WRITTEN BY: ERIN
After the 2008 release of Harvest Moon: The Tree of Tranquility, designed exclusively for the Wii, developers have created a second game, ready to hit shelves in North America this September. Harvest Moon: Animal Parade holds the same premises as all Harvest Moon titles, create and maintain a successful farm while keeping an active social life with the townsfolk. The story of Animal Parade concerns the Harvest Goddess' tree, which has begun to weaken. It is the player's job to find the Harvest King and help revive the land before it's too late. Players can choose to have their farmer be a boy or girl and can use new features such as accessories, to change what the farmer wears, as well as using a camera and saving the pictures to Wii Bulletin to share with friends online.
Players can now keep up to three pets, including cats, dogs, bears, turtles, even weasels. Each can learn its own tricks to strengthen their affection towards the owner. A new addition is that most four footed animals can be rode, including your cows, giving your poor horse a break. Another new game play option is to not only have one child, but two, and these kids can be put to work on the farm right away.
The game features three types of animals, your livestock, such as cows, chickens and sheep, your pets, cats and dogs, maybe that weasel, and then circus, where you can actually interact with what the cover shows as lions, zebras or elephants.
Natsume knows that it's good to try new things as well as be willing to can old ideas, otherwise they wouldn't have so many Harvest Moon titles and only a continuously growing audience. This definitely has enough new concepts to give a try.
