I have both ToT and AP... Was that a bad decision?

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
Velvet
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Post  Posted:

I thought they were different enough to warrant buying both.

I've started playing both, too, and now I'm at the end of Spring in ToT and in the middle of Spring in AP. And I'm not sure anymore...

The layot of the land and the plot are different, but these are small reasons to play both games. It would seem that AP has a lot more content in terms of everything, especially relationships: villagers have wishes (so there's a reason to make friends with all of them), dating candidates have dates. I'm looking through guides and it would seem that ToT has none of that. There are trophies\achievements in AP! There's a bigger choice of pets. So, it would seem that AP is so much more expansive and engrossing. The only downside I can find to AP in comparison to ToT is that you can't have all types of animals in the barn. But that's such a small brownie point if everything else in ToT is either indentical or subpar...

To top it off, I strongly suspect that cooking recipes are identical (heck, they probably are in all HM games, I've never paid attention!), fish to be caught is identical, etc. So for example if I decide to fill in the recipe book in full in AP (for the achievement), there's nothing left to do in ToT. Ditto for all other activities.

So is there any reason for me to play ToT? It must be a big reason to warrant playing two similar games.

P.S. I guess I'm asking this question to avoid playing ToT and ending up dissapointed and frustrated with wasting time with it before dropping it. I'd rather be told outright that I should play only AP. Or alternatively that there's enough of a difference to warrant playing both, if that's the case.
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greensara
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Post  Posted:

While Animal Parade can be thought of as an improved version of Tree of Tranquility, they do have differences, the largest that I know about being the main storyline and some candidates not being coupled with rivals. I don't know if the special candidates are available in ToT or not as I've only played AP myself. Whether you want to play both or not is up to you, but I probably wouldn't play them both concurrently as that may make you feel more burnt out on them, kind of like when I tried to keep up two different files concurrently in Tale of Two Towns.
Velvet
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Post  Posted:

Thanks! I think I'm going to play ToT first and lay AP aside for later. It felt just fine when I was playing ToT, after all, it was only when I started a concurrent play of AP that I started comparing them and finding ToT lacking.

Honestly, I do not understand how a company can release pretty much two identical games as far as important content is concerned (same villagers, same bachelors) and NOT get a huge backlash. And they did the same with IoH and SI in the past. I guess they do get away with it in Japan. I really wish ToT and AP had different characters, haha.

Btw I've never played SI and IoH just for that reason. I couldn't decide which one I should buy. :) And back in time I was not a die-hard fan to buy ALL games.
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PaleSunflower
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Velvet wrote:Honestly, I do not understand how a company can release pretty much two identical games as far as important content is concerned (same villagers, same bachelors) and NOT get a huge backlash. And they did the same with IoH and SI in the past.
For a good chunk of HM/SoS' history, what you're describing was normal, though the games were usually released a few years apart and things like in-game bug patches for consoles weren't really a thing yet (only new releases and versions would contain bug patches). There are also the separate boy and girl releases, such as HM:AWL and HM:AnWL, HM:FoMT and HM:MFoMT, and HM:DS and HM:DS Cute, which all shared most of their assets between each other.
Velvet
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PaleSunflower wrote:There are also the separate boy and girl releases, such as HM:AWL and HM:AnWL, HM:FoMT and HM:MFoMT, and HM:DS and HM:DS Cute, which all shared most of their assets between each other.
I've never minded separate releases, hehe, I would wait and buy a girl version anyway. Although to this day I can't fathom why they couldn't include girls from the start, but then again, in case of DS:Cute that was an awesome decision, since the bugs that were present in the boy version got removed. :lala:

What I do not understand is IoH\SI and ToT\AP. Isn't that like cheating customers? You sell a game, then you sell exactly the same game but better.

That said, as far as I've played ToT\AP I can see that they've changed all the dialogue for villagers. At least that is respectable effort that makes these games feel different. Still, it feels a little bit like cheating when all villagers and bachelor(ettes) are the same. And I can see that they've stopped doing that eventually, all their more recent games are different.

My issue with IoH\SI was that I really liked the premise of IoH (establishing a new town) vs. the premise of SI with its already established town. But I didn't want to play a demo version of SI, either. :P
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