Why is this the only Harvest Moon where your neighbors and fellow villagers drop by the farm regularly to say hello or pass along a gift? An odd little quirk, but its enough to build a sense of community, a small but important way to strengthen and commodify your ties with the town. Harvest Moon 64 succeeds in so many ways, often through the smallest of things, weird foibles and idiosyncrasies that were senselessly dropped in future sequels. Harvest Moon 64 renders each passing moment in the bucolic town as an urgent speed mission, which forms a funny kind of juxtaposition between the relaxed rural pace of village life and the hectic tasks of farm work. The farm space you receive in the beginning is way too small, and in the originals you had this huge field in the back of your house, and you really needed that to make money and grow crops. Weaker iterations of Harvest Moon falter most by allowing days to be nearly endless, granting so much freedom in activity that the daunting burden of the game eventually collapses upon itself and tasks that were once pleasant and ordered become grueling and unsatisfying. In the original harvest moon cute 3ds game it was repetitive and fun, but tale of two towns its repetitive and not fun.
Heres the game where the specific mechanics of the series are perfected, the only Harvest Moon smart enough to force each day to last a flawlessly balanced amount of time: too short to wander about aimlessly, only barely long enough to complete your daily tasks, so that by midnight you are racing full speed to reach the bar before closing time.