Doing chores the game? This is actually the first harvest moon related game I've ever played. I found it to be pretty relaxing, but the repeatition does wear on after awhile. The early game was largely concerned with earning money and gathering materials for house improvements, with forays into the dungeon with whatever stamina remained after my garden was tended to. After upgrading the house and unlocking the crafting stations things really picked up and there were a lot more options of what to focus on, and I really found it a shame that crafting was not available in some form earlier on. Like maybe you could borrow a crafting station in the town with a limited selection of the recipes with the skill capped at a reasonable level. The final two dungeons holding materials for the really restricts crafting progression as well. The other awkward part of the game was having a dungeon that was only unlocked during winter, I was lucky enough to progress to that point before winter hit, actually a lot before. This meant I had to spend over two weeks of game time without being able to make any meaningful progress story wise and was relegated to gathering materials, and fighting monsters. This additional time to grind meant the next dungeons became rather easy. Winter itself posed another problem in that your field is unusable, so only the plots inside dungeons may be farmed at that time. The combat was pretty basic and not at all complicated, but was enough to do the job and had a satisfying enough feel to it. There were quite a lot of activities to do, but many of them were fairly optional unless you were planning to court a specific girl that relied on those activities to raise her affection. Overall an enjoyable experience.

A fairly solid game from the mana series for the Nintendo DS. Typical hack and slash action-adventure game. I found the magic mechanic a bit clumsy due to the activation time, as well as the weapon special attack activation time feeling too slow. The other issue is being on the DS itself, the small screen is unsatisfying for the size of the stages and how many monsters can be on the screen at once. Progression wise the difficulty curve is fairly flat, with stages getting longer as the game goes on being the only change. Any trouble in progression can be solved with some additonal grinding on an easier level and gear upgrading. The game was short enough that by the time I was getting bored of the gameplay it was over, although I passed on doing a number of the optional side dungeons for each of the magic spirits, so there was still plenty more content if I had felt like continuing. The story was decent, and was in line with the feel of other mana titles. The gem grid system was interesting, and allows for some interesting specialization of specific weapons or magic if so desired, so customizing into a preferred style is possible with some effort.

a 3D remake of the classic SNES title with the original(JP) higher difficulty mitigated somewhat by the augment system that grant extra abilities. The augment system is interesting, but taking full advantage of it almost necessitates the use of a guide that details how each augment is obtained. The game contains some cutscenes with voice acting, which is a nice touch. I've started this game multiple times on different consoles, and playing this version was quite the change with the difficulty increase. Bosses I remembered just steamrolling with autoattacks required actual strategy to beat which gave the game a suitable level of challenge and kept each boss interesting. The new game+ feature is there, which combined with the augments allows the game to be cleared pretty quickly and gives some replay value, but if you're trying to min max a guide is required. I didn't bother due to missing some augments as well as missing 0.1% of the map somewhere that I didn't feel like hunting across the entire game to find. I may end up playing the PSP version at some point in order to play the 'After Story' FF4.5 game that is included with that version. The combat is classic FF action combat. Each character has a fixed job and roll within the party and gets their own time to shine throughout the story that really does a good job of fleshing out each character.

Another solid metroid vania symphony of the night style game. There's some new systems in places with mini quests, sub weapon skill system, but the quest system has a flaw where it's possible to sell a few of the items required for a quest by mistake and have no way to get them again to finish the quest. Which happened to me and was very frustrating as I was working on completeing as much of the content as possible but didn't want to have to restart. The partner switching feature was interesting, and needed for a few puzzles, but could also be a little clunky at times. Having to equip spells make switching cumbersome so a lot of them will go to waste, the same with the large number of sub weapons available. There's probably some appeal to them for people who really want 100% clear and maxed out and that will extend the total play time, but for a casual playthrough, they're wasted or gimmicky. There's some extra modes typical of castlevania, although they're fairly short, add some replayability, but I'd had enough after finishing the primary story.

A very Symphony of the Night style castlevania game for Gameboy Advance where you play as Juste Belmont. It has all the elements you'd expect from a SoTN style action rpg, but nothing in partiuclar that makes it stand out. Overall a fun game to play if you enjoy the series and style of gameplay.

