Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland/Gameplay

"Your goal is to successfully save your family's farm and the surrounding village from being turned into a resort. Construction begins in a year, so you have your work cut out for you!  But don't worry, if you earn the friendship and trust of the villagers, they will be sure to lend a helping hand.  Remember...It's up to you to SAVE THE HOMELAND!" -- Game cover.

All the actions you can take in Save the Homeland work to two primary goals: making money, and reaching one of the game's nine endings. Aside from purchasing Cows and a Kitchen, money serves little actual purpose in completing the game. It's mainly used to improve your farm with more crops, better tools, and more livestock, which in turn gives you more money, which once again can be used to improve your farm, and so on. Reaching an ending primarily involves obtaining hard-to-find items and socializing with the Townspeople.

Weather & Seasons
You can check the calender in your house to see what kind of weather is expected in the coming weeks, and plan your crops accordingly. You can also see the TV to see the chance of rain tomorrow.

Your calender lists three types of days:
 * Mild - The most common type, usually coming in as sunny or party cloudy. Rain is uncommon.  It's a good day to plant crops, and let your animals out of the barn to graze.
 * Rainy - Rain is almost guaranteed, so you won't need to water your crops. Keep your livestock indoors, and bring your dog inside if you don't have a dog house for it yet.  Any seeds you plant are likely to be washed away.  Part-time work at Brownie Farm is out the window, as is seeing the Harvest Goddess.  There's not much upkeep you need to do aside from feeding your animals; good thing too, working in the rain can make you sick.  It's a day for foraging, fishing, and interacting with the villagers.  If it's raining really hard, you won't be able to get a signal for your TV.
 * Dry - Practically no chance of rain. You can sometimes get by without watering your crops on clear Mild days, but doing that on these is likely to cause withering.  Let your animals out of the coup and barn; they love the sun.

All four months are included before the year ends, but each only lasts thirty days. You can check the season on your calender, but the surrounding nature tends to make it pretty obvious:
 * Spring: There's a mixture of rainy, mild, and dry days. The sporadic rainy days make planting a little risky.  If this is your first year, it might be better to just do some part-time work at Brownie Farm before you get a lot of crops and animals to eat up your mornings.  Buy as much livestock halfway through the month, because you'll want them before Summer begins.
 * Summer: Anything but dry days is sparse, which can completely eat up your time if you spent all your money on crops. If you have animals, it's a good time to make them happy, since they'll be able to go outside virtually everyday.  Halfway through, spend all your money on crops.
 * Fall: It rains seemingly every day. If you were smart and bought crops, you'll have a good time.  If you didn't, not only will your cumulative livestock be stuck inside most of the time, but trying to plant crops to utilize the weather becomes difficult; your seeds will usually be washed away even if you can find a clear day to plant them.
 * Winter: The cold weather will inevitably kill your crops, but the livestock don't seem to mind it. If you haven't started work on one of the Endings yet, you'll definitely need to around this time of year.

Stamina
On the status screen, your stamina is represented with a face. An aggressive expression means you're fully charged, a mild face means you have some energy left, and a weary face means you're... well, weary. A yellow face means you're sick or getting sick, and should stop working as soon as possible.

Whenever you use a tool, the farmer's stamina will drop a little bit. The sickle and hoe require much more strength, and thus take away more stamina. Doing chores earlier in the day consumes much less stamina than doing them at night. You can refuel some of your stamina by eating foods or using the Tool Shops' medicine.

If you stay up too late or work too hard, you might be sick the next day. This can prevent you from doing work entirely, and end up killing your crops and animals.