A heart with room for chickens 🐔 is a heart full of love.

[villain]

I’ve been playing the Friends of Mineral Town remake, so I’ll put all of my Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons talk here.

I also found this poll on a Japanese site where users voted on who they married in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. I’m not surprised to see Gray and Cliff getting the overwhelming majority of the votes – they’ve been popular since the N64 days (likewise Ann). Karen and Popuri would probably swap if this were a Western poll – I seem to recall Karen consistently being the second most popular after Ann since the N64 days. Rick being so low isn’t surprising, everybody hates Rick (his shop was always fuckin’ closed in HM64 and he was overbearing in BtN/FoMT), but I’m surprised Marie just barely beats out Rick. Marie is the only one that writes you long birthday letters!

Harvest Goddess, Kappa, Huang, and Bon Vivant are considered special candidates so it’s a lot harder to get hook up with them.

Character Popularity

	Character	Votes	%/Vote
	Gray	2,921	26.60%
	Cliff	1,399	12.70%
	Doctor	932	8.50%
	Brandon	918	8.40%
	Ran (Ann)	847	7.70%
	Popuri	682	6.20%
	Karen	652	5.90%
	Elly	627	5.70%
	Jennifer	372	3.40%
	Marie	369	3.40%
	Rick	320	2.90%
	Harvest Goddess	276	2.50%
	Huang (Won)	256	2.30%
	Kai	224	2.00%
	Kappa	137	1.20%
	Bon Vivant	45	0.40%

You can also finally marry any of the available candidates regardless of your or their gender, so that’s cool. Bon Vivant is probably the hardest because you only see him during the Cooking festivals, you can only give characters one item a day and have it positively affect their FP/LP, and the easiest thing to get that he likes are Spa Boiled Eggs.

Speaking of eggs, I’ve filled out my chicken coop. I’m disappointed they got rid of the event where Popuri would give you a free egg to incubate! I have a regular cow and I just bought a strawberry calf (they’re pink and white!) so I’ll have a cow producing regular milk and a cow producing strawberry milk (there’s also coffee cows and orange cows that are just called fruit cows but i need an orange cow). I need to upgrade my ax ASAP because I’ve been kind of slacking on cutting lumber and now I need a bunch of lumber to upgrade my house (so I can start cooking and storing stuff in the refrigerator) and to upgrade my chicken coop.

I got super lucky when upgrading my watering can to Gold and had every day my watering can was out be a rainy day. I was expecting to have to reload! I wonder if the game did that intentionally, or if it was just completely coincidental? I’ve also been slowly trying to get a few of the Harvest Sprites’ affection up so they can water shit for me. They really like Flour, but there’s like 7 goddamn Harvest Sprites, and Flour is 50g/each, so I’m just focusing on like, two or three and occasionally giving some Flour to the others.

[villain]

Also, it looks like all of the BGM is in XWB format, which means theoretically I could replace all of the music with better tracks from previous HM games (there’s a record player that has tracks from previous games, but I want the HM64 Summer theme to play during Summer!)

[tacotaskforce]

This has been the first HM game where I’ve really felt the Harvest Sprite Problem, but that’s probably because I haven’t invested time into the games since HM64. Once you fill out your fruit trees you can just start buying their love with honey, and at that point they become your sharecropper workforce. Stardew alleviated this issue by requiring you to complete almost every event in the game before its version of sprites were unlocked, and unless I’ve missed something the most recent mainline game, Trio of Towns, ditched sprites entirely.

[Mikey]

I’m sad that Rune Factory 5 is a Switch exclusive (at least for now)

[villain]

I’ve been stockpiling a small amount of Honey to give to people, primarily I’ve just been giving it to Jeff because I forgot who else likes Honey. I guess if the Harvest Sprites all like Honey then I’ll just start doing that. Thanks for the head’s up. Just another reason to plant a bunch more fruit trees and some flowers.

---

I bought a few apple trees, planted four bags of pineapple seeds (which will take most of Summer to grow, but will sell for a shitload), four bags of corn, and three bags of tomatoes (because these big fucking rocks are in the way, I just put in for my hammer to be upgraded to take care of that shit). I managed to somehow get two Van’s Favorites in the mail (the first one, coincidentally, on my character’s birthday). I sold one to Huang for like, 57,000G (if you give him some gold ore for a few days he’ll eventually start buying stuff off of you, he’ll offer more sometimes, but you can only sell one by one to him). I figure I’ll save the second one for when I need money. Van himself showed up so I bought the record player off of him – I assume he’ll be selling records the next Wednesday he shows up.

