Japan and English (DS and 3DS) cover.
Harvest Moon: The Tale Of Two Towns (牧場物語 ふたごの村
Bokujō Monogatari: Futago no Mura, lit. "Farm Story: Twin Villages") is a good games if you want to choose villages! First released in Japan on 8 July 2010 (previously February 25). The happy news comes to America where this game will released on 1 November 2011 on 3DS and 20 September 2011 on NDS!
Now comes to the story. Bluebell and Konohana villages were once the friendliest of neighbors. Then a huge dispute erupted between them over food! Both towns were certain that their cooking was the best in the world. This feud went on for a while until things got so bad that the tunnel connecting the two villages was closed off by Harvest Goddess! This feud has transformed these happy neighbors into bitter rivals.
To avoid hitting the fox, the protagonist (again, you can choose as either male or female) accidentally falls down from the horse and collapsed, the mayor
Rutger (ルドガー Rudogā; Rudger in Japan; Bluebell) and
Ina (イルサ Irusa; Ilsa in Japan; Konohana) wake him/her up. They welcome him/her to their village, but they start arguing, so you (player) choose which village to live in, Eastern-styled Konohana with its abundant fields of crops, or the animal-loving, European-styled Bluebell. Players will pick a home, build a thriving farm, and compete in a huge variety of festivals. If they develop their skills enough, and they might even find a way to bring these two towns together once again!
Luckily, there are more changes. Here are some:
First of all, crops. Konohana the “farming” village, so if you like farming choose this instead. Once I have bought the game, I will choose this village because I like farming.
Anyway, the new crops like
Watermelon,
Daikon and
Bok Choy are appeared here. Yay for you, the crops still grow even in winter! You can till a hoe in a row or in column, as I see in a screenshot. By pressing and holding A button and the direction when you’re tilling your field, you can plant your crops in a row instead of on individual spots called
Irrigation Trenches. The more interesting thing, when you water one plant in the row, you water all of them as far as the water in your can will allow. This saves a
lot of time and effort when watering. In the same way if you stick a bottle of fertilizer into your field, it affects all the crops in the row instead of just those in the immediate squares. The more thing, you can grow flowers again (but not wild mountain flowers)!
Sunflower,
Rose,
Carnation, and other flowers all in here!
Next is Animal. Bluebell is the “ranching” village, if you dislikes farming and likes ranching, choose this instead. There are new animals here, Alpaca and Owl. Unfortunately, Alpaca's has a maximum lifespan of 2 years. For the Owl, you can call it outside the village and it will bring you home. Bluebell is kinda boring or so.
Here are some little guides for all animals from ranchstory.co.uk (with some changes):
Animals (can be raised)
Cows: Profitable animals. As of previous Harvest Moon games, cows provide milk as always.
Sheep: Profitable animals. Sheep do what they have done, provide the wool. As of now, there are three types: pink, white, and black.
Alpaca: Profitable animals. New member to the HM family, no one knows what these cute creatures do yet. There are two types of them, white and brown. Alpacas seem to give you high quality wool.
From the Wild Animal (you can feed them to become friends)
Bears: You can spot them at the mountain, but at first it will attack you!
Boar: Same as bears, it also attacks you.
Monkey: Seems it likes Bananas.
Panda: You can spot them at the mountain between 9pm to 5am.
Fox: There's a place in the mountains where these little yellow animals inhibit.
There also more,
Duck,
Mouse,
Rabbit,
Racoon,
Sparrow, and
Weasel.
Pets (can be raised in your farm)
Cat: Like Grand Bazaar, it will raise chicken (I mean, took the chicken into outside the barn).
Dog: Like Grand Bazaar, but there are 2 types. There are
Small Dog (raise cows) and
Big Dog (raise sheeps and alpacas)
Horses: Profitable animals. Horses can pull carts that contain goods.
Fish: Domestic animal. When you catch fish, you can put them in your pond and start feeding them. Slowly they will get bigger and becomes high quality.
Bees: Profitable animals. Also a new animal, they give honey once a week except Winter.
Owl: Profitable animals. An adorable owl, another new member, they allow transportation between villages. Apparently they can sit on your head.
For the non-domestic animals, usually you can saw them in the Mountain. You can use the mushroom to jump into new heights, find wild items, fishing (bare hand or with rod), and more! You can also find bugs in here.
Mining is back! But with some changes, you can enter the mine after you complete Eileen's quest (in Bluebell village). You are in dark area when you come to the stairs. Go to some area and 'press' to get the ore. Watch out to the water hole that sprinkles a water or you will pulled out from the mine and lost some stamina!
To do mining, you must do this difficult way, so pay attention! (thanks to Owen by his/her guide in Harvest Moon Forum, with changes!)
You have to 1st upgrade one of
the farms to 100% by getting every expansion possible. Then Eileen will post a
request at the beginning of the next season to open the mine, or she might also
offer to build a hotspring. But keep in mind, you have to be living on the
fully upgraded farm at the change of the season for the request to appear. If
you get a farm to 100% then move to the other one at the end of the season and
it isnt at 100%, then you won't get the request.
