Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility

The Harvest Goddess has disappeared, the Harvest Sprites have gone, and your fellow islanders have lost touch with nature.

Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility invites you to work your farm, start a family, and restore your town to greatness. Your efforts will ensure the rebirth of the Harvest Tree and the return of the Harvest Goddess.

© 2009 Marvelous Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Licensed to and published by Rising Star Games Ltd. The trademark of "Harvest Moon" is registered by Natsume Inc.

Features

Play as a boy or a girl and restore your island to its former glory.

Mix with the community, pursue potential spouses, raise a family, and work your own little patch of land.

Play as your own child for the first time in a Harvest Moon game.

Discover new crops, livestock and character customisation options.

User reviews

loved it about time i can be both a boy or a girl plus have lots of suiters that are challenging

hiding40

Interesting, but disappointing.

The game art was beautiful, but awful loading time comes with bad control, this game might still be good with Harvest Moon fan.

Recommending the game cousin Rune Factory instead, but if you dislike RPG, his brother Harvest moon: Animal Parade (Wii) could be out soon.

CanonCygnus

The Harvest Moon series has now brought 10 years of farming goodness to gamers, but when all is said and done the series can -- at least in this reviewer's opinion -- be boiled down to just a few key versions of the game that really personify the best the franchise has to offer. On Super NES, the franchise got its amazing start. On GBA, Friends of Mineral Town brought gamers a beautiful representation of pocket Harvest Moon, blending the best from Game Boy Color with an even deeper experience. On N64, console Harvest Moon was defined, as it still to this day remains to be one of -- if not the -- single best overall packages the series has to offer. Over the years the world of Harvest Moon has continued across nearly every imaginable platform, and on GameCube alone the series saw two very distinct style changes in as many games (we don't count "Another Wonderful Life" as a third offering, really). Now that Marvelous brings its classic series to Wii, we're again seeing a new design, and a pretty unique take on the experience with Tree of Tranquility.

Tree of Tranquility may not be one of the best Harvest Moon games we've played over the years, but it isn't a bad one, despite a few oddities in both the presentation and execution of the game. Things changed this time around, so those thinking Wii's first Harvest Moon is just another quick crossover, you'll want to think again. For starters, you've got the option to play as both male and female leads, which means the game includes eight potential husband and wives depending on how you play. No need for Tree of Traunquility "Cute" this time around. In addition, there's a whole new story, following a young boy (or girl) as they arrive in a mysterious town after surviving a storm at sea. Once there, you'll be put to work by the locals at Souffle Ranch, and eventually chose from one of three locales to start your life on. Ok, so it isn't all new.

With Tree of Tranquility, we found ourselves spending much more time hanging out around our farm fishing and working the land than we did interacting with locals, and we think it has a bit to do with the boy/girl mechanic in the game. While AI takes its own paths around town and seems to mingle more than, say, Magical Melody, interaction just doesn't seem to have the same impact or depth this time around as it has in previous Harvest Moon games. Sure, we took time away from each day to go court our eventual wife, but more than anything it's the times when we're working in the field and have a chance to go to a pre-planned town event where we felt most of the game's story progression and character-to-character "life sim" attitude.

The general presentation Tree of Tranquility offers is a bit of a mixed bag, and while the style is nice, some of the animations and colors (vibrant green grass throughout the town leads to some beautiful water animations, for example), the title is inherently "last gen" in feel due to a lack of 16:9 or 480p support. The game's voiceover for the character, mostly heard before and after a hard day's work, is also muffled and low quality, and that's a shame. To top it off, the game's fixed camera (a staple in most Harvest Moon games) feels way, way zoomed in, and the only change you can make to it occurs when you stand still, and won't transition when you start moving again. Returning perks still make an appearance, such as the ability to Z-lock your character and bring up a tiled cursor. These are met with other nice additions, such as the ability to access ship boxes all across the gigantic village, ship items all at once rather than one at a time, and work all day, shipping items at night rather than at a specific time during the day; all nice inclusions. The town is also huge this time around, including a few distinct residential areas, multiple fishing spots, a hot springs (essential for recovering stamina), and lots of shops to check out.

On the whole "life sim" front, Harvest Moon embraces the more expanded design found in recent games, so while you could always check the television for weather reports, or cook food for yourself as the series has evolved over the last 10 years, the package this time feels more robust, as you can of course plant and raise crops, take care of livestock, buy furniture and expand your house, court a mate, acquire pets, upgrade tools, fish, and expand your farm to take up areas all across the town. It's a pretty huge game.

What it isn't, however, is a very daring Wii title specifically. Outside of a few motion = button press movements, and the inclusion of IR camera when standing still, there isn't a whole lot here that makes use of the Wii's tech. Aside from the mentioned aspect ratio and display limits (it's one of the only games to ship on Wii without 480p), the series could stand to evolve into a new level of actual "life sim" aspects, if that's truly the direction Marvelous wants to go. The farming in the game works, and as a farm sim, Tree of Tranquility does a nice job of trying to keep up with the best in the series (a decent job, but still one that's missing the overall polish other Harvest Moon titles have). With a little more ambition though, the franchise could really open up. Multiplayer would be an excellent move, allowing players to move from their town to others like Animal Crossing. The weather channel could make for some interesting "real world" integration, as you could set your region, and then have your virtual town synched with whatever destination you chose. After 10 years of basically the same design, we'd also be down for seeing a real-time version of the game, as there were plenty of times during our playthrough of Tranquility where we wanted to play a few minutes, and then put it down again, rather than rushing through day after day of doing the same general routine to build up cash flow. These aspects aren't necessary changes by any means, but they would push the franchise; something that hasn't been on the forefront of importance over the last few years.

Tree of Tranquility is a decent offering whether you're new to the series, or making your first plunge into the world of Harvest Moon. The game spends a great deal of time focusing on the farming and economy of the game, and less on the courting and AI interaction (something we certainly miss), but it also lays a nice groundwork for future Wii titles. 480i and 4:3 display definitely hurt the game, and the title could exist on any system, as it doesn't make use of the Wii controllers very well, but if you're looking for a core Harvest Moon experience, you'll get a decent taste here. Of course if you don't mind turning back the clock a little bit, I'd still recommend picking up the Super NES version on Virtual Console for just 800 points, and dive into Tree of Tranquility only after you've gone the distance with the cheaper, better game. And who knows, by the time you might have Harvest Moon 64 on VC, or be just in time for a US release of the now-announced Wii Harvest Moon sequel, already showing up in Japan. As another word of warning to potential players, there's a kill bug in this game when using the girl character, and courting Calvin, making it so there's no way to get him to five hearts and marry. If you do pick this one up, avoid that boy like the plague; he'll force you into a life of celibacy.

In the end, Tree of Tranquility is a decent -- but at times, weak -- first offering on Wii, and while we had a good time playing it, we couldn't help but think of the better times the series has already seen, and hopefully the better it has ahead. Die-hard fans should pick it up. Everyone else, give it a rent, or explore your options. There are a lot of them.

Pochama014