| Category | Rating | Comments |
| Overall | 8.2 | Farming has never been so much fun. |
| Graphics | 7.8 | Natsume did an excellent job of creating a 3-D world for the latest Harvest Moon. The crops and animals give visual clues as they develop. Even though the cute graphics aren't realistic, they seem perfectly suited to the game. |
| Play Control | 8.0 | Play control is generally good, but there are a few things that seem awkward. Positioning your farmer precisely with the control stick is difficult. |
| Game Design | 8.7 | Like the original Super NES and Game Boy HMs, HM64 is open-ended and has a time limit for reaching the best ending. Players are given almost total freedom to turn their inherited farm into a grand enterprise and to make relationships with other characters in the game. The scope of HM64 is even greater than the original. |
| Satisfation | 8.5 | Although Harvest Moon isn't for everyone, players who enjoy simulations and RPGs should eat it up. |
| Sound | 7.7 | There are nice sound effects such as the sound of rain, but the music gets tedious. |
| Other | --- | This is a game that grows on you. There are more ways to make money than in the original games. (8.2) No guns, no aliens, no bovine growth hormone. One of my all-time favorites. (9.7) Some players won't have enough stamina to keep up with it. (9.0) The overall score is dtermined by the average of the raters at Nintendo Power. Here are the scores those people gave: 9.7, 9.0, 8.8, 8.2, 6.7 |