Game: Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos
Genre: Simulation, Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam (Windows))
Developer | Publisher: Natsume Inc.
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $49.99 | UK £44.99 | EU € 49,99
Release Date: September 26th (US) October 6th (EU) 2023
Review code used, with many thanks to Clever Communications
As you may already know, this Harvest Moon game stems from a fairly recent series of games. It started in 2014 when Natsume Inc., which held the rights to the name Harvest Moon, decided to make their own farming simulation games under that name. Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos is already the seventh game in this series that started with The Lost Valley on the Nintendo 3DS.
Why did I write this intro? Because it’s important to know that you have a very different game before you than the Story of Seasons games. For one, it’s clearly visible in the graphics, and the mechanics and the ways to proceed are different. Let’s take a look at how it handles. And if you’ve already bought the game, don’t forget we have a guide up!
Helping Out The Harvest Goddess
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos starts with the Harvest Goddess surrounded by her four Sprites facing the big volcanic eruption. Each of the sprites locks up an area to help the people stay safe from this catastrophe. The goddess herself sends a note in a bottle.
10 years later, you wake up on a farm in Lenctenbury, where Doc Jr. tells you to learn the ropes on how to farm. During a quest to catch a runaway chicken, you find the bottle, and together with Doc Jr., you read the note. You two decide to investigate the wall surrounding Lenctenbury. When you get close, you hear a voice, which gives Doc Jr. an idea for an invention. He is going to make a Wall Whacker to breach the wall and open up the world. With your help, he succeeds, and now Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos takes off.
From there on, it’s up to you to take care of a farm and unlock more and more areas that have been sealed shut. Doc Jr. is the one who comes up with ideas and inventions to make your life easier. After you wake up the Harvest Goddess she helps you with a touch of magic as well.
All The Elements of Farming Simulation
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos has all the elements you would expect for a farming simulation game. There’s farming, taking care of farm animals, fishing, mining, cooking, crafting and foraging. You can socialize and find yourself a spouse, too. Natsume took pains to go about all these activities in a slightly different way from the normal farming gameplay. I like that; they didn’t just copy-paste. Let me clarify.
For farming, you need seeds. But you can’t buy these in the stores. Instead, you will find little red wisps everywhere around you. When you talk to them, you get a bag of seeds. Find a purple wisp, and you might get more than one. This adds to the sense of exploration. Finding a new area means you never know what kind of seeds you will find. Because wow, does this game stretch it when it comes to variety? There are onions, sure, but there are also red onions. And use fertilizer when you sow them, and other varieties might even pop up. The downside is that you will have trouble sowing nice rows or fields of the same crops as you often don’t have more than a couple in your bag.
You can buy the standard animals like chickens and cows. But you can also tame creatures that you find while exploring. It does take a lot of patience, but there are literally all sorts. Think bunnies, horses and foxes, but also a bear and a tiger! I’m unsure how that last addition will work when it comes to eating, as I haven’t tamed it yet.
When mining, you will see stone and some ores, but most ores are found by dousing. It’ll show circles on the ground, and you will have to dig there. Find the ladder to the next floor, or find ores. But beware, rocks might be falling on your head, taking away your stamina.
The world is a huge place, so how can you go about being at several places in a day? You can fast-travel to waypoints, but you can also decide to pack up and move the entire farm to a new location with Doc Jr.’s invention, the Expando Farm. Find a place that mainly has a summer climate. Move the farm there and get busy with summery crops.
All of those things are very different from the standard fare, and it makes Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos more fun.
Unbalanced At First
The game isn’t without its issues, however. I feel the first part of the game is a bit unbalanced. You don’t have a lot of stamina and replenishing it during the day can be done by eating meals. But meals cost so much, eating up your meagre earnings. Like me, you will probably resort to eating things you find or crops you grew. But items like apples, mushrooms and your crops only give half a heart, and you have to have quite some in stock to replenish the five hearts you start with.
This was a problem when finding Silver for the quest to build a barn. And that quest is the one the game hinges on. After finishing that one, you get the Expando Farm and a means to travel much faster, opening up the world. I managed it eventually in the mine, but it took me many days to do so.
The main reason was that there just aren’t enough hours in a day and night cycle to reach a floor around floor 20, where the silver is. Eventually, I managed by only dousing until I found the next ladder, stocking up on food and keeping going even when my character was sleeping where she stood.
However, the mine floors change every time you enter, so you might have more luck than I had and find silver much earlier!
Once It Takes Off, It Flies
If you stick to it, the game really takes off after the Barn quest. Suddenly, the world is a huge place with a ton of crops, flowers, recipes, fish, ores and more to find. You will get many quests from townspeople, all giving either a reward in seeds, dishes, crops and more. The main goal, aside from opening up all the areas, is to get the cultural level of every village up. You can do that by interacting with the villagers, fulfilling their requests and shipping items.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of influences to take into account. Spring crops grow better in the first town of Lenctenbury, as it’s always spring there. But others do better on the beach in the full sun, and so on. The weather has an influence as well, with bad storms potentially destroying your crops. But don’t worry, Doc Jr. has just the invention for that!
There are a lot of events to take part in and a lot of achievements to strive for. There is so much to do that really, there aren’t enough hours in a day. You will really have to limit yourself to a couple of goals at a time. Otherwise, your little farmer will get super stressed (and you will, too!)
Controls, Graphics and Soundtrack
Graphically, Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos has hugely improved from the last game, One World. The world feels more alive, though I would have liked for it to be more detailed. The camera moves freely, and the way the overworld map works fits a good adventure game. As is standard for these Harvest Moon games, expect big-eyed characters and expressive faces. The animals are cute and cuddly, and the crops look scrumptious and colourful.
The world that you explore is huge. Its parts must be unlocked by finding the little statues of the Harvest Goddess. The towns you discover have a lot of inhabitants, but their dialogue is a bit repetitive. For example, when there’s an event like the horse race, you expect the people of the town to flock to the central square. They don’t; it feels a bit bare because of it. It’s a bit sparse between the villages, but there are things to forage and animals to find, and the vistas you encounter are lovely. The feeling of wanting to look past the next hillside is certainly there, encouraging the exploration part of the game.
There is a different background tune for every area. The controls work fine. I like how you don’t have to think about which tool to use; the game determines that itself. There’s even a search function on the map, allowing you to search for wisps with, for example, tulip seeds. And you can place a marker on the map so you don’t lose sight of your goal. The Winds of Anthos has really made steps when it comes to quality of life.
Conclusion: It Grew On me
At first, being stuck in the first hours of The Winds of Anthos because I had trouble finding silver, I was a bit disappointed. However, the game took off after solving that, giving me so much to do that I didn’t have enough hours in the gaming day. The quality of life shortcuts, the searching mechanism and setting markers really add to the fun of gaming.
All the elements of a farming simulation are there, but the game doesn’t go about it in the traditional way. Basic things like finding seeds to sow and Doc Jr.’s inventions make this a farming game that is different from the others.
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos has made a big leap since their last game, One World. And if you play past a slightly unbalanced start of the game, you will find many, many hours of enjoyable farming and exploring in an innovative way.
Final Verdict: I Like It A Lot
Note: if you are thinking of picking up Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos you can find the physical version at Amazon.