When comparing Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition vs Mario Tennis Aces, the Slant community recommends Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best couch/local co-op games for the Nintendo Switch?” Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition is ranked 33rd while Mario Tennis Aces is ranked 34th. The most important reason people chose Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Special Edition is:
As part of the main story, you find yourself in a storm-wrecked town that needs to be rebuilt. You take it upon yourself to get the farms, livestock, buildings, and economy back up and running again. Even though Harvest Moon is mainly a farming simulator, there's plenty more to do here. You have access to plots of land to farm, mines for quarrying, bodies of water for fishing, and you can prioritize which town buildings to restore, all in order to bring the residents back. Your priorities and choices make all the difference in how everything gets rebuilt.
Specs
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Pros
Pro You get to rebuild and manage a small town
As part of the main story, you find yourself in a storm-wrecked town that needs to be rebuilt. You take it upon yourself to get the farms, livestock, buildings, and economy back up and running again. Even though Harvest Moon is mainly a farming simulator, there's plenty more to do here. You have access to plots of land to farm, mines for quarrying, bodies of water for fishing, and you can prioritize which town buildings to restore, all in order to bring the residents back. Your priorities and choices make all the difference in how everything gets rebuilt.
Pro Tons of freedom to do what you want at your own pace
You can do whatever you feel like without worrying about too many restrictions. With the main story quest, you get to pick and choose your approach to rebuilding the town. This means that you can focus on fishing and mining over farming if you prefer, aside from instances where someone in the story requests a certain item that you can farm up yourself. There are no looming time restrictions or anything like that; you can go at your own speed and do whatever you choose from day to day.
Pro Farming simulator mechanics are simple to pick up and learn
Farming in Harvest Moon is easy to learn. You have a plot of land with squares of fertile soil, and then you just need seeds for whatever you'd like to plant. Caring for your your crops is only a matter of keeping up the habit of watering them, as well as making sure you pluck out any weeds that crop up from time to time. As long as you have the seeds you want and you remember to take care of your farm, you'll be successful in no time.
Pro Two-player co-op speeds up resource gathering for both players
Playing with a friend makes things go by much quicker. You and one other person can co-op to collect resources together, basically cutting your required time for quests by half. Aside from simply enjoying the game with someone else, if you have a goal you want to accomplish and you feel like it's taking a long time, co-op can help speed things along.
Pro Couch co-op with a friend is tons of fun
Playing with a friend right beside you makes the game much more enjoyable. Reacting to each other in real-time is just better than playing against a computer opponent. There's no online co-op -- only multiplayer matches against random people -- meaning you'll have to be in the same room together to play.
Pro Solid roster of Nintendo characters to play as
There's a good variety of characters you can play as. If you're familiar with first party Nintendo games, then you'll see a lot of familiar faces here, like Yoshi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Luigi, Peach, and of course Mario. Everyone has their own playing styles, with bigger characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong favoring hard-hitting power shots, and others like Yoshi and Mario that have a more balanced approach. You can go with whichever style or character you prefer, practicing with them until you master everything. Getting to see all of these characters together in one game is great for fanservice as well.
Pro You can compete against others online in multiplayer
When you run out of single-player content to enjoy, you can hop online to play against random opponents. The main game mode is the tournaments you can play, which rewards you with special characters if you score well. Online connectivity is good too, especially with the choice to drop out of matches beforehand against players who have bad connections. Playing online is a really great way to test your skills and improve your play, since anyone you get matched with is an actual player who has their own strengths and weaknesses.
Pro Intense and engaging tennis matches
Mario Tennis Aces is incredibly addicting to play. Matches are fast-paced and exciting, with one particular mechanic that keeps things unpredictable. Every time you successfully hit the tennis ball to your opponent's end of the court, you build up a power meter that you can use in a couple of different ways.
When you want to quickly finish off a match, you can slow down time and take aim at a vulnerable corner of your opponent's court for an instant win. Or, if they try to do that to you, you can instead expend some of your power meter to quickly reach the ball and hit it back. Things can get pretty tricky when you both use up your power meters at the same time, leading to some satisfying wins.
Cons
Con Farming is almost pointless outside of story events
Even though Harvest Moon is a farming simulator at its core, the trade is surprisingly not that useful in this game. During your main quest to restore the town and earn money, you have the option of farming, fishing, and mining; by and large, farming is the least efficient of the three, taking more time and earning you less money in the long-run. It's much more productive to either go fishing or mining if you want to rake in more cash at a faster rate, as farming just isn't worth it for the long-haul.
Con Bugs and game crashes
There are some instances where you may run into bugs or the game will outright crash. Sometimes, quests don't progress they way they should, leading you down the wrong paths or refusing to accept items that you're actually supposed to hand in. Game crashes are also unpredictable, varying in how often they happen. So until a few more patches get released, you may want to be more careful about saving often, just in case you have to redo a quest or you lose out on progress from a sudden crash.
Con Bland visuals
The graphics and presentation are nothing to write home about. They look awkward, with the 3D character sprites moving around in a 2D environment, with odd details that don't look quite right. The sprites themselves are pretty low-effort as well, and they don't at all look like they're advanced enough for a home console. Everything just looks low-effort all around and not that great to look at.
Con Not enough new characters
Most of the townspeople here are recycled from previous games in the series. It's a bit lazy to have so many of the same NPCs around without introducing many new ones. Fans of the Harvest Moon games might be happy to see their old favorites again, though they may also get bored by the lack of new faces around. New players won't notice anything wrong, though.
Con Very wide skill gap between experienced and inexperienced players
Mario Tennis Aces can be unwelcoming to new players. While playing co-op or online, it's tough to catch up with everyone else who knows how to time their power shots with the meter. If you don't pick up on this mechanic fairly quickly, you may feel like you're getting left behind. You don't necessarily have to use the mechanic if you and a friend agree not to, but this sadly makes matches pretty dull. Running against computer opponents is a good way to get your feet wet before moving up to other levels of play.
Con Limited gameplay options for solo players
If you're the type who prefers to game alone, then Mario Tennis Aces might not be for you. There's only one single-player mode, while the rest of the game is mostly dedicated to co-op and online play. The solo mode is also extremely short, clocking in at around four hours. Aside from that, there really isn't much else for you to do.
Con Certain characters are locked behind online tournaments
The primary way to unlock new characters is to win tournaments, but this isn't entirely fair. They're only available for a limited amount of time, with the rewards changing from tournament to tournament. Even though some of these characters are in the actual game as opponents in the single-player adventure mode, you can't get access to them unless you unlock them through these tournaments. If you don't like playing online, or if you don't have the means to pay for Nintendo's online service once it's implemented later on in 2018, then you're basically out of luck.
Con Single-player adventure mode is pretty difficult
The game's adventure mode makes up for its short length with some real difficulty. It's a rough introduction to the gameplay, as some of the matches and bosses are really hard. There's plenty of variety to things, like courts that have certain hazards in your way and uneven terrain such as tall grass, as well as inventive boss designs like a giant squid that shoots out tennis ball-shaped blobs of ink. But all of these things can get quite overwhelming, especially if you're using the single-player mode to get better at the game.