I said I was gonna do it. I just now got around to it.

You all know that I’m a long time fan of the Harvest Moon series. Well, since the US release of the female version for Gamecube came out, I felt that my experience was incomplete….and what red-blooded heterosexual would walk into a game store and buy a game targeted to girls? Well, fortunately, I had inside sources. My girlfriend bought Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for herself, and after about a year of playing it, lent it to me. Let me tell you, it was like no other Harvest Moon experience I’ve ever had. Where should I start?

Well, let me first say that I’m an experienced HM player, and if I’m serious enough, I can go through the game like a dose of laxatives and be married within 2-4 days (real time).

But since this girl thing was new to me, I decided to enjoy the experience.

The first thing I noticed disgusted me. Let me turn back the clock to the first Harvest Moon for Gameboy. If you played as a girl, you got the watering can and, like, fifty seeds right from the start, whereas if you played as a guy, you had to buy all of these things. The same applies here. In the guy version of the Gamecube HM, I worked and worked and worked to get the shipping bin that you could sell vegetables in (you have to do a crazy amount of work hybriding and breeding crops). In the girl game, you have this from the start. Natsume is sexist. They think that women need to have their asses wiped for them, so they make the game easier by doing the hard parts for them. On a side note, though, there is less field space for the girl version, and you have to fertilize the grass field for your cows, although that is a painfully easy task.

The controls seem a bit different, especially when you go into first person view (it’s easier to control, it seems.).

After I had played around and explored for a while, the creepy ranch hand, Takakura, informed me that I should start looking for a husband.

Let me tell you something about the original AWL. On the box, it has the main character surrounded by the potential wives, and they’re all fairly attractive. For the girl Harvest Moon, though, they did not do this. This is because the potential husbands are all creepy lowlifes and would therefore reduce game sales. So, my search for a husband began. When I saw my choices, though, I had a hard time deciding. (Note: You HAVE to be married by the end of the first year, or your game will end…although that option wouldn’t be so bad considering what they give you to work with.)

These are the lady-killers of Forget Me Not Valley.

Gustafa

He’s a hippie. Wears a pimp hat with a feather in it and loafs about playing the guitar all day. Lives in a hut by himself, where he listens to Enya and most likely smokes marijuana.

Defining Quote: “Peace, sister.”

Marlin

As you can see, when he gets older, he pursues his lifelong dream of becoming a late-night talk show host. Lives with his sister and sells you seeds. The instruction booklet says, “He may seems gruff and cold, but he is really just shy.” That’s just a cover-up for him being an emo slob that lives with his sister and sells people seeds. He’s constantly bitching about the weather.

Defining Quote: “I hate this weather!”

Rock

Run. Run as fast as you can. Travel under the cover of darkness and sleep by day, but for God’s sake, RUN! His sole mission in life is to impregnate every female in Forget Me Not Valley and he has his eyes set on you!!! You’ll know him when you see him; he dyed his hair blonde to pick up chicks. He chases after underage girls and constantly talks about seeing them in bikinis. A serial rapist.

Defining Quote: “YOU GONNA GET RAPED.”

After much debate and deliberation, I decided to go for Gustafa, seeing as how he’s the lesser of three evils. I didn’t have to flash my breasts at him; he was easily won over with flowers……a real ladies man.

So, after a while, I gave him the blue feather (an engagement gift). After that I stopped playing. Yes, you read that right. I stopped playing. Why? I noticed that this was starting to affect my personal life. I started seeing things from a woman’s perspective. I started looking at myself in the mirror more. Things like that. It was getting out of hand. And I couldn’t get the horrid image of living with Gustafa out of my head. I even dreamt once of the whole scenario…being alone with him with his horrible, hippie penis moving ever closer to me….I awoke with a scream. A look of pure terror and astonishment on my face. That’s when I knew it had to end.

Thank you, Kristen, for enlightening me on what it’s like to be a woman. The labors and hardships have taught me a valuable lesson. That being, if you are a woman who has moved to a strange, new location and you are not married within a year, a rapist will appear at your doorstep and ask to move in with you. If you refuse, you will be sent home.

Thanks for the mammaries….er…..memories.

(Since this is a review on an expansion of an already reviewed game where there are no graphical changes, there will be no score. Just a mentally scarring story.)