But until then, the only way to get different
gems, minerals and ores is by finding them, inside the tunnel or
in the mountains, usually in the cracks in the walls behind the waterfall on
the Konohana side and in the crack on the lower Bluebell area.
The new here is request like Rune Factory. A lot of requests are random, a villager will ask you for a random item that can be found during that season, and also possibly ask you to deliver it to a random person, pretty boring. You can find out the item, and the person who you're supposed to deliver it to, by pressing Y while selecting that request on the requests screen. But it's good after I play it, when I saw the shelves on the Konohana Town Hall (I live in Konohana) there are 5 ranks on the request,
D,
C,
B,
A, and
S. I don't know what the color of A and S, but be careful, the higher the rank, the more difficult the request, but you will get rare items!
Extra: (The item will be in the body of the message, the person will be at the top. It will also show a cow if the person lives in Bluebell, or a turnip if the person lives in Konohana).
The next section is festival. There are many more festival, some festival is the one village-only. There are:
Cherry Blossom Viewing,
Children's Day,
Critter Contest,
Angling Contest,
Star Gazing Festival,
Moon Viewing Festival, and
Snow Festival (*
Blue is Bluebell only and
Red is Konohana only). ALMOST all seasons have Cooking Festival! First is
Salad category, next is
Soup category, then
Main Dishes category, and finally
Desert category! OMG! But, if you don't have high quality dishes to participate, you can also cheer them if you want (I ever choose to cheer Team Konohana and won, I also get the reward too). For my record, I participate Winter Cooking Festival at Main Dish in Year 2, I brought Omelet Rice and my team wons, and I get
Shrine Cart! So depending your year, win or lose, you can get Seeds, Wine, and Carts (if you can, can you also tell me another reward beside these?).
About Cooking Festival, let's see... In your Spring of the 1st Year, depending on village you are living in, different recipe. Thanks to Youtube video contains lives in Bluebell (at that Year I live in Konohana) so I can write this (incomplete yet, if you have information about this, comment me):
Salad: Caprese Salad (Bluebell), Cucumber Namul (Konohana)
Soup: Herb Soup (Konohana)
Main Dish: Spaghetti (Konohana)
Dessert: Pudding (Konohana)
Then, the village. As I say,
Bluebell is the “ranching” village and
Konohana the “farming” village, but you can start keeping cows and chickens in Konohana right away, and you can grow crops in Bluebell too, but more cons. For example, when you enter Bluebell, you can buy seeds, but only flower seeds in that town. So, to get crop and tree seeds and also green fertilizer, you should travel on the mountain (or cross the tunnel if the 3 tunnel expansion request was complete) to get them. Same as Konohana, if you want raising animals in Konohana you should travel all away to Bluebell to get some (except pets in Kana Animals, though). Even better, you can up and move to the other village between the 23rd and the 30th of every season if you want.
The brand new in this game are clothes. You will start as village clothes (depending the village you choose). Its unknown how to get this, either from request from Nori (from Konohana village) or Oracle (who want you to be a guinea pig). But, you need some wool or alpaca wool and money in order to get it.
The bachelor and bachelorettes are both reappears. As mentioned, you can play either as a male or female. The only difference is the person will you married later.
The mentioned bachelors are:
Ash (アーシュ
Āshu) who is responsible for take care of animals from animal shop,
Cam (カミル
Kamiru; Kamil in Japan) who sells flowers,
Dirk (ディルカ
Diruka; from Grand Bazaar) who takes his job as a postman,
Hiro (チヒロ
Chihiro; Chihiro in Japan) who is Ayame's apprentice doctor,
Kana (キリク
Kiriku; Kiriku in Japan) who opens a pet shop, and
Mikhail (ミハイル
Mihairu; Michael in Japan; special bachelor). While the bachelorettes are:
Alisa (アリエラ
Ariera; from Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands) who is the priestess,
Georgia (ラズベリー
Razuberī; Raspberry in Japan),
Laney (リア
Ria; Lia in Japan) who is Howard's father,
Nori (ナナ
Nana; Nana in Japan) who can give you clothes if you complete her request,
Oracle (賢者さま
Kenja-sama; Sage in Japan; special bachelorette) who works on alchemy a lot and
Reina (リコリス
Rikorisu, Licorice in Japan) who studies plants.
This game has a very awesome feature, if you a beginner or ever played Harvest Moon, this game is very recommended.
Thank you for fogu.com with some help with me! More coming soon!
More help:
http://wiki.gamepit.jp/futago/index.php (That's japanese website, but you can use Google Translate to help).
Fogu:
http://fogu.com/hm10/
I also found this site:
http://udccf.org/hm10/
Anyway, I also play the game on my DSi and with R4 3DS and I chose Konohana (my character is girl and named
Himawa, I have successfully reconicled two towns again and I focus to expanding my Konohana farm to 100% to unlock another construction request by Eileen).
Picture Source:
http://www.harvestmoonwelt.de/pages/main.php?section=events
http://www.hmmeadow.net/
http://ds.ign.com/