Khuutra is right, the N64 Harvest Moon is the best so far. It does better as a whole than any other Harvest Moon released afterwards. The second choice is Magic Melody. The Tree of Tranquility isn't bad, but after I bought it I stopped playing because of the long loading times and horrible camera angle.

While I would recommend eternal darkness, my experience wasn't as scary as Khuutra makes it sound. There are two reasons I can think of for this:
1) You have a sanity gauge that tells you the sanity level of your character. The should have left it out and kept you guessing as to your sanity.
2) The insanity effects are a little out there and the real things that happen are mundane. They need more real things that happen which is weird and more instanity effects that are less on the flashy side. If my head suddenly explodes I know that it is an insanity effect.
What it amounts to is they need to work harder at keeping you "on your toes" when it comes to the insanity effects. I can only hope that they release a sequal with my above two points addressed. I did beat Eternal Darkness four times, so like i said, it is a good game.

Going to bump this back up. Whenever you pass judgment on my Gamecube recommendations, I'll come up with a Wii list for you.

I actually liked Back to Nature best, but 64 is a close second. Magic Melody was alright.

Does anyone know if the DS version is worth a purchase? I need a sim life game, and if it's not Harvest Moon I'll probably pick up Animal Crossing.

Noname, have you ever played an Animal Crossing before? It's awfully, awfully different.

I've heard generally good things about Island of Happiness, but I have yet to play it.

Yeah, they're almost night and day. Still, I like them both for a similar reason: they're strangely relaxing to play (although you can make them frantic if you want to).

Get an Xbox 360 and buy some of Rare's games

I don't know if he would prefer to do that, given that most of RARE's games do not tend to suit his tastes.