My regular cow is giving milk, so I finally have something to give to Cliff. I need to instigate the event that prevents him from leaving town, but I rarely ever go to the church (the priest just gave me the recipe for Strawberry Milk, and I’m like, dawg, I got a whole COW that will start producing its own strawberry milk).

Tuesdays I need to remember to check the Entertainment channel for recipes, Wednesdays I need to remember to check for Van.

Gotts is currently upgrading my house to the “slightly bigger” house, so I’ll be able to buy stuff to cook with and a goddamn refrigerator to store perishables to get them out of my fucking inventory.

Elly and Marie are both at green hearts, I want to say, and Popuri is at blue or possibly also green? I need to start giving stuff to Ran. I’m kind of liking Popuri’s personality more than the others so far, though. I still have no idea who I’ll try to marry so I’m just playing the field. I’ve been giving gifts to the doctor because he’s always there with Elly when I’m giving her flowers, so I toss some blue grass at him occasionally before I leave.

Also: Summer means typhoons, which means I need to check the weather more often so I can plan for reloads if there’s a goddamn typhoon (typhoons prevent you from going outside, so you can’t feed your animals, water your crops, etc, and I believe they can also damage your crops, grass patches, any fences you have up, etc).

(Why can’t rivals get married? Like, even on the N64, the rivals could get married! Also, the 8 character limit when naming your animals in this PC game is fucking duuuuuuuuuuuumb)

[tacotaskforce]

Oh, was not aware of that quirk of Huang. Also where is Van? I played through a full year of the game and never figured out where he was.

[villain]

He came by and introduced himself I think on the 2nd of Summer. He hangs out on the second floor of Ran’s Inn on Wednesdays. You need to gift the Harvest Goddess 30 gifts, I think, so after she gives you the White Grass then Van should show up. I’ve been giving the Harvest Goddess one of the flowers she loves every day because I really want to get the damn elevator for the mines.

[tacotaskforce]

Ah, that would do it. I’m been stuffing the goddess full of fresh produce, but no flowers.

[villain]

She really likes the Moondrop Flowers that grow all over the place in Spring, so I had just been collecting those (along with the Toy Flowers for Elly) and giving them to the Harvest Goddess exclusively. I have enough to get me through Summer and a chunk of Autumn before I’ll need to give her something else (though, hopefully by around that point I should have the elevator and then the Harvest Goddess can get bent).

[villain]

I came to the hospital to give Elly a flower and she tells me the Doctor wants to give me something, and then he starts talking about how the trees are giving off negative ions and that’s why it feels good and then he gave me this negative ion machine, except I know an essential oil diffuser when I see one. I got one just like this sitting a few feet away from me. Get bent, doogie.

[villain]

Close to the end of Summer. Last night I was cutting some of the weeds on my farm and accidentally cut a fucking pineapple plant down (if it were any other crop i wouldn’t care, but these things take fuckin’ forever to grow), so I get to re-do a day again.

I’ve been stockpiling Honey and started using three of the Harvest Sprites to water my crops. I was expecting to have to finish their work, but they manage to water everything, so they’re a lot more useful than I had anticipated. I’ll probably plan to grow a shitload more in Autumn now that I have the tools to sufficiently clear off the obstacles on my farm (big rocks and tree stumps) and I know that only 3 Harvest Sprites can cover a decent amount of area.

I upgraded to the bigger house earlier in Summer, got a refrigerator, the seasoning set, and a pot from Jeff’s store. The Education channel mentions a TV shopping channel (which is how you used to get stuff for your kitchen), but it looks like that isn’t actually in this version of the game as far as I can tell, so I’m not sure why that’s there. I think I prefer the TV shopping channel method because it meant you only needed to wait 7 days to get a new kitchen utensil vs 10. Not a fan of requiring you to collect a recipe before you can cook it – why can’t we experiment anymore?

Gotts is upgrading my chicken coop. I’m going to start selling off the chickens that only have a max of 5 or 6 stars to make way for chickens with a higher max affection potential. I have three cows, one strawberry and two regular, but I gave the Cow Seed to one of the regular ones so I should have another regular one in like, another 2 in-game weeks. I’ll probably go for upgrading the Barn next so I can have enough cows that are old enough to produce decent-sized milk by Winter.

