Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is a game that's simply an unique, immersive treat for your GBA.
When you start the game, you have basic areas of a farm: your house, the dog house, the Horse's stable, the livestock barn, the chicken coop, and a big area of land in which you can sow seeds to harvest plants. Harvest moon provides you with many ways to develop your income, but most come from crops. Growing crops involve a good number of steps--from buying the seeds, to planting them, to watering them every day, to harvesting the crops. You'll have many tools to use at your disposal. You have tools such as the hammer, axe, hoe and water can to help you take care of your crops. To harvest most crops, all you need to do is walk up to a fruit or veggie and press the A button. Clearing grasses is done by using your sickle. As your progress you'll gain new tools, such as bells to call your animals, brushes to brush them with, and other stuff like the blue feather to help propose to your girlfriend in the game. Most tools are upgradeable via use of "ores" you find in the nearby mines. What’s also great to see that an item you need, or tool you need, is obtainable with a combination of two buttons being pressed at the same time. Little things such as that make, life on the farm much easier for your character.
One thing you'll notice about Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is the fact that time ticks away in the game. Every ten seconds that pass in our world, ten minutes pass in Mineral Town‘s world. Luckily, time doesn't advance when you'll inside places like your home, shops, other houses, and when you open your menu button time won't pass either So there's plenty of ways to take a "break' through your day in the world on Mineral Town. If you are outside for most of the day. a typical world can take about 5 minutes to complete. though most days won't be like that, for if you go into your barn, coop, and the various houses, a day can take sometimes up to 30 minutes to complete. Each "season" takes about 30 game days to complete, and there are 120 days in a year. Animals will get bigger, and older, and eventually pass away, and as the events unfold in Mineral Town, events will occur, and people will move, and things will change.
The RPG elements come into play via upgrading your farm and tools. As you progress you can use your money to invest in the farm, upgrade your farm, tools, and purchase new things such as furniture. Every day, every week, month, year, there is something new to do, some new experience to have.
At times the life of farming can be pretty intense. Luckily there is plenty of monthly events, such as horse racing, celebrations, and fun games to do to make life different each day. What's fun is, that you can choose how to live your life out on the he farm as you want it. You decide what to do in your "day." It's like one big "sandbox" that never gets boring.
The people in the nearby town also play a huge importance in your character's life. You'll develop friendships, meet people, and interact, and your relationships with these people will change over time. there are many character events that you'll experience, especially when you interact with the 6 potential brides in the game that you can flirt with and eventually marry. By giving the girls gifts, and interacting with them, they will increase their appreciation for you. You'll notice these increases as their "heart," indicated when you talk to them, changes colors from a faded black heart all the way to a bright red heart. There are also other rivals in town, boys who are interested in the 6 girls, that eventually will end up marrying them if you don't progress well with the girls in the first few years. Characters such as the harvest sprites prove to be valuable to you, since after you build up a good relationship with them, they can help you in one of the many farm tasks from harvesting, to watering crops, to taking care of your animals.
One thing that really stands out in this title is it's sound. it's fantastic to hear from your GBA, or DS how great the sound is heard from this game. the weather events sound almost lifelike, the music is pretty fitting, and the sound is crisp and clear. The graphics in t he game are pretty well done too, you'll notice how the graphics lighten and darken as the day progresses, and the forest, farm, and the town will show colors of each season such as the colored leaves and grasses in the fall, or the snow that covers everything in the winter, to the rains in the spring. Overall, the detail in the graphics is great. In previous Harvest Moon games, graphics and sound has never been a plus, but with friends Of Mineral town Natsume has struck gold in their series.
The Game also features connectivity with the Game Harvest Moon: It's A Wonderful Life for the Gamecube. By hooking your Game Boy Advance to your Gamecube via the GBA to GCN Link Cable, you can unlock cool things in your GBA game such as new characters who visit your town, and unlock the seaside cottage that you cannot obtain during normal course of the game.
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is a rare title that packages farming, RPG elements, simulation, and dating in a solid package. It might sound weird on paper, but Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is an unique game that you just need to try once. It has a few flaws with text during the Japanese-to-English translation, and it can be annoying when you accidentally toss an item away, but those are incredibly minor flaws when you look at the whole game. Simply put, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town is one of those unique games that will make any Game Boy Advance owner's library, very happy.