Harvest Moon DS

THE BAD:
This game unfortunately has a few spelling errors as well as some glitches. One such glitch is that the game will randomly freeze.

SUMMARY:
At the beginning of this game you see a cut scene where the Witch Princess and the Harvest Goddess battle it out. I'm not going to tell what happens and ruin the fun though. Your game then begins. You start out with a farm and it's your job to work your way up. Like the past Harvest Moon games you grow crops and raise animals. In this game you can also mine for jewelery, gems, metal, and more. Once you've gotten yourself stable then you can focus on courting and marrying a girl. There are a few requirements to get married in this game.

This game allows you to marry five girls. (Lumina, Flora, Celia, Muffy, and Nami) As well as these girls there are special ones that you can marry as well that require some extra work to marry but can be worth it in the end. These special wives are the Harvest Goddess, the Witch Princess, a mermaid named Leia, and a mine princess named Keira. If you put Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town or More Friends of Mineral Town you can also have the option of marrying the girls from Mineral Town as well. After you are married you then have a child later on who grows as the game continues. This is only a small preview of what this game holds in store.

There are other extras as well. One example is after you save a cetain harvest sprite you can start to buy things from him. Some of these items are musical records. After unlocking another sprite you can listen to these records that have music from past Harvest Moon games.

After you save some of the working harvest sprites you can start to pay them to help you with jobs such as fishing, harvesting, taking care of the animals, and more. However, you don't pay with money. You pay with medals. To get these medals you can buy them or participate in the casino. You bet medals to win them. You can also spend these medals on items that can help you with work.

Harvest Moon DS, one of the best Harvest Moon games to date. I would recommend it to children of all ages.

SUMMARY:
Plotline~

There's the Goddess, pure good and loving, and the Witch Princess, who is intent on creating chaos and evil. Wait...doesn't that sound like the Wizard of Oz?

The plot is very unique compared to the other games of this series. In order to save the Harvest Goddess ((HG)) from the evil Witch Princess ((WP)), you must uncover and free 60 Harvest Sprites ((HS)).

AWL/AnWL~

Memories, or just plain lazy?

I'd say memories! Many, of not all of the same characters in Another Wonderful Life and A Wonderful Life make yet another appearance in this game! With the characters like Nina, Galen, Vesta, and so many more, this brings back the memories of your old AWL friends!

Graphics~

Unfortunately, the graphics leave much to be desired. Much like what we saw in FoMT, with the pixelated 2D graphics, it's very low-quality and unappealing.

However! This doesn't have any effect on gameplay and the overall quality of the game itself, and can therefore be ignored! Sometimes it's good to go back to the basics.

Marriage~

Oh yes, the ever-loving...marriage!

In order to be married, you need to recover 60 sprites. Seems easy, doesn't it? Some are harder than others, and some are simply a breeze to catch!

But what's this? Do I sense new bachelorettes? Yes!

With the addition of 4 "special" girls, players now have a choice between taking the easy way out, and playing hard-ball! These 4 special girls ((without giving too much detail and ruining the surprise!)) are much more difficult to marry than the ordinary girls, but it adds more excitement to the game!

All the same, there are still the ordinary girls. The main bachelorettes consist of Lumina, Muffy, Flora, and Celia!

Or, if you wish, you could marry one of the FoMT girls! However, it comes at a price: They're very hard to get, and the game will restart if you do!

Mutant plants!~

Out of all the things that can be said about the crops, the Giant Crops ((as they are commonly referred to)) are definitely the most interesting!

If you plant crops, there's a very, very small chance that one of them could turn out to be GIANT! It's so big, you need the help of the mayor and the sprites to pull it out for you! But don't worry, all that hard work will leave you with 10x the cash in the end!

Conclusion~

Yes, a lot of HM games are similar. Yes, after time they can get repetive and eventually boring. But yes, for a great time you'll have fun, and engulf yourself into the imaginary world of farming.

With such a different plot, interesting characters, new gameplay, and new bachelorettes, who couldn't resist this game?

THE BAD:
There are only a few bad things about this game.

