The PoPoLoCrois manga series was quite popular in Japan during the PS1 and PS2 era, and even had several strategy RPG games similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. This week’s issue of Famitsu reports that it’s coming back, as part of a collaboration title with Harvest Moon—or, rather, Story of Seasons. [Thanks, Game Jouhou.]
(Don’t worry, we’ll explain the name change at the end of this report if you need to get caught up.)
The Nintendo 3DS game fuses PoPoLoCrois Story and Harvest Moon’s original Japanese title, Bokujou Monogatari (lit. “Farm Story”), and will be called PoPoLoCrois Farm Story. It is an RPG.
The game’s world will feature many characters from the PoPoLoCrois series, and will bring the prince Pietro back as the protagonist. Pietro will go on adventures with command-based RPG battles, and will also have a farm where he’ll be able to grow all kinds of crops.
According to Tamori Yousuke, the original manga author of the series, “It’s finally been made possible thanks to all the help from various people. It’s a new departure for PoPoLoCrois.”
Harvest Moon vs. Story of Seasons:
The last Bokujou Monogatari game developed by Marvelous is being published in North America by Xseed, who are a subsidiary of Marvelous. However, Natsume—who published the series in North America until last year—own the “Harvest Moon” name, so Xseed have retitled the franchise Story of Seasons in the West.
Meanwhile, Natsume are now developing their very own Harvest Moon games, which have nothing to do with Marvelous or Xseed. This series retains the “Harvest Moon” name in North America, and the first title in the series is Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley.
For now, we’re going to refer to this game as PoPoLoCrois Farm Story to avoid any of that confusion. Of course, we will still use the Harvest Moon name in the body of our reports to let people know that the game’s roots lie with the original Harvest Moon series.
Note: Screenshot from PoPoLoCrois Story II on PS1.
