Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley, like Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland before it, is a little different from the other Harvest Moon games because instead of starting a farm from scratch, you start with a fully functional, albeit deserted and overgrown, farm and have to keep it from being destroyed. It is your grandfather's farm but he has died and your father wants to sell the land to the Funland Corporation. They intend to bulldoze the place and turn it into an amusement park. That's not what Grandpa Gus worked for all his life, so you decide to take over the farm that has fallen into disarray a bit and make it profitable again. You have two years to raise $50,000. The gameplay is very similar to previous titles: grow and sell crops, raise animals, mine ores, befriend the neighbours and perhaps even find a wife.