work.") Time really, really, REALLY moves fast for some reason in this game.

I rush off back home, plant the new seeds I got, water them, and... wait a minute, why isn't hitting SELECT while the watering can showing the water gauge? Yes, that's right. the tutorial FLAT OUT LIED to me. So, pressing select ANYWHERE with ANY TOOL, will open the map, no matter what. I was like, "Okay then." I decided to equip my sickle by pressing R2 to bring up the tool cycle system. Which I found out just by randomly pressing buttons. (Yeah, again, no tutorial for that.)

So, I ran over to my pasture and swung my sickle at a bunch of grass, and missed/whiffed my swing. So, it turns out, there are three stages of grass. The first small grass won't allow you to harvest it, nor will the medium grass that's nearly halfway up your body. Only the tallest / stage 3 grass will let you harvest it. Each three grass you harvest is supposed to give you 1 fodder. (You start with 0 fodder.) I got 6 fodder for slashing down about 8 pieces of grass, and then I was on my way back home to rest.

But before I progressed the day, I decided to check the TV. See what the weather was like, and the horoscope, etc. Tomorrow's weather was going to be raining. Which meant I didn't need to water my crops that day. I decided to rest and progress to the next day. After waking up and hearing the rain pitter pattering outside, I turned around and interacted with the bed again. This time I chose the Diary Option (and Diary again) to save the game. Now, the game only has four save slots, for some reason, but that doesn't matter. So I save the game and I come back to me facing the table in my house, and the rain's stopped.

"Huh, that's weird," I say to myself. I then open my menu and am about to switch tools when I panic and check the time/day. "What the?!" I exclaim, in my empty apartment. Apparently, SAVING THE GAME, progresses the day count too as if you were sleeping. I sat there dumbfounded, staring at my screen for a minute, then immediately quit and uninstalled the game. Sorry Harvest Goddess, you can't seduce me if your entire game isn't good enough.