1. Glitches that can ruin your game.
2. Doing the smallest things, can result in the villagers affection towards you to drop.
3. You lose your stamina quickly.
4. Some things are pointless, like the cat.

Now, there's not too many bad things about the game, right?

SUMMARY:
This game is one of the best out of the series if I must say.^^

This game starts off between a fight between the Harvest Goddess and the Witch Princess. Witch Princess puts a spell on her and she accidentally turns her into a statue, and the Harvest Goddess disappears.

Now that's when you come in! It's up to you to save the Harvest Goddess and rescue 101 Harvest Sprites. But don't worry, that's not the only thing you have to do!

You can fish, mine, talk to the villagers, have a family, and so many other things! But I hope you didn't expect that you wouldn't have to actually do any work? You'll have to work in different ways to earn some money! You can ship things or raise some animals. Fishing and mining can also help you.

There 48 different and unqiue people living in Forget-Me-Not Valley. Fourteen of those people are the girls who you can marry, one of them is a furry monster, another is a animated stuffed toy, four other people only appear if the Mineral Town girls are there, and 2 of them don't come in your game until you have been married and your family has a child. Then finally five of them are your marriage rivals.

Also, there are fourteen different girls in which you can pick from to get married. The 5 normal wives are Nami, Muffy, Celia, Flora, and Lumina. After them come the 4 special wives, the Harvest Goddess, Leia the mermaid, Witch Princess, and Keria. Then the 5 girls from Mineral Town, Popuri, Karen, Mary, Ann, and Elli. You'll need to connect to the GBA game to marry a Mineral Town girl. Also, there are certain requirements in order for you to get married, like for instance rescuing 60 Harvest Sprites.

Each time you rescue a Harvest Sprite, they will be able to help you in different ways on your farm. So, they aren't pointless.

Let me not get into too many details, let the rest be a surprise.^^ Well, I hoped my little review has helped you to decide whether or not you will buy this game. But of course I do recommend that you do.

THE BAD:
- Doesn't Have Online Mode.
- No costumization at all.
- You Are Always A Boy.
- No Easter Eggs.
- No Voice Acting.
- No Replay Value.

SUMMARY:
This game is very good, specially if you like different games that include farming, and taking care of a family.

This game has a storyline, even when the game is just about farming and family. The storyline has many fantastic elements, like the Harvest Sprites, the possibility to marry a God and a Witch. The story is very entertained. Young gamers and old gamers will enjoy this game. The elements of this game are beatiful. This game is different, perfect to relax.
The story is about you, a farmer that works in a normal farm, but one day, the Harvest Goddess and the Witch have a fight, and the fight made the Harvest Goddess and the sprites dissapear. Now you have to recover the Harvest Sprites while you live your normal life taking care of Animals, planting and harvesting.
Don't think this game is only about farming. You also have to keep your friendship with the people from the Town, and you can make optional tasks like help dig a mine, fishing contests, and more. You can organize your schedule in the game to accomplish everything you want. The town where you live is HUGE, so don't expect to accomplish everything in one day. Patience is a virtue in this game.
You also have to marry a girl. Depending on who you choose, you will see different events, and you will get a kid, too. When you marry, your wife will help you a bit in the farm.
It is not easy to get the girl you want. Depending on who you choose, you will need to give her different kind of gifts, and impress her more than your Rival. Yes, you have a rival, and if you don't get the girl you want soon, your rival will marry her, and you will need to choose a different girl.
Many events depend on how you progress in the game. For example, you may not enter the Duck Competence if you don't own a duck. You may see many events, and you may skip many.

The graphics are very good, Anime style. Everything is very detailed. The animals and persons are very well designed and detailed. The houses and buildings have simple decorations, but that's good. The town itself is very nice. It is beatiful how the dawn of the sun looks, very realistic.

The music is descent, it is not perfect. The music is very repetitive. You can choose which music you want to play. However, there aren't many options, but changing them frecuently keeps the music fresh. The music is the same everywhere, inside or outside the buildings.

