Gamecube titles ending up on Wii are ever present in the Nintendo world of today, and with games like Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast and Super Paper Mario changing platforms late in their development cycle, the trend can make a decent game feel out of place on the motion-sensing console. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody sees its first European release on the Wii rather than the purple handbag and, like other ports of Cube games, it feels out of place, especially when an all-new Wii entry in the popular farming franchise has already come out over on Japanese shores. But is this still worth picking up if you crave some cow milking action?

When porting to Wii, there is one major consideration that developers have to make; the controls of a normal controller are nothing like the ones that the Wii Remote and Nunchuk present, and the ones here make this fact as clear as day. The placement of certain buttons is mind boggling - pressing the C button on the nunchuck for the menu and the Z button to use items, for example - who came up with that 'brilliant' idea? Rather than go into what every button on the Wiimote and nunchuk does, all that needs to be said is that the examples above are reflective of the entire control scheme. Why these choices have been made is very hard to understand, and if you try to work out why Rising Star Games have strapped these weird button combinations onto the game then you may find yourself slowly realising that Magical Melody can be unplayable at times, something that I'm sure the developers didn't intend.

The buttons aren't all that has been used criminally however, as the pointing action and movement in general of the Wiimote is practically absent from Magical Melody. At first I found myself anxiously pointing the remote at the screen on the menus, hoping that I could select things with this perfect method of menu navigation. But sadly this dream never came true, meaning that you must select any option in the game with the d-pad. No, wait, you can't use that either. The only way to make a selection is with the analog stick, which causes frustration throughout the farming adventure you are on. This is just as annoying as it sounds, as when cycling through a keyboard to type your new horse's name, if you even have the chance to get a horse - more on that later - you can't help but think how much simpler it would have been to use an onscreen cursor, which could have been used in the main game itself too, as with MySims. The controls are the first sign of how badly the developers have ported this game, something that is apparent even though I have never personally played the non-European original.

For those people who have never experienced the scarily open-ended gameplay of the Harvest Moon series, there are a lot of things to get to grips with. Magical Melody is primarily a farming sim, where you grow crops and tend to animals day in and day out, while slowly developing your ranch into a thriving economy. You do this by talking to the many citizens of your village and building a reputation around the area. By keeping livestock and making a business of your crop growing sections of the ranch, you aim to outdo rivals and woo the women of this small village, eventually leading to both marriage and the promise of a baby. The game is completely open-ended, which means that you are free to do whatever you please - however, this is something that doesn't exactly work out. The problem with this style of play is that the game throws you into this world without any sort of guidance whatsoever. This was a major problem when I started the game, as I had no idea what to do first. With no money, which is earned through selling crops and animal produce, I couldn't physically buy any animals or crops, forcing me to enter a vicious circle of confusion that I couldn't get out of. A few pointers here and there as to what to do next would have been nice, so that I could enjoy my early experiences with the game. As it is though, it's hard for newcomers to get into.

The titular Magical Melody is a set of musical notes that have to be used to revive the nearby Harvest Goddess, who has been turned to stone. This is a story point that is used to cover up a simple mission structure, whereby performing certain tasks gets you one step closer to reviving this mysterious goddess. The difference here is that you aren't assigned missions; instead they are preset into the game. You are awarded a note after selling your first piece of fruit for instance, although the game doesn't tell you about this before you do it. This means that achieving the necessary fifty notes to 'complete' the game is near impossible. It's a weak attempt at trying to add a sense of progress to a game that is open to whatever playing style you choose. This is a life management sim, so you have to be prepared to invest huge amounts of time over many weeks to get anywhere close to fulfilling many of the requirements for the notes. It doesn't help either that some of them are just plain silly - not pressing any buttons for five minutes and collapsing on the floor from exhaustion aren't the best ways to progress in a game!

In addition to the life sapping main game, minigames can be unlocked by attending festivals that happen at certain times of the year. On Wii you would expect these to be fun, party style minigames in the style of Rayman Raving Rabbids and other minigame collections - but you would be mistaken. Controlling in exactly the same way as the single player game, these distractions are nothing more than up to five minutes of boring, non-responsive gameplay. These meagre attempts at fun, including competitive digging and counting animals in a pen, aren't worth anyone's time, especially when compared to the minigames found in games like Animal Crossing on DS, a game that is a much better example of this genre. There is no point wasting your time on these when you could be trying to work out how you're ever going to afford that barn extension.

As this is a Gamecube game, the graphics are reflective of the generation and so even though the cutesy characters are well suited to the experience, they don't match up to the Wii standards of today. In two years this game hasn't seen any sort of graphical upgrade, although this isn't that much of a big deal in the long run. The animals look fun and bright, while the amount of colour on screen is a nice thing to see, so fans of the series will feel right at home. The sound is sometimes of the same quality, although the music is not; the deafeningly cheesy tunes that play as you shop for goods are what you'd expect in a Harvest Moon game, but they will still get on your nerves. This might not ruin what is otherwise a fine standard of aesthetics, but it does mean that you'll be reaching for the mute button more often than you should be.

Although there is a lot wrong with Harvest Moon: Magical Melody - and scanning back over the review I can't seem to find much in the way of positives - it is still a Harvest Moon game, and this will be enough for fans who have played the series since the SNES original. If you have played a Harvest Moon game before and found everything about it convoluted and confusing, then the same will be true here. The major problem with this entry in the farming series however is that it's a sloppy conversion. From the controls to the fact that some people in the game refer to the R button on the Gamecube controller, there are too many things wrong with this version to recommend it to a Harvest Moon fan over the Gamecube and PS2 titles. If you have milked the Harvest Moon cow of all that it has then this may hold your attention until the dedicated Wii release, but for everyone else you'd be best off hanging on for a better farming sim to come along - even if that does mean waiting until the cows come home...

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).