Platform: DS
Number of Players: 1
Publisher: Natsume
Release Date: Early 2007
Official Website
Writer: Kalina

Review of Harvest Moon DS

Pros: addictive core game play, more challenging than previous Harvest Moon games, decent graphics and sound

Cons:Huge glitches, poor/limited use of the stylus

Ah, Harvest Moon. Still a niche game, though the developer has gotten increasingly prolific of late. However, frequency of development is not necessarily a good thing, as this game shows.

The simple, yet solid game play has remained relatively unchanged since the days of the SNES Harvest Moon. You grow crops, take care of animals, forage the hills surrounding the town, and court the lady of your choice through gifts. The game play moves at the rate of a glacier, to be sure, yet it is addictive. Several aspects of the game have been upped in difficulty, with positive results.

The inclusion of special girls, even harder to woo than the normal ones, such as Kiera, the goddess, and the witch princess, was a wonderful idea. In addition, the upped costs for building new places on the farm and buying new equipment provide a welcome challenge. These challenges are what manage to keep the gamer playing, even after the game play wears somewhat thin.

The innovative design of the DS makes Harvest Moon DS’s non-evolutionary game play all the more noticeable. The stylus is only utilized in two ways, both of which are tedious. First, the use of the stylus for getting items out of the knapsack by tapping on them and dragging them is frustratingly time-consuming and slow. Of course, the other option is to use the standard button configuration on the DS to pull out items. This significantly faster and better option becomes even slower than using the stylus, due to the staggering number of items the characters keep in their inventory. Therefore, the only option left to gamers is to use the stylus, as poor a choice as that is.

The second way the stylus is used is to touch and brush all livestock – the player’s dog, cat, sheep, ducks, chickens, and cows. To milk cows and sheer sheep also requires the stylus. To perform these various actions, the player rapidly rubs the stylus up and down over the animal. While the idea makes sense, it is not particularly enjoyable. In fact, it becomes downright annoying because whether it’s touching, brushing, milking, or sheering your animals, it is always the exact same motion.

In addition, in order to get bigger produce (such as milk or wool) from the animals, the gamer has to get a certain number of hearts. And getting a certain number of hearts requires rubbing the stylus as fast as possible in a certain time limit. After playing for a few days and actively trying to take the best care of one’s animals, the gamer’s hands will be beyond sore and stiff. Of course, the gamer can sheer or milk their animals without the stylus, but the products-the milk and wool-will never upgrade to a higher level. The gamer will be stuck shipping off small milk and small wool for a much cheaper price. Oh, and once the products are leveled up, they don’t stay leveled up. For example, even if the gamer gets a medium milk once with the stylus, that does not mean the gamer can then look forward to getting medium milk without the stylus. As a result, most gamers will only do the minimal requirements needed to keep their animals from dying (feeding and occasionally milking).

That’s it for utilizing the stylus. Sadly, the stylus is barely implemented at all, and when it is implemented, it actually makes the game play worse, not better. On the same topic of game play, be forewarned: there are often freezing glitches in this game, so save often. Now, every Harvest Moon game has its glitches, so I was prepared to overlook some small issues. This game, though, has some of the most ridiculously large glitches to date, including the ability to get one million dollars just by hiring the harvest sprites to fish in a certain season, and the inability to marry the Witch Goddess and even the Harvest Goddess in the US version. It is mind-boggling why Natsume allowed the game to ship with such glitches in the core of the game itself.

The graphics on Harvest Moon DS fare better under scrutiny than the game play, with the portraits of the townspeople and the townspeople sprites themselves slightly more detailed than the Harvest Moon: Back to Nature for PS1, but the same or perhaps a little less developed then in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (for GameBoy Advance).The graphics are certainly not among the DS’s most beautiful. Then again, they aren’t among the system’s ugliest, either. All in all, the graphics are quite detailed and clear, especially for a Harvest Moon game (Harvest Moon isn’t exactly revered for its amazing graphical finesse). The sound, while nothing any more outstanding than the graphics, still fits the game nicely, with the ability to buy songs a clever inclusion in Harvest Moon DS.

So, is Harvest Moon DS worth a play? I would say you miss nothing by skipping out on this entry. This is especially true for newbies. There are much better entries n the series that better highlight Harvest Moon’s strengths. Magical Melody for GameCube or Friends of Mineral Town for GameBoy Advance come to mind. While the core concept of Harvest Moon is a sound one, the game play is starting to get stale. As the updates in the Harvest Moon series get more and more frequent, I find myself wishing Natsume would slow down, take more time, and make a more innovative entry. This isn’t it.