I’ve also collected three records so far – the Spring and Event themes from HMSNES, and I think the Autumn Theme from HM64? I haven’t previewed it yet and they’re using these weird names to refer to the older games (Harvest Moon SNES is called like, “Outset of Seasons” or something bland like that). I was using the Event theme from HM SNES but I got nostalgic and depressed so I put the music back on mute.

hell yeaaah my boy jeff hooking me up. i knew giving him all that honey would pay off.

[villain]

i wish the moms were the marriage candidates

[villain]

dang or Ann’s dad. Guy runs an inn, can cook, single dad, strong, orange tie to match his hair.

[villain]

i think i planted too many seeds. fortunately the harvest sprites seem to be able to handle it. also, i guess the farm map will show you if there are any red mutations of the blue magic flowers or whatever they’re called before they’ve even bloomed.

i forgot to buy orange trees before asking gotts to upgrade my barn, fuuuck. it’s going to take his ass like 5 days, too.

[Khan]

Love story of seasons, love back to nature, will eventually get this game very looking forward to farm lesbianism

[villain]

who are you going to marry i still can’t decide.

i’m almost leaning towards popuri because she seems to be the sweetest of the bunch just like really sheltered because her brother is overbearing. i love elly’s redesign the most of the bachelor/bachelorettes, but she’s so uptight and i’m already uptight enough as it is and i think her little brother needs to go fall into the lake. i like karen’s family, i feel like jeff is the most relatable character in the franchise, but after HM64 they took off that hard edge Karen initially had – in HM64 it felt like an accomplishment when she stopped being shitty to you. marie’s re-design is great, but i haven’t really encountered too many events with her despite having her heart rating really high up. I wish like, if you’re good friends with Marie, then other people you’re good friends with will also come to the library more or something. That way I don’t feel bad about the only people going there are me, gray, and the doctor j.

I need to try to trigger some events with Ran, I give her stuff occasionally when I have something in my inventory if she’s there when I go to give the Harvest Goddess something, but she’s probably the girl I’ve interacted with the least in the franchise (the Inn was always out of the way, but they’ve added a path near the blacksmith that leads to a small forested area that then leads to the centre of Mineral Town, so you feed right into the Inn, plus Van is there on Wednesdays).

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town OST - BGM Autumn 2 ( Alt ) Theme

I really like the piano in the Autumn B BGM.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town OST - BGM Flower Bud Village - Main Theme Record Theme

I got the HM64 main theme record! This is the best song in the entire franchise. It was composed by CHACKey who did the BGM for the SNES game (and a bunch of other SNES games, his stuff is pretty good), but then he dropped out of composing music for games after HM64 because it didn’t pay well enough so he switched to I think programming. I remember reading one of his blog entries from like 1999 or 2000 and him complaining that the game didn’t get an OST release. This version kind of blows – it doesn’t feel bluesy enough.

Harvest Moon 64 Intro

This is the John Blaze shit. And somehow the N64 soundchip sounds better than SoS: FoMT which sounds tinny and weird like they recorded them from the DS. Also, I love that HM64 opens with the town celebrating the death of your grandfather, because it’s better to drink and celebrate life than stand around and ponder death.

Harvest Moon 64 - Summer theme

Also, why doesn’t this game have the HM64 Summer theme? That part at ~40 seconds in is the best. The steel drums making way for the harmonica to sweat. And it has castanets! I fuckinmg love castanets.

also i’m in love with whatever the fuck you call what elly’s wearing over her hands and forearm.

[tacotaskforce]

I’ve been working on wooing Jennifer because it is trivial to buy her love with chocolate, even if I am convinced she’s going to leave granola crumbs on our bed.

[villain]

when i learned she doesn’t even live in the goddamn tent i was like, i don’t got time for you. cliff spends all goddamn day in the church with that weirdo who eats raw flour, and that dumb ass chicken sculptor is slumming it with gotts after he found his ass passed out and decided to claim him for his own and took him back home, and I haven’t seen her ass go into that tent a single damn time! Give it to Cliff so he doesn’t have to spend all day at church. Christ, that reminds me, when I go back to the game I need to remember to try to trigger the event to make sure he sticks around.

Also, I really hope they patch the rivals getting married in, because it’s super dumb that your rivals don’t get married. In HM64 not only did they get married but they had kids and their kids had their own unique look if i recall correctly.

[Khan]

I won’t know til I play who I wanna marry I suppose, but I’ve always liked Popuri and Karen

[Mikey]

@villain

that hard edge Karen initially had – in HM64 it felt like an accomplishment when she stopped being shitty to you.

HM64 taught me the appeal of tsundere