My Personal Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon Ranking

I feel I should start this off by admitting that I have not played every Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon game, but I have played a fair few so I think I'd like to rank my favorites. There are a few things I look for in a farming simulation game: aesthetic, marriage candidates, pacing, a balanced difficulty level, and replayability. I care about the plot or storyline somewhat, but most of them have the same basic premise: restoring the village to its prior glory or developing it into a fully-fledged town. And there are some nature spirits there to guide you. So, since they're all basically the same, I won't count that as a category. So, with that, let's get into the ranking.

7. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature

Harvest Moon: Back to Nature is a PS1 game. As such, the d-pad controls are fiddly and frustrating and the graphics are terrible, which is typical of that era of gaming. The game is also really difficult at the beginning, with your farmer only able to hold like 2 items. The player character is a boy and as such, you can only choose from the female marriage candidates, which isn't as fun for me as a female player who prefers bachelors. I can't judge the game totally, since I was only able to make it through a few weeks in-game, but that's a pretty good indicator of how un-enjoyable I found it.

6. Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town

This game was a remake of the original Friends of Mineral Town game which came out for the GameBoy Advance. It was an incredibly popular game, which is why they remade it for the Switch and PC. The game is cute and fun, but it has its issues. The aesthetic, for one thing, is overly vibrant and the characters all look like toddlers since it has that chibi style. I like the character's portraits which pop up during dialogue better, but even the 2d portraits are babyish looking. Additionally, it's too easy to make money. In the spring and fall, the town hosts a horse race which you can bet on. If you bet on the horse race, you'll be raking in the dough in no time, thus making the rest of the game too easy. The game doesn't really have a main story line, so getting married feels like the end-all be-all. The candidates are pretty excellent, though. I played the game for 35ish hours and though I could go back and remarry other bachelors, the rest of the game isn't fun enough to make it seem worth it.

5. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

Magical Melody for the GameCube was another easy game, but this time, not because of an OP festival. The game is just simple. There aren't complicated fertilizers or makers or anything like that. The bachelors all seem to have easy gifts that you can give them to increase friendship. The mines aren't difficult to descend. There are no winter time crops, which is nice, since you can spend the season focused on your animals and mining. I like the ease of the game, but like Friends of Mineral Town, it has a baby-like chibi style and there are no character portraits to improve it. The harvest goddess design in this game is one of my favorites, however. There are 10 bachelors and bachelorettes with an additional special candidate. The variety is nice, but they all have pretty surface level personalities and the "heart events" aren't memorable at all. I think the game is super replayable, since you can "speedrun" getting married in-game in less than a day IRL. I also have a lot of nostalgia for the game, since it's the first one I personally owned.

4. Harvest Moon: Animal Parade

Animal Parade for the Wii improved upon the previous title, Tree of Tranquility. But the map is so huge that it takes all day just to talk to all the townspeople and get your chores done. Time moves slowly in the game to compensate, but that means a single day in-game takes almost an hour IRL. The game is not hard, but the incredibly slow pace makes it kind of daunting and tedious to play. There are a lot of marriage candidates in this game, though, and they're all really good. The cut scenes or heart events in this game are more rich than in Magical Melody as well. The aesthetic of the game is more "realistic," with more earthy color palettes and less chibi-like character models. The bachelors have differing body types and face shapes as well, which adds to the game's visual interest. I don't find it particularly replayable, though, since the game takes so long.

3. Harvest Moon: A New Beginning

A New Beginning for the 3DS has more to offer than the games that came before it. You are able to customize your village and your farm, there's fertilizer, more advanced options for taking care of your livestock (which may lead to them becoming giant livestock, which is fun), and you can craft. The game adds a level of complexity that I had not seen in the previous titles. It's hard, but not impossibly so. It feels like there's always more to do, which keeps you coming back for more. The aesthetic of the game is really nice and peaceful as well, not overly vibrant. The animal models are some of my favorites, too. The marriage candidates have better cutscenes than in the games earlier in the list and they're not too hard to romance, so you'll probably be able to see plenty of them before you select a single bachelor or bachelorette to pursue. The one issue is the pacing. The game does feel like it moves slowly, each day taking thirty minutes or so to play through. It's really not that long, but since it's a 3DS screen, something about it seems disproportionate. Like it's a small screen, it should be a small map and a short day. Furthermore, in order to complete the main story line, get married, and have a child, you'll likely need to play through 3 in game years or so. The pacing makes the game less replayable.

2. Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life

I really shouldn't rank this game so highly. It's too difficult to make money and there are only three marriage candidates. However, this game has the best aesthetic of any Harvest Moon game, hands down. Another Wonderful Life balances the romantic fantasy of moving off to the country to start a farm with the gritty look and feel of actual rural towns perfectly. The cows are my favorite farming sim cows of all time. The villagers around town are a diverse and colorful bunch. There's an eccentric mad scientist, a hippy living in a yurt, a rich lady living with her granddaughter in a villa, and many more rich, deep characters. This game has some of the best cut scenes for bachelors and bachelorettes, as well as for non-marriageable NPCS. The game also has more story progression than any other game. You and your spouse will grow old and your child will grow up. The town around you will expand and change. People will move in, people will die. It's a very real place in a way that other HM/SoS settings aren't. I think the game is replayable, too. There are only three marriage candidates, so it's not that hard to imagine giving each one a try. The first two "chapters" of the story (the first two years you play on the farm) go by very quickly as well, making the game easy to jump into. I think this game captures my heart and my nostalgia more than any other game on this list.

1. Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

Maybe because it's new, but Pioneers of Olive Town is my current favorite in the series. I think the game has perfect pacing, excellent marriage candidates, approachable difficulty, and a decent look. The bachelors/bachelorettes have differing builds, face models, and even walk styles. They have really cute heart events, and there are a lot of heart events too. The villagers around town present you with the funniest cutscenes in addition to the heart events of the marriage candidates. The game seems really replayable, since it's easy to jump in and start making money and building up your farm. There's not a ton of extraneous requirements for marriage, so you can easily play through marrying each and every option on different save files. The only thing I don't like are the maker machines, but only because they take up too much room and cause me to drop frames if too many are on screen at once. But they're not too tedious, with the exception of the seed maker, which at times seems totally useless. Right now I rank it above Another Wonderful Life because it's not as difficult and it's honestly more fun because of that.

That is my ranking. Honestly, it was hard to enumerate them, but I stand by what I said about each game. You may be surprised that this is how I have ranked them. A lot of people had issues with Pioneers of Olive Town, citing everything from annoyance with the makers to disappointment in the dialogue. I love the game, though, and plan to keep on playing it over the next several weeks.