The gameplay is very good. It uses the buttons and the touchscreen at the same time. You use the touchscreen to navigate through the menus, select the tools you will use, get tips from the sprites, and many more things. You also use it to pet your animals and clean them.
You use the buttons to use the tools, move around, and to do those general actions.

One import feature of this game is that you can choose one from a few girls to marry. Each has different attitude, likes different gifts, and treats you differently. Choose wisely! Some girls can be easy to conquer, and some others may take you extra effort and time to get.
Here is a list of girls you can marry and the difficulty:

• Celia - Easy.
  
• Nami - Medium.
  
• Muffy - Easy.
  
• Lumina - Easy.
  
• Flora - Medium.
  
• Leia - Hard.
  
• Harvest Goddess - Hard.
  
• Witch Princess - Hard.
  
• Keria - Hard.

THE BAD:
Along with the good there is also some bads about this game.
1. Way too many glitches. That can get very annoying and even ruin your gaming experiences.
2. There is no horse races and frisbee shoots like there was in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. Without these there is basically no point in handling your dog and horse.
3. The cat that you start out with is useless.
4. Whenever you throw anything on the ground such as weeds, flowers, wild items, or ores your affection with any of the valley's villagers will fall drastically.
5. Whenever a sick animal dies many of the villagers will grow to hate you and all of your hard work in raising friendships with them will be ruined.

SUMMARY:
Harvest Moon DS is one of the greatest games that Natsume has ever released. This isn't even a biased opinion I have heard from many other people who have played this that they love it and it can't get any better. I do have to disagree with that though but only because of one thing. This game has way too many glitches but it makes up for it with all of its new features.

Harvest Moon DS is close to the 9th game of it's series made and it's one of the best! It may even be the best, well it is in my opinion. Harvest Moon DS was released late in September of 2006. It was an instant success and sold amazingly with all of it's great new features and it's amazing plot line.

The game starts out with a constant battle between a new villager added in it known as the Witch Princess and the vastly known Harvest Goddess. Things heat up between them and the Witch Princess flys away fleeing to the Harvest Pond to try and escape her annoying fiend. She is without luck and the Harvest Goddess appears to once again annoy the worst out of her. The Witch Princess decides with not allowing this to go on so she tries and stops it but only to her horror she sees that she's turned the Harvest Goddess to stone.

If you have ever played Harvest Moon: Magical Melody the Harvest Goddess is too turned to stone in that one and since that game was made before this one I think that may have had an affect on why they put it in this game.

The Witch Princess quickly realizes what she has done and she tries again this time but to turn her back and again she screws everything up. The Harvest Goddess disappears out of no where to what we figure out is another world distant from this one. She figures out to herself that if she doesn't quickly do something to get the Harvest Goddess back she will have no one to play around and have fun with. So again the Witch Princess ruins everything by too sending all 101 Harvest Sprites to the other world with the Harvest Goddess to maybe try and bring her back.

This little story starts you out and now you have a purpose to playing this game. You must free all 101 Harvest Sprites along with the Harvest Goddess. The only ways to bring them all back is to do a number of things.

They consist of farming your land by growing crops, grass, flowers, etc. Meeting villagers and making friendships with them. Raise the affections of 14 legible bacherlorettes and get married to one, of your choice. Have a child and watch it grow up starting from a Toddler to a Child and lastly to a Teenager. Other things to past the time are fishing, collecting wild items that will be spread around the valley, cutting weeds that will appear as days go on, and raise money from all your findings to buy cattle, sheep, and poultry to raise along with your farm. But before you can even think of buying these animals you will need to have enough money to build a barn, shed, or coop for the animals to stay in.

This isn't all that you can do in Harvest Moon DS. You can even raise enough money to build newly added features such as a Mushroom shed used to grow mushrooms, and a Maker shed used for many other things. Oh and I almost forgot along with other Harvest Moon games this game too allows you to dig for Jems, Ores, and other minerals in the mines. These mines include of one entrance room and four separated mines that you will have to unlock on your own. In two of these mines you can find a lonely and very sleepy mine girl named Keria who too was newly added in with this game. She had never before appeared in any other Harvest Moon games.

