What are your favourite Festivals in HM/SoS?

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.
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Yes, I’m back again with another one of these discussion threads but this time it’s about festivals. Festivals are great additions to HM/SoS for many reasons, such as them breaking up the monotony of the gameplay and providing something new, they make the town feel like a community, they allow players to deepen their relationship with the town and they also give players a goal to work towards. The game needs to have a balance between regular days, competitive and non competitive festivals.

Trio of Towns in my opinion had the best balance of festivals, a harvest festival per season, an animal festival per season (any animal), a cooking festival every 2 seasons, the fashion fiesta and pet promenade once a year (which is good because I don’t really care for these festivals) and a town trylimpics or beverage bash being held once every season whose game varies based on the town hosting. They also have town specific deity and romantic festivals once per year which I’d say are some of the best romantic festivals in the series. There were also the town specific New Years festivals all being held at the same time.

PoOT on the other hand only had 2 festivals per season (coincidentally like that other farming game…), quite a few were static cutscenes and none of them had anything to do with farming, which is a shame since there is no incentive to improve your crops or animals. Being as the days in PoOT were still reasonably long, it kind of made the game more monotonous with the lack of festivals. I don’t think I even made it to the winter festivals when I played the game.

To summarise here are some of the festivals I enjoy having in the games:

Contest festivals:
Spoiler:
Every game in my opinion should have at least one of these:
harvest/crop festival
animal festival
cooking festival

This is because they test your skills through an important part of a farming game: the farming! These festivals always provide an incentive to improve your crops, animals and cooking, usually providing a decent reward for performing well.

Other additional contest/minigame festivals can be added in depending on the game.
For example the trylimpics in Trio, the animal race in Animal Parade, the tomato and swimming festivals in HM BTN etc.
These are festivals that can vary from game to game and the devs can come up with new ideas to suit the town and it’s setting.
Non competitive festivals:
Spoiler:
1 or 2 Romantic festivals
A town festival
And the New Years festival

These are festivals that provide a break and nice little interactions with the townsfolk. Most of the time they are relaxing and don’t involve any competition. Apart from the New Years festival which involves the entire town, they can often provide romantic moments with your candidate of choice. Examples of romantic festivals are the flower, firefly, moon and starry night festivals in Animal Parade and the starry night, sealit nights and Christmas festivals in Trio.

Examples of town festivals (not explicitly romantic are)
The Fireworks and Music festivals in SoS, the deity festivals in Trio and the Autumn leaves festival, pumpkin day festival, music festival and snow man festival in ANB.

My favourite non competitive festivals are from Trio (all the unique deity and romantic festivals) and ANB.
Sorry for the large wall of text. What are your favourite festivals from the SoS and HM series?
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Mabbie
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My favourite festival of all times would be the Harvest Goddess Festival in BTN. It's so nostalgic to me, and so freaking cute. <3
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More than anything I love festivals I can get something new of out of by coming back to. It's like replayability, while the game is new. The most basic is stuff like harvest or animal fests. You know from the beginning you'll win them eventually, but it's still relatively exciting. Maybe you put a little more effort in and try to win a little faster. Maybe you just barely make it.

Aside from that, +1 for Harvest Goddess Festival in BTN. I like how HM64 did it (I don't think it was called the same thing though?), where you got to vote for who played the Goddess that year, but BTN did it the best. I don't think there's a more iconic festival, especially now that it has an homage in Stardew Valley. (Heck, I even did one in my fan comic many, many years ago.)

It's such a simple thing, just being able to ask somebody to go to an event with you. I'd love to see it come back, but maybe a little more detailed? In my interpretation kids got to dress up as Harvest Sprites, or what if your fully grown kid could attend, and you could dance with them, or they could dance with another kid in the town? Veering a little too far off topic, but it's cute, I love it. :lol:

