You'll need to balance the responsibilities and requirements of both to succeed. It completely murders the pace of the game.Complete jobs for other local farmers to earn coveted Deere Dollars, but don't neglect your own property. When we went to town, there's load screen. Oh, and did we mention the load screens? There sure are a lot of them. It's hard to get motivated to build on and expand our farm if the game is acting like it's going to completely die if we do. This is the normal progression of the game. Plus, it's not like we were getting excessive. The 2D sprites are very basic, so there's not a good excuse for why the game can't seem to handle everything. The only thing mentioned that animates are the sprinklers, and they only have a couple frames. Fences, sprinklers, even entire buildings would disappear and reappear constantly. Riding our tractor caused such significant slowdown that the game became almost unplayable. The farther we progressed in the game, the worse it got. Walking in from town to find our barn missing was rather startling. John Deere streams its objects, but does such a poor job of it that it takes multiple seconds for some things to load. So now we've got a tractor, a little more land, and a decent amount of crops. Since there's not enough time in the day to work on a lot of crops, the helpful John Deere retailer will sell you his merchandise. The farm can be expanded, and more crops can be purchased. Unfortunately Harvest in the Heartland falls apart as soon as the player gets ambitious and really plays. Gameplay+varies+from+destroying+trees,+to+gently+caressing+udders. There's even a decent amount of customization with the colors of buildings and player's outfits. There's a town we got to visit to buy stuff, or enter our crops into the county fair, which in turns unlocks little trophies and ribbons. When it's a small farm with only one of two crops, or a few animals the game is actually kind of fun, if not completely unoriginal. We planted some wheat, watered it, then harvested it for cash. As an American version of Harvest Moon, John Deere has a nice concept. It's not as rewarding as actually planting your own vegetables and nurturing them to blue ribbon size, but it has the benefit of being able to raise dozens of cows without the stench that comes with it. Players look down from an overhead view and guide their farmer around, completing all the steps required to grow a crop or raise some livestock. Planting crops, watering, feeding chickens, you know, farm stuff. That is, it's a game about running a farm. Harvest in the Heartland is essentially Harvest Moon. Unfortunately, Black Lantern Studios made a game that is hardly functional, much less fun. It wouldn't be a big deal if the developer made a decent game that's actually fun to play. The difference is that Cabela's doesn't require the player to travel to an authorized retailer and purchase its products as the only option to progress. After all, Cabela's has sponsored tons of hunting/fishing games without beating the brand name over the player's head. John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland is obviously just an advertisement for John Deere tractors disguised as a Harvest Moon ripoff. Okay, so we're not dumb (well, not really dumb).