Pros: More, more, more, more of everything. Taking concepts and elements, and entire characters from Harvest Moon 64, and then throwing them all together, mixing them into something somewhat recognizable but also new...

This is the first Harvest Moon game to not release on a Nintendo console, instead releasing on the Playstation, where it found a ton of success. and there's a ton in this game too. A hefty amount more vegetables to grow, more in-depth relationships with the villagers in the new village of Mineral Town, you can make mayonnaise and cheese with eggs and milk, and yarn out of wool from sheep! You can even make meals and dishes in the kitchen with recipes that you've collected, which is a big first for the series too! You can also hire the Harvest Sprites as workers on your farm, give them flour and they'll scurry about the farm and you can set chores for them, it's fun! Also, the villagers walk around the town on a schedule, you can actually see them go about their day doing different tasks in different locations, actively. Some pretty neat additions to the series here!

Cons: UGH, I did not care for how they straight up copy pasted characters from Harvest Moon 64 and brought them into this brand new town, mixing up their family trees, changing their personalities and sometimes even their names... It just all felt... disrespectful, especially considering how very intentional the Harvest Moon 64 characters were designed based on their family lineage from Harvest Moon SNES... it just, man, it all felt wrong here. It really is the sour patch for me with this game, which is otherwise pretty decent, despite some hiccups here and there like loading times, reverting back to four directions of movement after Harvest Moon 64 introduced eight (and this actually makes it even worse for four directions in an isometric viewpoint, like, when I press up on the controller, does my character move up-left or up-right? It's that sort of annoyance), and, here's a big nitpick for me, but the sound effects made when your character walks, it's a constant suction cup popping sound, and I find it rather infuriating, heh... Oh, and also, unlike HM SNES and HM 64, this game has a ton of menus and charts and such, just totally gamifying things and taking the series into a less simplified direction that I was not a fan of.

What it means to me: This game is the first Playstation game I ever purchased, as the other Playstation games I had played belonged to my older step brothers... But Harvest Moon was the series near and dear to me and my younger brother, so we just had to get this one, check it out. And so we did... and, I'm sorry, we just couldn't get into it as much as we did HM SNES and HM64, hell, even the Game Boy games were more charming and inviting for us. I will say though, this game did later receive a remake for the GBA that did improve some things a bit, and even later got another remake on Switch (I still need to play that one...). So, it did get better anyhow.

This one's been on my backlog since birth lmao

Let me just start by saying that I absolutely adore the way this game looks. The cute, play-doh-esque character models contrasting with the semi-realistic environment textures is a timeless look, like an adorable low poly diorama you could replicate in real life.

The PS1 was my first console, and Back to Nature just happened to be one of the games my brother had lying around for it. Picked it up when I was like, 7 years old, messed around for a bit, had a chicken die because I didn't know I needed to feed it myself, and then put it back down. It's a game I would continuously revisit through the years, getting farther each time, but never finishing it. Not because it's bad, mind you! I just didn't have what it takes to appreciate a farming/life sim like this before, I think. Close to 20 years later, and the deed is finally done. I had a lot of fun with it! Maybe a bit too much in fact, to the point where there was nothing left to do for the entirety of the game's third year.

Back to Nature has you taking over your late grandpa's farm, with the town's mayor warning you that if you don't take good care of the farm and neglect your neighborly duties, you'll be kicked out in three years. Off you go then! Milk that cow! Pick up those eggs! Chop that tree! Give that sheep a dope fade! Drown Elli in flowers and get married in a year! Sell 200 fish and become the 𝐹𝐼𝑆𝐻𝐸𝑅 𝐾𝐼𝑁𝐺! Faint after brushing your horse! Beg the harvest sprites to help you with the cattle because oh god there's so many of them help,

There's tons of things to keep you busy! But maybe I was a bit too efficient in my approach?
By the end of Year 2, I had all Power Berries, all fishing prints, all recipes done(except for the Harvest Sprite one, which I got shortly on the next Spring), maxed out my coop and barn slots, just had my baby, max affection with nearly all my animals, shipped every item, and viewed almost all random events.

But there isn't any way to speed up the three year evaluation period. Sure, you can go straight to bed after waking up, but your animals will most certainly die/lose affection for you before you're halfway through the year-- hell, halfway through the season even. So for an entire year, there was... Nothing to do. Sure, I had a few animals under 10 hearts, but that's it. I even had over 100k burning a hole in my pocket with nothing to spend it on. There weren't even a lot of random events left to see; just like, two or three, and one of them was locked until year 4.

This ultimately made going through that last year a big slog. Yeah, I could come up with arbitrary goals like "Ship 999 of every crop" or something, but that doesn't really change anything, does it? Just makes a number go up in your status screen, and it doesn't even affect your completion %. If there were more things to do, something that I assume the GBA remake took care of, then BTN would be an easy 5* for me. As it stands though, things slow down a bit too drastically before the evaluation, completely overcooking the anticipation for the credits/ending sequence.

Still loved it though. Maybe on a revisit I'll just play until the wedding and consider that my personal ending.

Eu amo esse jogo, como um simples jogo de fazenda te faz cair um cisco no seu olho.

A simplicidade disso é algo único demais