The classic SNES JRPG ported to the Nintendo DS. This replaces the practically unplayable Playstation port. It includes some new bonus side quest areas that get unlocked in the new game+ as well as a new ending, otherwise it's a faithful port of the original. And the DS is actually well suited to SNES ports aside from being on a small screen. When playing the SNES version, this was the first rpg I recall playing that had multiple endings that changed based on certain actions taken during the game, or at what point you opt to face the final boss during a replay.

Another port of an NES game that never made it out of Japan. I barely remember the story outside of 'save the world' due to playing the first 2/3 of the game, taking a fairly long break, then finishing the game after all the primary plot points had been covered and just returning to beat the final couple dungeons. I vaguely recall the story being engaging enough when I started though. The big change in this game compared to earlier ones is the job change system. You unlock various jobs as you progress through the game, can change a character's job at save points or in the field, and each job levels up separately by accululating job points during combat. Which is distinct from the experience points gained. Although this gives completely freedom in building any kind of team you desire, and each job gets a little mini quest for some top tier equipment once it reaches level 99, the actual process or leveling jobs once again encourages an unnatural playstyle and grinding. Instead of just fighting monsters normally, you want to take as many actions/turns on each character in order to gain a job level, which is capped at one per battle. And since switching to a new job weakens your character to a certain degree, you are further incentivized to return to the starting area to grind job levels without gaining regular levels, since the level up bonuses will are somewhat tied to the characters current job level. And despite the huge pool of ~26 jobs there are only a small handful of fights that actively require a specific job to be present(only 3 iirc, scholar, dragoon, dark knight) in order to deal with a boss mechanic, most of the jobs never really get a chance to shine especially when combined with the annoyances of levelling them with the penalty applied each time to change them. Overall though I'm glad I finally got to play and finish one of the previously missing mainline Final Fantasy titles and see where most of the jobs that would appear in later titles first appeared.

A Gameboy Advance remake of the classic NES game and another NES game that wasn't originally released outside Japan. This was also released on the Playstation. Although there are differences between each console version. The GBA version is rather easier than the original and has some optional dungeons for FF1. FF1 was probably my introduction to the whole genre, and there's way too much nostalgia that bias' my views on the game itself. As for FF2, this was the first time playing it. There is an interesting story system with the use of keywords to progress certain story events and the playable cast is named, with temporary members coming and going throughout the course of the story which gives the game a lot more depth than the first game. The combat system is similar in how battles take place, but the leveling system is completely different. And although the leveling system is interesting in principle, where various stats and skills go up with use instead of via a more traditional experience point value, it lends itself to meta gaming and power leveling performing very unnatural things in order to level faster, such as equipping two shields, or attacking your own party members. All of which can be done fairly early in the game to gain a massive advantage that can trivialize much of the games content. There is also an optional dungeon at the end that brings back in the temporary party members for their own bonus adventure that was not in the original version of the game.

I never had the chance to own a Nintendo 64 console when they were current, so when I saw this remake/port for the DS I snapped it up, never having had a chance to fully play through the original N64 version. The DS version is pretty faithful although adds some new features and mini games, the controls could be a bit clunky at times, although I recall the N64 controls also having a few awkward moments but it still works and is very playable. This game is pretty classic as it marked the first shift from 2d platformers into 3d and set the stage for the Mario Galaxy games on the Wii, and Mario Obyssey on Switch. The only time the controls and particularly the camera controls frustrated me was during the final boss, although part of that is just me being bad at getting the timing of the throw correct. I only went for 80/150 stars, which many fans would consider sacriligious. But I'd rather move on to other games or save doing a full star run for the non-handheld version.

Although the original game was released for Playstation in July 2000 and was a tactical rpg, the DS remake in 2008 switches the combat to be a more standard turn based jrpg. Some content was also taken out from the post game. It is very much a beginner jrpg, with a hint of where to go next in the status screen so even if you take an extended break you won't be totally lost of where you left off. Not that many breaks are needed, the game itself is fairly short even when you complete the side stories to recruit more puppets. Speaking the side stories, it is possible to miss out on some of them if you advance the story too far before completeing the side quests which is always a disappointment for me. The story is cute and an inversion of the more standard fantasy rpg story. The combat system is decent enough if a little basic, and although there's a fairly high encounter rate you can enable auto battle to sweep through the low difficulty mobs and enter manual commnds for bosses or as needed.