There are many, many other features that go along in Harvest Moon DS but it would take way longer to add them all into this Review and I don't want to spoil everything for you guys! I have tried and summarized this the best I could so that everyone who reads this has a distinct idea of the game and I hope you do try and enjoy it. It's really a great game and if you miss the chance to play it your really missing out on a lot. Never think of it as anything less then it is and just enjoy the game the best you can.

THE BAD:
-Too many glitches (good and bad)
-Marriages
-You lose stamina too quickly
-Cannot be a girl or have a girl baby
-No dog or horse competitions

SUMMARY:
Yet again, another great Harvest Moon game! If you own a DS, have played any Harvest Moon or love RPG/Adventure's, this game is for you. Despite the glitches, this game has an amazing storyline, similar to that of Magical Melody for Gamecube.

In this game, you watch a cut-scene where the Witch Princess has cast a spell on the Harvest Goddess and she has disappeared. You're job is to find all the Harvest Sprites in order to gain her back. There are a total of 101 different sprites, found for completing various tasks throughout your farming life.

I found that locating just 60 of the harvest sprites a big challenge, and one that you must over come to marry any character. Like Magical Melody, sprites are found by completing various tasks throughout your farm career.

Like any Harvest Moon game, you are a male farmer, owning a plot of land with a man named Takakura. He will give you various pets throughout the game and save you when you pass out. Crops are a big portion of this game, and can be planted throughout the spring and fall seasons.

Other than crops, the only other real moneymaker is through animals. Farm animals include cows, sheep’s, ducks, and chickens. While you also will receive a dog, cat and horse. The down side is there is no horse festival or dog race like previous Harvest moon games.

The use of the touch screen is much in the long run, but not really a “fun” factor. You only use it to move around items in your rucksack, navigate through various menus and interactions with animals. With your animals, you are scored for points while using the touch glove. I found that my favourites were shearing sheep’s and just generally petting animals. Washing an animal was very hard and became frustrating at times.

Marriage is a major portion of the game. One of the reasons I had a hard time marrying was because there were so many characters! The characters you choose from have different personalities, likes and dislikes. One problem I had was locating 60 harvest sprites, which is very challenging. It becomes very expensive and time-consuming to unlock just one sprite.

My overall opinion after playing left me excited to play again. This game was a lot of fun, but like most RPG's, they can get boring. Try not to cheat with glitches and the game is more interesting. Overall, for my first Harvest Moon game, it was great! Recommended for any Harvest Moon fan. I would suggest however, renting it first. If the glitches annoy you, wait until the second instalment is released.

THE BAD:
There's various glitches that may do you both good and bad, but even so many players just tend to ignore the glitch for the fun of the game. Some of the glitch might not allow you to marry The Harvest Goddess or The Witch Princess causing some disappointments to some players.

SUMMARY:
Knowing the Harvest Moon series you already know you'd be hooked to the game once you put yours fingers on it. Once you get hold of the game it's likely that you can't let go of the game. It's an improvement from the hand held console games, in my opinion it's one of the best hand held Harvest Moon game. It seems unlikely that you'll get bored of the game easily. If you like RPG/Simulation games I'm sure that you'll take an interest on Harvest Moon DS.

You play as a young farmer in the game and you encounter a fight against The Witch Princess and The Harvest Goddess. The fight causes The Harvest Goddess turn into rock by an incorrect spell that The Witch Princess accidentally casted on The Harvest Goddess. Since, you some how show up after the occurrence The Witch Princess would ask for your help to regain The petrified Harvest Goddess. You'll now have to rescue 60 Sprites to restore the Harvest Goddess back to life.

The storyline of this Harvest Moon game really took a different attack on the players, but it seemed to interest many. The tasks on your way to marriage is quite difficult, but it's what gets you on trying until you're able to accomplish your goal.

THE BAD:
GLITCHES!
Finding the Harvest Sprites.
The "condition" to marrying a Mineral Town girl.
Same graphics as GBA versions.
The inability to have a female child.

