It's the HARVEST GODDESS, not the farming God!
AWL could have been the best. It's at least great because time passes slowly for you to get plenty of character interaction done, although the character interaction itself was a bit lacking. However, there's virtually nothing to spend your money on, and not much to do - and even if you did find something to do, it's only going to make you money which is good for nothing because there are like two expensive things to buy in the whole game.
The cutscenes were great, although there should have been more. If HM ever reaches a nearly-AC style (although probably not that time-consuming) level of interaction with people, it would be awesome. However, you wouldn't have multiple people that have the same personality and say the exact same things, and unlike in AC, there would actually
be character development with cutscenes, and the characters would also like you more as you give stuff to them.
And you also have a lot more free time which there is simply not enough to do in because farming is useless. I guess the game just got too easy. I always hated how fast time passed in old HM games, but as nice as it was to get more time, they still executed it badly. Perhaps if sleeping had gone for 8 hours instead of an unhealthy 6 (honestly, it's so easy to stay up late and get up early every single day), and if there were more things to do in general (besides stuff like fishing and mining which is too repetitive), it could have been the best HM.
I don't know why HM64 would be considered the best; BtN improved on it in
nearly every way. And Friends of Mineral Town was essentially a remake of BtN. They took out some good stuff, but improved lots of things, too, so perhaps that would be the best. Although the characters were even more robotic than in AWL, there were loads of cutscenes. It would be nice if there were a healthy combination of cutscenes and real personality...
Oh, and Daedalus, NOBODY wants to tell anyone that their existance was validated by INDEROS, so I recommend changing your signature. Nobody should even quote him saying anything positive about them. Negative things are okay, though, since anyone who Inderos hates must be an okay person.