I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I’d try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there’s a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon’s later entries since there’s more than one.
Harvest Moon to me is a bit hard to revisit. Having to get used to only carrying two tools at the same time, your farm doesn’t seem as big, you don’t have a way to know that you’re tired as readily, you just have to watch for the signs and the village you visit doesn’t seem as characteristic. It’s a basic farming sim, it has to start somewhere.
But Stardew Valley does so many things that it is easier to revisit.
The older Final Fantasy games. I made a point of doing a playthrough of the NES version of FF1, and I’m glad I did. The increased difficulty over the GBA version is mostly better than the absolute lack of challenge in later versions, but the added content and qol improvements make it preferable to play a hardmode hack of the gba version in the future.
The NES FF2 is just too much. I lose stats? No thanks.
And I’m really glad the Pixel Remaster version of FF3 exists now, the NES version was pretty unpolished and glitchy.