SUMMARY:
Harvest Moon DS is the newest installment of the Harvest Moon series, released for the Nintendo DS. As with every game out there, there's the good and the bad. Fortunately, the good outweighs the bad for this game, but I'm afraid it isn't up to die hard Harvest Moon fans standards.

One thing I love about the game is the people. Every character is different and unique in their own way, with their own families, friends and personalities. Making friends with as many townsfolk as you can is always fun and entertaining, because you can learn a lot about a person by getting on their good side.

As with the majority of the Harvest Moon series, the game never ends. Once you've maxed out your farm to it's fullest, complete with a wife and full-grown son, you are still free to continue on forever (or until you get bored and decide to start a new game).

What would any good farmer be without a loving wife and children? In Forget-Me-Not Valley, there are a variety of girls to wed, each with their own distictive appearances for their children.

A major improvement to this game is the ability to further customize your farm! Instead of starting out with animal sheds and having Gotz add on to them, you can build it yourself and choose where you want it to go! You can even choose the material to build it out of! Beware... fodder and lumber get destroyed in storms easily.

Alright, you've read the good, now for the bad. One of the most annoying things about this game are the many glitches. The biggest glitch being that in 90% of the games, you are unable to marry the Harvest Goddess OR the Witch Princess, because the glitch interferes with the marriage requirements for them.

Another is that the game is constantly freezing up, which is common in many games for the Nintendo DS.

Even though the glitches are irritating, the most annoying bad thing about this game is that you must find 60 of the 101 Harvest Sprites to be able to marry ANYONE in the Valley. This is almost impossible to do within the first five years! I still haven't been able to marry purely because of this ridiculous requirement.

Even though the Mineral Town girls are also eligible for marriage if you connect either FOMT or MFOMT with this game, there's a condition to go with it. If you marry a girl from Mineral Town, you will move to Mineral Town with her and your game will END! Sorry, but no continuing to farm or having kids.

I also find that the graphics are boring, because they are the exact same as the GBA versions. I think the Harvest Moon experience would have been much more exciting if they had similar graphics to those of the Playstation 2 versions. This would have been a fresh change for HM players and would have improved Nintendo's reputation for terrible graphics.

Alright, the last con for Harvest Moon DS is the inability to have a female child. People who are familiar with the GBA versions know that you cannot choose the gender of your baby. In FOMT, you will always have a boy, and in MFOMT, you will always have a girl. However, in AWL SE for the PS2, it is possible to have either a female or a male child. Many players prefer to be able to choose their baby's gender or at least have it chosen randomly. Sadly, this is not so for Harvest Moon DS.

There you have it, the good and bad of Harvest Moon DS. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you should buy it or not, because in the case of this game, it is truly up to the player's personal preferences.

THE BAD:
The many glitches

SUMMARY:
Harvest Moon has been a block buster series ever since it's first release on the SNES. Now it continues it's legacy onto the DS in Harvest Moon: The Harvest Sprite Station, or just Harvest Moon DS.

Harvest Moon DS sets off with a fight scene between the Harvest Godess and the Harvest Witch. The Harvest Witch then accidently casts the wrong spell which petrifies the Harvest Goddess. She then teleports the Harvest Goddess and all 101 Harvest sprites Away to the Valley. That is where you come in, you must collect all 101 Harvest sprites and return the Harvest Goddess to her former self.

This game takes place in the same location as "Forget me not valley", with all of your favorite characters, plus your favorites from Mineral Town, only if you have either "Harvest Moon friendsof Mineral Town" or "Harvest Moon more friends of Mineral Town"

The main good aspects of this game is the replayability, if your bored with your game, restart and marry another women, also try different techniques to gather money.

This game makes good use of the touch screen in where you use it wash, pat, milk/sheer your animals. IT also holds your rucksack/map/farm details etc.

The only problem to hold against this game is the glitches, the main 2 glitches that can really annoy you is one, the game will freeze while transitioning screens and that sometimes your save file will be unreadable, so I suggest saving frequently and in both slots.

Apart from the glitches aside, this game is a great sequel in this game series and is a must buy for all Harvest Moon fans alike. I do suggest getting this game, but just make sure you save freuqently.