Cooking festivals come in a close second place. Not contests, the potluck type where everybody brings an ingredient to include. The Westown pizza eating deity festival in Trio was a nice twist on that, I think.
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Mikodesu wrote: Jul 26, 2022 2:04 pm It's such a simple thing, just being able to ask somebody to go to an event with you. I'd love to see it come back, but maybe a little more detailed? In my interpretation kids got to dress up as Harvest Sprites, or what if your fully grown kid could attend, and you could dance with them, or they could dance with another kid in the town? Veering a little too far off topic, but it's cute, I love it. :lol:
Precisely! And more than that, the girls would dress up and get so darn cute!! :heart: :heart: :heart:
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Mabbie wrote: Jul 28, 2022 6:23 am
Mikodesu wrote: Jul 26, 2022 2:04 pm It's such a simple thing, just being able to ask somebody to go to an event with you. I'd love to see it come back, but maybe a little more detailed? In my interpretation kids got to dress up as Harvest Sprites, or what if your fully grown kid could attend, and you could dance with them, or they could dance with another kid in the town? Veering a little too far off topic, but it's cute, I love it. :lol:
Precisely! And more than that, the girls would dress up and get so darn cute!! :heart: :heart: :heart:
Oh yeah, the girls getting to dress up is definitely half the fun. :) Might have been the first time I saw a character in a video game change outfits (aside from weddings) so it was great.
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Mikodesu wrote: Jul 28, 2022 8:53 pm
Mabbie wrote: Jul 28, 2022 6:23 am
Mikodesu wrote: Jul 26, 2022 2:04 pm It's such a simple thing, just being able to ask somebody to go to an event with you. I'd love to see it come back, but maybe a little more detailed? In my interpretation kids got to dress up as Harvest Sprites, or what if your fully grown kid could attend, and you could dance with them, or they could dance with another kid in the town? Veering a little too far off topic, but it's cute, I love it. :lol:
Precisely! And more than that, the girls would dress up and get so darn cute!! :heart: :heart: :heart:
Oh yeah, the girls getting to dress up is definitely half the fun. :) Might have been the first time I saw a character in a video game change outfits (aside from weddings) so it was great.
Yup! And as BTN was the second HM version that I played, it comes with lots of nostalgia <3 it's really sad that it doesn't happen the same way on FoMT (GBA and remake)
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The deity festivals in Trio are quite nice. The dances were nicely done, and it's great how you can choose ANYONE as your partner, not just the romantic interests. The huge boost in FP is awesome, too. 4000 FP in one go with EVERYONE, I believe it is, plus an extra 2000FP with your dance partner. More than half a heart, all together! But all the festivals in Trio are pretty darned good, I don't think there are any I don't like. If I have to name a single favourite, I think it's...hrm. Well, I'd be hard-pressed to choose between the Beverage Bash and the Trilympics. I think I'd go for the Beverage Bash, as I don't like the Trilympics on Lulukoko's turn (I hate fishing.) But I really like the egg/daruma hunt on the other towns' turns. I do think it'd be better if they'd given Tsuyukusa a more original festival though. Leave the egg hunt to Westown and choose a more unique Asian festival to represent Tsuyukusa. They have PLENTY of cool ones!

Okay, so that answers that, now that I've blabbed aloud to myself or a bit, lol. The Beverage Bash is my favourite festival I've ever played in Bokumono, though all the Trio festivals are good fun. (And I really liked the ANB competitive festival set-up when it came to awarding prizes, that was the BEST. Though I'd like it to have taken 3-4 years to max everything to top level rather than only two.)

EDIT: *grumble* This made me want to play Trio again. I blame YOU, uh...*looks to see who started this thread*... Somerandom!
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Kikki wrote: Aug 01, 2022 7:12 am EDIT: *grumble* This made me want to play Trio again. I blame YOU, uh...*looks to see who started this thread*... Somerandom!
Ha ha ha, sorry about that Kikki!

At the moment I have been thinking about the farming games I like and dislike and why that is the case. Usually it is for multiple reasons both in gameplay and story/character and town development. This was because Rune Factory 5 was a game that on paper I should have enjoyed because of it’s similarities to RF4 but when I played the actual game something just felt…off and at the time I couldn’t put my finger on why that was the case.

Looking back I do agree that the daruma game could be changed into something more fitting for Tsuyukusa. I don’t know what they could do instead. Maybe something like the bean throwing festival in Rune Factory?

I did like the HG festival in 64 and back to nature, but the flower dance in Stardew Valley not so much. I think it’s because you were more involved before the dance instead of just going to the area, maybe asking someone to dance and just watching a cutscene. In 64 you voted for a girl to be this years Harvest goddess (I don’t remember the exact title though) and then pick a girl to dance with. In back to nature for boy you could ask a girl out to escort them to the dance and go on a date with them afterward. In the girl version you get to dance in the festival and you are given a dress (The reason that you get it is pretty sad). It is more heartbreaking for the girl MC in the first year as every guy except Kai and Rick escorts your rival to the festival. And when you do get asked to go to the festival in the 2nd year it is more satisfying and you also get to go on a date after the festival. To me the lack of real change makes the flower festival in Stardew less meaningful and stagnant, especially since while the characters are paired off, there are no rivals in the actual game, so your “competition” isn’t bitter about not dancing with their partner and the dance doesn’t really change past year 2 which is the year most players can participate in it. Also Haley is always the flower queen (I have no idea what the judging criteria for that even is, if it was popularity the farmer would easily win) and Lewis is too busy spending money on his solid gold statues to provide you with a dress or a suit that everyone else is wearing.

The deity festivals on the other hand I like more than the older HG festivals as, yes you can dance with any character at the festival regardless of their gender and them being marriageable. It can be romantic if you want it to be (choosing a candidate of the opposite gender to your character, especially when dating or married) or totally platonic, it is up to you. The dances also change between the towns which is a nice touch.
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