I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I'd try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there's a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon's later entries since there's more than one.

Harvest Moon to me is a bit hard to revisit. Having to get used to only carrying two tools at the same time, your farm doesn't seem as big, you don't have a way to know that you're tired as readily, you just have to watch for the signs and the village you visit doesn't seem as characteristic. It's a basic farming sim, it has to start somewhere.

But Stardew Valley does so many things that it is easier to revisit.

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[–] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I would love to experience X-COM UFO Defense, but the only X-COMs I've played to any extent are the two "modern" Firaxis games. Going back to the originals is a real effort, especially without having the manual to hand.

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

OpenXcom is a fantastic reimplementation of the original, and has some even more fantastic mods. I agree if you've never played it before and aren't too familiar with old school "Nintendo-hard" games, it can be extremely challenging even on the lowest difficulty. Fun fact, the original had a broken difficulty selection and reset to the "easiest" difficulty after reloading any save game, so most people never truly experienced a full run at any difficulty above "easiest", so that's just naturally perceived as the way the game was meant to be balanced. Don't be ashamed of playing on the easiest difficulty or using "cheat" mods if that's what makes it playable for you. There's nobody to judge you but yourself and what matters is that you're having fun. And it is a ridiculously fun and replayable game, to me at least.

[–] Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OG XCOM has a really rough learning curve for sure. It is easy to understand the fundamentals of but it takes a lot longer to get it well enough to really enjoy. Once you do learn it I feel like it is different enough from new XCOM that you can enjoy both. I love new and old xcoms a ton.

[–] MintyAnt@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Old XCOM also likes to bend you over and fuck you over a lot. And that's the way we liked it!

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Ah yes. Land Skyranger, open door, sectoid throws grenade into Skyranger. Evac with one survivor. Good times.

[–] Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I will say that new XCOM can be good at that too. It really is the most important part and I'm glad they didn't leave it out of the remake!

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

If the originals are too difficult to sink your teeth it, you can start with Xenonauts.