Natsume’s Harvest Moon: Light of Hope made its debut a couple of years ago, but it’s getting repackaged in Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition Complete for release on July 30. It’ll be a digital and physical release for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch for $29.99.
The news originally comes from a Natsume press release via Gematsu. The Special Edition Complete includes “special features made specifically for consoles,” though Natsume doesn’t elaborate on what those are. It also introduces a brand-new character in Soleil. Soleil uses Gem Sprite magic to help on the farm, be it gathering materials or tending livestock, and is playable in co-op mode.
All four previously released DLC packs will be bundled in with the Special Edition Complete too.
- Decorations and Tool Upgrade Pack
- Divine Marriageable Characters Pack
- New Marriageable Characters Pack
- Doc and Melanie’s Special Episodes
Previously, these were available separately for $3.99 each.
Light of Hope tried steering a difficult current between previous recent entries like A New Beginning and Skytree Village while maintaining some of the classic Harvest Moon games’ charm. It wasn’t completely successful in this attempt, though, with Light of Hope receiving a less than stellar reception, both critically and from consumers.
Some of the issues came from the rather confusing split between Marvelous and Natsume, where Natsume’s Harvest Moon now is separate from the Harvest Moon (Bokujou Monogatari) many grew up playing.
Light of Hope has the player work to rebuild a broken-down harbor town and brings back features like town design from earlier entries. In particular, it was accused of simply rehashing the older games’ concepts without trying to do anything new with them, along with several bugs and loading time issues that kept the experience from being as smooth as it could be.
Still, including the four DLC packs means players who do pick up the Light of Hope Special Edition Complete will have plenty of content to work through, not to mention more marriage candidates than they could shake a cow at.
