Before starting the review this reviewer would like to apologize in advance for what may be an undeservedly negative stance towards the Harvest Moon series. It’s just that years ago when I first heard the game’s title I imagined a gore-fest of a game, where every month (on the full moon) creatures harvested human lives all over the place. Imagine my disappointment when I figured out that the Harvest Moon series actually tackles with the other kind of harvesting, namely vegetable harvesting.  With that out of the way, let the review begin!

Farming, life and social interaction simulation adventure game with light RPG elements

Usually the first thing a review mentions is the genre the game belongs to. Unless it’s absolutely clear the game is a basketball simulation or racing game, we reviewers like to slap genre tags onto games like there is no tomorrow. Innocent Life does a good job of making our life miserable though. Still, I’m not one to give up easily, so here is the genre tag I’ve come up with for Innocent Life: farming, life and social interaction simulation adventure game with light RPG elements. Now that the genre has been defined, let’s see what made me come up with such a painstakingly long tag.

1. Gardening: Every Harvest Moon title focuses on gardening. Regardless of the back story of the individual game, the majority of the playing time will be spent taking care of your garden with hoe in one hand and a watering can in the other. As in real life managing a garden (which grows bigger and bigger) is no trivial thing and it requires constant attention. Shrubs need to be removed, the ground needs to be prepared and seeds have to be planted. And while these are mostly weekly tasks (at least in the beginning), you have to water your plants daily, at least if you want them to grow big and strong. Since your profit is directly influenced by the quality of your home-grown vegetables you’ll spend your every waking moment (which is ironically only a few minutes per day in the beginning) tending your garden, watering every plant until the day you can finally harvest it.
2. Life simulation: If life was as simple as it is in Innocent Life, there would probably be wars all over the place (people would start attacking each other out of pure boredom). Watching TV, shopping and cooking are pretty much everything you can do, outside of following the story and gardening. This is a huge step back from the rest of the series and I’m not sure if this was a design decision or if the PSP simply can’t handle marriage, home decoration and other “complex” interactions that the living room brethren can do.
3. Social interaction simulation: The protagonist of the game is an android.  A very human android at that. So it’s not surprising that one of the goals in the game is to blend in with the rest of the population of the fantasy island the game takes place on. Unfortunately there is hardly any wiggle room available here, as most of the interaction is scripted in advance, so you’ll only get generic comebacks outside of the story.
4. Adventure game: Other than farming this is the most important aspect of the game. Finding/earning rare seeds for your garden is pretty much the main goal here. You can earn other items that you’ll find helpful as well. Exploration is key here and at times playing Innocent Life resembles playing an old school adventure game, where you have to figure out the next step in a line of puzzles. Mind you, your noodle won’t get overworked, but it will stir a bit here and there.
5. RPG elements: What would a “Japanese” game be without some kind of leveling up? True to the origins, Innocent Life features statistics such as “love” and “challenge”. Not the most classic stats, I agree. You won’t be leveling up all the time either. For the most part leveling up is synched with storyline, so you’ll be seeing the stats page on Sundays when most of the plot progression happens. To be frank I haven’t figured out yet if the stat increases are linear or if player actions actually influence what attributes get raised.

I hope I managed to explain the reasoning behind my genre tag. Now that that’s settled, let’s look at how the game actually plays. As mentioned, the player is put into the shoes (which vary according to season!) of a little android boy named Life (at least by default). If you ever played a SNES or Gameboy Japanese RPG you’ll be immediately familiar with the camera and controls. The camera is positioned above Life, allowing you to see a few dozen feet in each direction. Because the viewpoint is slightly tilted you can see roughly a square area, even though the PSP screen has a 19:9 ratio.

So yes, gardening. It sure doesn’t sound like the most thrilling thing so the authors decided to make the story depict it as humanity’s only hope. Innocent hope takes place in the not so distant future where machines do pretty much everything. Because of that the nature spirits aren’t exactly happy and it’s only a matter of time before they decide to unleash their wrath on the inhabitants of the island the game takes place on. Life being an android might not sound like the most obvious candidate for humanity’s savior, but the story does a fairly good job of mixing his humanification with his love for the land. It’s cliché, make no mistake, but deep down underneath it all it raises some pretty deep questions.

The sound is ... Japanese

Although the game has been simplified in many areas, graphics are not one of them. Harvest Moon games might look better on the GameCube, but comparing Innocent Life to the PS2 offering it looks surprisingly good. It is not the best looking game on the PSP by far, but except when compared to a few blockbuster games it does look great. The little anime influenced folk aren’t all that detailed and most of the textures could use some additional work, that much is clear from the beginning. But the environments are full of life and are quite big considering the amount of trees, buildings and other landmarks found in them.

The sound is… Japanese. As there are no voiceovers in the game this might sound odd at first. The few sparse sound effects just scream Final Fantasy and the music could not be more jRPG like. It’s hard to describe this to somebody who is not familiar with jRPGs and I could write pages upon pages without coming any closer to making you understand what I mean. So I’ll just say that the tunes are catchy, energetic and fit well into the game, but they do tend to repeat themselves a bit too much.

Conclusion

As I told you at the start of this review, I resent Harvest Moon for being a farming RPG and not an action gore-fest. And for the life of me I can’t get over just how stupid the idea for this game really is. I do have to admit that I’ve been playing it in short bursts for well over a week now and I still enjoy pulling that potato out of the ground after a week of watering and taking care of it. I might be biased here as I am a huge RPG lover, not to mention that underneath my rough medieval knight exterior hides a persona which has a soft spot for Japanese games. Innocent Life is only enjoyable when played in short bursts, but other than that it is a nice enough game considering the sharpest object found in the game is probably a garden hoe.

 

Gameplay	15/20	Gardening, gardening, exploration, gardening, watching TV, gardening, story progression, gardening, gardening, etc.
Graphics	17/20	Great looks for a portable game and the artwork is as anime as it gets. There are no loading times, which is a great boon for a game of this kind.
Sound	15/20	The lack of voiceovers isn’t really surprising for a portable game, but the music could have been a tad more diverse.
Value	16/20	Before you’ll finish the story and get every seed available in the game you’ll probably drop dead from exhaustion. Moderation is the key!
Preference	13/20	Harvest Moon games are a niche market. You’ll enjoy it only if you like slow, easy on the mind Japanese games (think Final Fantasy lite with no combat)
Overall	76/100	Under the line Innocent Life is a decent game that will keep you occupied for a while. It could do with more diversity though!

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