Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns Review

I recalled reading an article two years ago about a new Harvest Moon game coming out for the PSP. I think it was "Twin Villages" or "Tale of Two Towns".

But last week, my sister told me about a new HM game on the DS called "Tale of Two Towns". I immediately downloaded it and found out that it crashes on No$GBA. I used DesMuMe instead. What's good about DesMuMe is that it has save states and it can record AVI files just like in VisualBoy Advance.

So I started the game, entered my character's name and info and the graphics looks similar to the previous HM games on the DS like Island of Happiness, Sunshine Islands, and Grand Bazaar but like in Grand Bazaar the maps and info were in the touch screen and you move your character with the D-pad.

Tale of Two Towns has a unique storyline and gameplay not seen in other harvest moon game before. The story goes like this: you were driving a horse cart then you crashed and woke up. The mayors of the two villages found you and basically gave you an option on which town would you like to live in. It's not permanent as you can move to another town starting at the 23rd day of the season.

Anyway, you can choose Bluebell where they specialize in livestock or Konohana where they specialize in crops. It's not black-and-white though. You can plant in Bluebell or take care of animals in Konohana but in Bluebell, the field is small and in Konohana, you can only hold a small amount of livestock.

One thing I noticed between the two towns is how they are themed; Bluebell looks like the Western world while Konohana looks like East Asia. They even have their own town music and characters.

These two towns were fighting and on top of that, the tunnel connecting the two towns collapsed. It is up to you to unite the two towns under the orders of the Harvest Goddess. Every week, the two towns compete in a cooking festival (just like the weekly bazaar in GB) and each cooking festival increases the friendship between the two towns.

Yes, you may still travel between Bluebell and Konohana but until you have opened the tunnel, you must pass through the mountain which is extremely tedious because of its large size (it spans seven screens!)

Tale of Two Towns has a new set of characters and also returning characters from IoH/SI and Grand Bazaar.