I've never played a Harvest Moon game, where should I start?

So I was browsing the eShop and noticed that a few titles were for sale. Namely Harvest Moon A New Beginning and A Tale of Two Towns.
I've been interested in the series, but never played any of them before are any of those two a good start?
Or should I save my money for Story of Seasons instead?

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, I would recommend completely ignoring the Harvest Moon series and going for Rune Factory 4 instead. I just found that there's just so much content in the Rune Factory games that it's kind of completely spoiled the Harvest Moon series for me. Plus, you're able to go right into the action right at the start, unlocking all the tools from the get-go instead of slowly unlocking one tool a week until you finally have all the basic ones half way through Summer. LONG after you needed them.

Although if you WERE to pick up a Harvest Moon game, I'd actually say Harvest Moon DS (or Friends of Mineral Town, your pick). Sure, the graphics look a bit dated, but I found the mechanics in that game compared to the others were just spot-on.

Cirom said:

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, I would recommend completely ignoring the Harvest Moon series and going for Rune Factory 4 instead. I just found that there's just so much content in the Rune Factory games that it's kind of completely spoiled the Harvest Moon series for me. Plus, you're able to go right into the action right at the start, unlocking all the tools from the get-go instead of slowly unlocking one tool a week until you finally have all the basic ones half way through Summer. LONG after you needed them.

Although if you WERE to pick up a Harvest Moon game, I'd actually say Harvest Moon DS (or Friends of Mineral Town, your pick). Sure, the graphics look a bit dated, but I found the mechanics in that game compared to the others were just spot-on.

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I disagree, I feel the opposite about Harvest Moon vs Rune Factory, I strongly dislike Rune Factory, but love Harvest Moon .
Although, I liked the 3DS ones, the DS ones were cool too. I loved the Sunshine Isles for NDS. ;D

Any Harvest Moon is a good one, so whatever one you pick you will probably like it.

Honestly HM doesn't have a story like to follow. So you can start anyone. Of those two I'd probably say ANB just because most people seem to think it has more content than some other DS ones. I'd just look up information and see which you might like better.

I'd actually suggest "Friends of Mineral Town" if you can (might require an emulator if you don't own a Gameboy Advance or can't find it used). So far, it's been my favorite despite the little issues it has (like sometimes being unable to harvest the middle crop in the cases of crops which can be harvested more than once).

For the 3ds...I'd say "A New Beginning" is a good place to start. "Story of Seasons" is good, but it has some gameplay in it which can be slightly complicated to a beginner (like field competitions; even I don't like that incorporation). Though, both still have you acting as a pseudo-mayor and making improvements to the town.
I'll admit that I've never played "Tale of Two Towns" (though I really want to), so I can't say one way or another on that. Many people have enjoyed it, though it's extremely limited depending on which town you choose (livestock or farming).

I'd say HMDS, Harvest Moon 6. Its simple, and quite addictive!

I would recommend Harvest Moon Animal Parade for a beginner~ just because that's the first one I started my Fianc? on, and he's started to really like the series because of it, mainly I love how many pets you can have, it has customization, it's easy and relaxing to play, and the mine is absolutely fun to forge for stuff in. <3

However if you do not have a wii, then I'm guessing you should go with Story of Seasons~ it's really nice Imo and I think the long tutorial at the beginning is a little tedious for seasoned farmers... but the game has a 'seedling' mode to make things easier, plus the long explanation of the game should be able to get you accustomed to it? plus if you are a fan of customization, it has a lot more of it~ but please keep in mind these are just my opinions. <3

I recommend Harvest Moon DS for sure. It's definitely dated compared to more recent Harvest Moons but I had a lot of fun with it. It was my first and it's easy to pick up and play.

I would also suggest Friends of Mineral Town!

It was my first Harvest Moon game and I quite enjoyed it, it was pretty cute and fun. Although you might need an emulator, which shouldn't be too hard to find and I had no trouble playing the game on one.

The very first one I ever played was the original on the SNES aaaaages ago. It's practically a completely different game now, though. I dabbled in the Gamecube versions for maybe a couple hours each, but they never really hooked me at the time and I just didn't care for them.

Last month I picked up Story of Seasons, and it was essentially my first Harvest Moon. At least my first in ridiculously long time, and I have about 60 hours invested into it already.

So I voted for Story of Seasons.

There's no story to follow; rather, what story/plot the games do have are isolated to that game so playing out of order doesn't really matter here. So I just picked up the newest rendition of the game that I had access to. Seedling Mode does make it easy enough to start out with little-to-no knowledge of how the game works, and even I felt like the tutorial was going on for too long. Grandma, pls, I have figure out which button is the 'Action' button, if I can till the field I think I can figure out how to water my crops on my own.

I haven't played it, but I've heard SoS compared to ANB in the sense that it's an "upgraded version of ANB." There are less unnecessary cutscenes in SoS and you don't have to customize the whole town like you did with ANB. I've also heard complaints that you had to work your tail off for everything in ANB, and that SoS lightened that load a lot.
There are the "Conquests" for public fields in SoS, though I've found them to be super easy, and once you win a field once, you just re-rent it when the lease expires and you don't need to do another conquest for it. You could just rule them all forever from very early on, and that's made it far less intimidating than I thought it would be.

Those were just a few of the things I read up before I decided on SoS over ANB.

There is one major con for SoS for me: Serious framerate drops around the paddy fields. ugh. It gave me motion sickness trying to play up until Fall year 1 because I was swimming for ores every single day. The waves of the river + framerate dips made me nauseous.
By the time I got used to it, I opened a new area and didn't need to swim for ores anymore. By now I'm used to the awful framerate and it doesn't phase me. It still looks noticeably choppy from time to time, but I've brushed it off. I dunno if ANB is any different in that regard, though.


Although I do second the thing about Animal Parade. My boyfriend wanted to play Harvest Moon, too, after I sunk 50~ hours into mine and I was still addicted. But he didn't want to play on my 3DS! oh no, he needed a console version! So I bought Animal Parade for the Wii (well, my Wii U) and aside from telling me the music puts him to sleep, lol, he's been really enjoying it. Seems relatively easy to start on that one, too.