Harvest Moon vs Story of Seasons

I'm sure most Harvest Moon fans were as confused as I was when I heard that two Harvest Moon games would be released at once, from two different publishers, and one would no longer hold the Harvest Moon name. After a lot of digging and confusion, I finally figured out why the split happened, so I wanted to try to spread the word for other confused fans. Yes, I know it has been a while since this was big news, but it still took me this long to get all of the facts straight. 

Traditionally, Harvest Moon was the western release name for the Japanese Bokujo Monogatari series. The name was owned by the North American publishing company, Natsume. The actual BokuMono series is owned and produced by Marvelous AQL, and worked with Natsume to translate and publish games in North America for almost 20 years. Marvelous decided to stop working with Natsume sometime before 2014 to instead use their in-house publishing company, XSEED Games, and thus lost the right to use the Harvest Moon name for their upcoming titles.

XSEED had been publishing most of Marvelous' games for years, but hadn't done so for the BokuMono series since it had been contracted to Natsume for so long. When they finally switched it to XSEED, it was mostly a blow to Natsume, but they still lost the name they'd been using for almost two decades. Needing a new name, they decided to use the title Story of Seasons, and so far two games in the series have used this name: Story of Seasons and Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. These are the games that continued the BokuMono series that fans had been in love with for so long, but that didn't mean Natsume was going to give up that easily.

Not wanting to lose the business that the Harvest Moon title had brought, Natsume developed their own game in what would be a new series of purely American Development. The result was Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley

It was completely different than anything that had previously had the Harvest Moon name on it, and many fans did not appreciate the surprise. In fact, it was hated almost universally, and many refused to even buy it at all once they knew that it wasn't an actual BokuMono game. As a personal review of the game, I thought it was overall very rushed and the characters were completely 1-dimensional, something that had been almost unheard of in the rest of the series, but there was so much potential. It employed a new style of "sandbox" terrain building on the player's farm, similar to the game series Minecraft, but that was the only interesting thing about the game. The rest of the mechanics were very slow and difficult, and the characters were just awful to interact with. There wasn't even a town or other houses, so the NPCs just wandered around. Overall, the potential had been there for an interesting new style of farming game, but, the fact of the matter is, it wasn't a true Harvest Moon game. 

That's why everyone was so excited when Story of Seasons came out in 2015

This was the game that the North American BokuMono fans had waited three years for, since the previous game in the series, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. While it had come out in Japan the previous year, even before Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, the English-speaking fans of the game had to wait quite a while to get their hands on it. Even so, it was everything that the BokuMono series had been loved for, including a huge, beautiful new map to explore and a few dozen lovable characters to befriend and romance. I still frequently play this one (when I'm not playing the brand new title) and it still feels like a part of my childhood, simple and relaxed. 

Natsume is also still trying to improve their own version of the games, and even created the first version of the title for PC or a mobile device. I haven't played this new addition to the American series, Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories, and it's not on my immediate "must play" list, but I am going to try it. After all, I couldn't give it a proper review if I didn't even bother to play it. I'm hoping they actually try doing something good with the name that built up such a big reputation, but if not, fans still have their beloved BokuMono series under the Story of Seasons name, and I for one am excited to see what Marvelous has in store for us in the future.