YMMV / Harvest Moon: A New Beginning

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Allen. Most of the bachelors and bachelorettes of this game sort of get this to some degree, but not as much as him. He's a total Jerkass, but some players still love him and see him as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Some think that he gets a lot sweeter after marrying him.
  • Rod is either too cheerful and young or completely awesome.
  • Neil might be awesome and adorable or just a tempting option because he's the first guy available. Him not changing his Tsundere personality doesn't help this problem, even if no one actually changes a bunch after marriage.
  • Soseki is either a loveable teaser that is fun to romance or an annoying "old fart".
  • How the fans took Michelle was a bit weird. Some hate how she's actually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and you can only find that out as a guy at the last heart event. Some love her for that very reason, since it makes her different from all the more happy and slightly straightforward characters.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Two good examples are two people collapsing in two separate cutscenes. At the very beginning of the game, Dunhill faints right in front of you and you can't do anything other than help him out. The next example has Sandra, who does the exact same thing, except Dunhill rushes to you to get your help and it's now Summer 1 of your 2nd year. At least Sandra has a reason for fainting since she doesn't go outside much during the day. Dunhill, however...
• Broken Base:
  • How the time was handled in this game was not always perceived the same way as others. Even after the notorious first season, some people didn't like how seriously fast it got afterwards. A minute goes by for every real second in life. Not only that, but it seems as if everything takes up time. You could spend an hour just trying to give out gifts to a few villagers. Time also passes indoors, which doesn't help.
  • This game in general seems to be getting this treatment from fans, especially since Story of Seasons (2014) was a Surprisingly Improved Sequel that took every Scrappy Mechanic from this game and fixed the problems and improved the mechanics.
• Earn Your Fun: Due to the Slow-Paced Beginning, you have to do quite a bit of work before you can get to the fun stuff.
• Fridge Brilliance: Both Amir and Yuri's hearts are invisible unless you start dating them. It makes sense for Amir to have an invisible heart, since he's a special bachelor in Grand Bazaar, but why is Yuri's heart invisible? Because she's a very quiet, timid person—in other words, she doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve!
• Game-Breaker: Online, due to the generosity of other players. Even if you're just playing with random people, you're likely to get silkie eggs and high quality seeds for crops that otherwise won't show up for a while.
• Genius Bonus: One of the bachelors is a writer and his original name was Sengoku. Localization company Natsume renamed him to Soseki. Soseki Natsume was the pen name of one of the most influential writers in the history of Japanese literature.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The title, A New Beginning seems ironic since it was the last Bokujō Monogatari game released by Natsume before Marvelous transferred translation to their in house translator XSEED Games — leaving Natsume with the name Harvest Moon that they now use for their own series of games.
• The Scrappy:
  • Allen isn't always the most favored bachelor...
  • Alice isn't loved either. She's the one who comes up with the bright idea to hide the Music Sheets. You could've unlocked the Mines earlier on if it hadn't been for her.
  • Michelle. Unfortunately most people do not even begin seeing her true nature as The Scrappy until they viewed enough of her heart events to learn that she actually is just using the player as means to getting expensive gifts.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The unlocking of Crops being either action-based or time-based. The most annoying, by far, is the fact that Yam Seeds are not sold until Fall Year 2 and shipping 30 Yams is necessary to complete Town Restoration Plan #4 which can sometimes be unlocked during Fall Year 1 and you have to pretty much wait for a whole game year to finally fulfill that condition.
  • The same for animal unlocks. Suffolk Sheep and Brown Alpacas aren't available until Year 3 (spring and summer, respectively) unless you have three births from the corresponding previous animal (which means a little over 20 days of it not producing anything while pregnant) despite the items they produce being needed to craft a lot of useful items you'll get the plans for far earlier, like the Greenhouse, Speedy Brush, and a whole host of outfits.
  • The time isn't loved by many. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have so much to do, with even the "Speedy" versions of the tools taking a few minutes to use per animal. If someone waits to venture out into town until after doing all of their farm chores, they could be waiting until noon or later. There's also the Random Events, which take up a chunk of your day if triggered. They are pathetic, poorly handled, and are all-in-all a waste of time.
  • The dreadfully long tutorial that takes up one in game month. This restricts the player from playing ahead, and makes the first month of the game to be extremely slow and boring.
  • Eating. Everyone in town eats three meals a day. Good for them. Only problem? For the most part, they all eat at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME; they also take two hours to finish eating each meal. You cannot give them gifts while they eat. On the plus side, at least if a shop is open, the shopkeeper won't take a lunch break - you can still do business with them.
  • The herding cutscenes, and the plaza shop cutscenes. At 7 AM each day, if you have dogs and/or cats set to herd your livestock out and back in, you'll get an unskippable cutscene EACH TIME if you're on the farm (thankfully, being inside your house doesn't trigger it). And twice a day, if you're in the main part of town around 10 AM and 6 PM, you'll be treated to unskippable cutscenes of the folks who run shops in the plaza coming in from the riverside, setting up their shops, and calling in customers. Then you'll get cutscenes of them CLOSING up their shops, saying their goodbyes, and exiting through the riverside area. The only way to avoid these cutscenes is to either be inside someone's house at just the right time (because the scenes trigger up to 10 minutes past the hour - so, if you go into town at 10:11 AM, you're safe), or to be somewhere else. Inconvenient and annoying. Thankfully, Story of Seasons allows you the option to skip the vendor stall cutscenes.
  • Sandra's Stall. While ostensibly a way for you to get rare items via trading and a rare thing to do in the evenings in the game, many of her requirements for blueprints (aka the thing Rebecca usually sells) are cooked dishes that you have to randomly discover the recipe for. She also has an annoying cutscene for setting up the stall.
  • Paddy crops. One seed makes one crop instead of four, putting one crop in the seed maker only nets one seed, and the crops to not produce multiple times. This makes it a real pain if a paddy crop of a certain star rank is needed as it will take a very long time to make it and no extra seeds can be saved to do it again.
  • Breaking up with someone not only requires dropping their heart level, but not interacting with them for a whole month. Festivals count as interaction, so you have to skip a month of festivals if you want a different boyfriend/girlfriend.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first season is so unbearably slow that you're likely to go to bed as early as 2 p.m. The later seasons and onwards are usually better received by most, if not all players.
• That One Level:
  • The Ancient Ruins, which are the most expensive location to travel to. No matter what you do, you'll have the least time to spend there of all the travel spots: it takes the longest to reach them (5 hours) and you leave them the earliest (at 8 PM). They also contain a massive number of important and rare items, such as certain colors of the Down you'll need to make clothes (only available as trades from Sandra otherwise, and they're not cheap), a large number of the Fragments you use to make useful items, and the Ancient Figurines you'll need if you want the Witch Princess to live in your town.
  • The task in Town Restoration Plan 4 that requires you to unlock the Foliage Festival which requires you to ship yams. Because yams don't unlock until Fall Year 2, doing so is a Fake Longevity attempt that causes those unprepared and unwilling to play online to get Yam seeds early to be delayed a whole game year.