Rival Events

Besides your own relationship, the marriage candidates may also enter into unofficial romantic arrangements with each other. These scenes let you see what could have been had the winds pushed fate in another direction. The couples never have a wedding and don't live together.

Rival events will trigger between Arata and Diana, Derek and June, Freya and Jules, Gabriel and Maple, and Lloyd and Sophie. Samir and Kagetsu do not have rival events.

Triggering rival events requires the following steps:

• Your marriage. The rivals won't be interested in each other until after you get married. If you happen to marry someone who has a romantic rival, the events associated with your spouse and their rival won't trigger. If you want to view everyone's rival events, then your marriage options are limited to Samir and Kagetsu.
• 6-Heart Event. You'll need some friendship with the rival individuals. Even when married, you can continue to raise the fromer marriage candidates' friendships and see their heart events as though you were good friends. You'll need to have cleared their 6-heart event before they will ask you for romance advice.
• Go for it! After clearing the above steps, initiating a conversation with a former marriage candidate might reveal that they also have a romantic interest in someone and aren't sure if they should try to pursue these feelings. Telling them to "Go for it!" will unlock the rival events. Both individuals must be encouraged to move forward. For example, telling June to give it a shot won't make the rival events occur unless you have had the same conversation with Derek. If you tell the rival to "Wait and see...", then nothing will happen until you're asked about it again.

Once the pieces have started moving, you'll see an orange (!) marker on the world map indicating the location of the event. Each couple's rival events must be at least 7 days from the prior event, and there are four rival events for each couple. You can see more than one rival event per day, and each event takes about 1 hour of in-game time. Rival events will not trigger on festival days.

Rival events had been a staple in the series for many years. Up through Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands (DS, 2009), the other marriage candidates could marry each other, either during the player's romantic pursuit or afterwards. In some games, the rival couples also had children of their own. Rival events were included in the original Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar (DS, 2010), but the events changed so that the couples would not marry. The games that followed contained no rival couples.

In 2016, series producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto explained during interviews celebrating the 20th anniversary of the series that the reason why Marvelous removed rival relationships was because of Japanese player feedback. The players either became frustrated when the candidate they were pursuing got married to the rival before they could propose, or the players felt there were rival couple arrangements that fit the candidate better than a marriage with the game's protagonist.

Since then, Bokujou Monogatari that originally contained rival events include these alternative romance scenarios in their modern-day remakes, though there is no formal marriage between the rival couple. Despite Westerners' preference for rival events, new entries in the series have not included these bonus scenes.