Best Harvest Moon yet!
ToT is in full 3D for one, not in a birds eye view like previous games.
Other changes include:
Crops are laid down in a 1x6 lineup instead of the typical 3x3 square surrounding your character. This is great because the tools level up in such a way so that when you charge them up, less stamina, time, and water is wasted on empty squares.
You can walk through your crops now meaning you no longer have to worry about formations.
A hot spring that will raise your stamina back up to full once per a day.
Your spouse AND child will help you out on the farm =)
And of course the New Game + feature, where you pass your rucksack down to your child, whom gains the benefits of your hard work the first time through (you keep your money and items) and then you get to play as them. You play as your child the second time through! How cool is that!
I suppose it's true that the core of the game isn't much different, but it still works very well as recorded by the average users score. It's a little easier then past games, and the way the story line was set up makes me want to actually work on the story line throughout the game instead of running off to do my own thing. Being a sandbox type of game, it is still very, very open to allowing you to do your own thing, but the benefits of advancing the story keep me going back to it. It's a fun game when you want something a little different, but being the type of game it is I have to recommend that you rent it before you buy it. Not everyone likes games like this, it's not a popular genre by any means, but it is worth a try. Anyone who likes harvest moon should like this iteration, the changes made the game more fun and accessible to me.
I mean, the changes made to the game may seem minimal to some, but to me, it changed the gameplay up enough to make it feel very new.