Old School Harvest Moon fans rejoice, Harvest Moon Island of Happiness is all you could ever want in a Harvest Moon game and more. This game is THE best original Harvest Moon game on a handheld yet(not counting Rune Factory of course.)! I was a bit let down by the first Harvest Moon DS, however this one hits all the right spots! Okay, so maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit…Let me explain why this is the Harvest Moon game to get if you own a DS.First off, I should probably caution newer players to the series, the game’s difficulty at first will probably annoy you. So maybe this isn’t the best game to get your self familiarized with the series and it’s gameplay. For that I’d probably suggest Harvest Moon 64 or the Back to Nature games. I’d say this game is more for the long term HM fan, who maybe has been a little bored with the series for awhile.
The reason for the difficult start, is that the stamina bar goes down so quickly, leading to you having to eat a crap load of food in order to get anything more than just watering a few of your plants done. That coupled with the fact that when you start out in Island of Happiness, you’re given only a house, your basic tools, a stable for your Dog and Horse(Which you have to gain through befriending certain towns people.), a field for planting, a shed for wood, and of course your shipping bin. Everything else you have to unlock or buy, this includes things like a barn for cows and sheep, a coop for chickens, and other things that used to come standard in your old HM games.
The reason for this being, that you have been shipwrecked on a deserted island, you’re not the only one that washed up on the shore of this island though, a nice family consisting of an Old Man named Taro, his Daughter named Felicia, and Felicia’s two kids Natalie and Elliot have also been stranded. Taro and Co. decide this island isn’t bad after all and that, instead of getting help, they should try to revitalize the island! But how does one go about getting such a task done?! Such a question is answered when it’s discovered that there seems to had been an old farm on the island, and Taro used to be a farmer back in his day! But what with him being too old for the job now, he asks if you’re up to the task.
This being a Harvest Moon game and all, you happily go along with his offer, of hard labor and long hours, all for the one goal of making this old abandoned Island full of life and happiness once more! Oh and of course not to mention the money, money is good too, and you’ll be needing A LOT of money if you’re looking to unlock everything there is in this game. Trust me when I say, you won’t be getting bored AT ALL while you play this game. There’s so much things to do and unlock in this game, that even an old school HM player(like myself) will have a hard time getting everything done and completed, and I say hard in the fun sense of the word. This game is so fun and addicting you’ll have a hell of a time putting it down.
If you’ve played any of the other recent Harvest Moon games you’ve probably found that you get things done too quickly, that time just moves too slowly, and that there’s nothing to do to fill that time. Well thankfully there’s none of that in this game. Time moves at a perfect pace in this game, it’s not too fast like the first HM game or HM64, and it’s not too slow as in A Wonderful Life, it’s just the right amount of time needed to get things done, and even if you can’t get things done before night fall as long as you have enough stamina and your hunger bar is full you can go well into the morning, just get in bed before 6AM of course.
The core gameplay hasn’t really changed much from past titles, however there are some new things worth mentioning, and some small new changes. For starters, all you girl gamers out there will be happy to know that you don’t need to wait for a “for girls” version of this game, as you are able to choose your gender at the start of the game, and that there are 6 Bachelors and 6 Bachelorettes for each respective gender to choose from. However, not all of these characters are around at first. For you now have to do certain things for certain characters to move on to your happy little island. There are 12 main villagers, and more than 90 other characters that can move to your island, some of which include some familiar faces to long time fans of the series. Brand new to the series is the ability to plant and grow Rice, and other grains. You can even grow different types of mushrooms and trees.
One of the things they’ve changed is the way you upgrade your tools. In past games you had to use the tool enough so that you could get the smithy to upgrade it for you if you had the right ore. Now however, it doesn’t matter how much you use the tool, all you need are these things called “Wonderfuls” there are 7 different colors of Wonderful stones and each color adds a different effect to your tools. The tools you start out with can only be equipped with one Wonderful stone at a time, but as you go on and the Carpenter moves in you can buy new tools that hold more Wonderfuls, but these aren’t easy to come by. You’ll only get them by doing certain things like winning festivals or doing certain things during the winter so that the general store will sell them.
I’ve also briefly mentioned that you don’t start out with much, so you’ll be buying a lot of what you need for a successful farm and island. For instance, when you finally get enough money and lumber to build your barn for cows and sheep, you’ll only have two feed boxes, and you won’t be able to buy sheep until you unlock a certain amount of villagers. In order to hold more animals you’ll have to get the carpenter to build you more boxes to hold feed, and even when you do that if you want to hold more boxes you need to upgrade your barn. So like I said, you’ll be needing a lot of money and lumber, but once you have it, the list of things you can get the carpenter to build for you is outstanding! This is by far the most customizable Harvest Moon game. I mean you can even build better roads for your island! It’s crazy!
I should also mention the whole game, for the most part, is touch controlled. You move your character by touching on the screen in the direction you want to move, the closer to your character you touch the slower he/she moves the farther away you touch the faster your character will run. All the normal control of a HM game is here, tap on things to pick them up or to talk with people. To use items and tools all you need to do is equip them to the 4 little icons in the corner of the screen and either tap the icon or use the D-pad. If your left handed you can use the ABXY buttons. You can also hold either the L or R buttons to run. Throwing items is as easy as dragging and dropping the item above your head, and this makes doing things like feeding your animals much easier and faster, as you can throw as far as you can see on the screen, so all you have to do is stand in one spot tap on the feed your character is holding and drag your stylus over to the feed box, it’s really satisfying throwing your animals food around like you’re a pro basketball player. The same can be done with talking to people or giving your loved ones gifts. No longer do you have to go right up to the person to talk, just tap on them and they’ll say their lines. Also a returning feature from the first HM DS game is the little touch controlled mini-games with your animals, like special milking, sheering, and petting. You still do all that stuff like you normally would in an old HM games, just sometimes icons will appear above your animals telling you that the mini-game will happen. These mini games are fun for awhile, but then become a bit tedious after the first few times you do them, and sure they can be skipped if you don’t want to do them but it raises their heart points more so really you don’t want to skip them. All in all though, the touch control really helps you do things quicker and it’s a lot of fun too.
There’s so much to love about this game, you’d be a fool not to play this. Marvelous Interactive has outdone itself with this one. This is by far one of the best Harvest Moon games ever, and is up there with Harvest Moon 64 and Back to Nature in my book. If this game had a little more interactive festivals, like the tomato fight mini-game and Chicken Sumo, like in the old HM games I’d gladly give this game the title of best Harvest Moon game of all time, but sadly the festivals, albeit fun little events where you can win wonderful, are not spectacular. I just wish they’d make them a little more interactive like back in the day! So come on Marvelous! Make this game, but with more mini-game like festivals damn it!
In closing, if you’re a fan of the series, but have found more recent titles to be a bit boring fear not, this title isn’t one to miss. And if you’re a newer fan of the series, but can’t play HM64, or you don’t have a PSP, thus not being able to pick up the port of Back To Nature, then this game is still worth picking up. To you newcomers I say; Stay FAAAAARRRRR away from the first Harvest Moon DS game! This is the one to get, DS owners, this is the one to get.
Don’t miss out on the greatness of this game!
