DS #2609: Harvest Moon DS: Island of Happiness (USA)

[virtualboy]

The gfx look kind of blah. The straight 2D ones were nicer...

 

[Razorwing]

I am a big Harvest Moon fan and have been playing this for an hour or so now and it is probably gonna be deleted from my SD card very shortly.

The touch screen controls have just ruined the whole HM experience, I mean whats so wrong with the D-Pad? I am finding simple tasks like weeding and clearing up logs/stones are taking twice as long as they should do just because I can't get the guy to face the right square etc.

Oh well guess I am back to waiting for Rune Factory 2 to come out in English

 

[deathfisaro]

If I played this is year 2000, I'd have loved it.

The economy is broken (Pay 120G for seeds, a couple days later 18 crops -16 on one day and 2 more the next day- give you over 6,000G. WTF?).
Not being able to walk on crops is so 20th century.
Picking up items (like pulling weed) take forever.
While you can move diagonally you can't take actions diagonally unless you're standing on that actual cell (unlike + directions, where you can perform actions one cell in front of you).
Every day all characters give you one useless dialogue, forcing you to talk to them twice if you want to use shops, flirt, or even just chit-chat.
Animal minigames are simply chores and not much of a minigame.
Loading is quite long, for example when you exit the shop screen you see a long black screen -the kind of loadings you see on optical media but not on carts-.
And finally, delivery box asking me "DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SHIP THAT? YES/NO" every single damn time is simply torture. Okay let's get this straight. In order to ship the item, you need to:
1) Touch menu
2) Touch backpack
3) Drag the item over to one of the 4 equip rings
4) Exit menu
5) Equip the item
6) Walk over to delivery box
7) Touch the delivery box
After 7 steps, the game wants to know if I want to ship that item. Hell, as if people can accidentally perform all 7 steps in the correct order and ship out a wrong item.


Being able to skip tutorials is a big plus +2 points there. (Although you still get harassed by "Do you really want to skip the tutorial? YES/NO")
The concept of developing an island is pretty cool, another point.

So overall, 3/10.

My all-time favorite is RF1. Yes ores are overly expensive and all kinds of limitations on dungeons were bad, but it's still better than RF2's first half.
(RF2's first half is almost pure HM. You grow crops, do sidequests, and get married.)

 

[NatsuMatto]

Gotta say I'm really disappointed that this game seems to suck. I'm a big HM fan, and put many hours into FOMT, RF, and Innocent Life on the PSP.

I'm not sure I want to even bother with the ROM after hearing the comments.

 

[Curley5959]

hmm, Good posts here, bad posts there.. Man I have to play this, Its already on my cart just gotta play it..

 

[lalalalala]

I don't like the touchscreen that much. It's hard to pick up stuff. And I don't understand why wild flowers are not combined like seeds. Argh. Forcing me to get the medium backpack.

How do you increase the stamina of the character? I barely hoed and watered 16 or so squares and it passed out. ARGH~

 

[NatsuMatto]

I don't like the touchscreen that much. It's hard to pick up stuff. And I don't understand why wild flowers are not combined like seeds. Argh. Forcing me to get the medium backpack.

How do you increase the stamina of the character? I barely hoed and watered 16 or so squares and it passed out. ARGH~

Eating the various "Grasses" (which look like hearts for some odd reason) will increase stamina. There are usually at least 4-5 to be found on the beach and around the shop area.

I don't know if anyone noticed this yet, but the controls are a little easier if you use a combination of the stylus AND the d-pad. The 4 equipment items are mapped to each of the four directions on the d-pad, so you can move with the stylus then tap "left" (or whatever) to use the hoe/watering can/etc.

The inventory system is bunk... why I have to manually stack like items is beyond my understanding.

Not sure how much longer I'm going to stick with it.

 

[Carnivean]

I don't like the touchscreen that much. It's hard to pick up stuff. And I don't understand why wild flowers are not combined like seeds. Argh. Forcing me to get the medium backpack.

How do you increase the stamina of the character? I barely hoed and watered 16 or so squares and it passed out. ARGH~

Eating the various "Grasses" (which look like hearts for some odd reason) will increase stamina. There are usually at least 4-5 to be found on the beach and around the shop area.

I don't know if anyone noticed this yet, but the controls are a little easier if you use a combination of the stylus AND the d-pad. The 4 equipment items are mapped to each of the four directions on the d-pad, so you can move with the stylus then tap "left" (or whatever) to use the hoe/watering can/etc.

The inventory system is bunk... why I have to manually stack like items is beyond my understanding.

Not sure how much longer I'm going to stick with it.

I was also finding it somewhat nicer when just moving around hitting L and tapping in the direction I desired ocassionally.

 

[deathfisaro]

Using touchscreen to plow or water crops isn't that bad. What makes it really bad is inability to walk over sprouts/crops.

When watering seeds, I stand on the middle row or column, water 3 directions, go one step forward, water 3 directions, go one step forward and water 2 remaining directions.
But watering 8 non-seeds are more than double the hassle compared to watering 9 seeds.

 

[reimu]

This game does have its annoyances, sure. You can't walk over your crops, shipping things is annoying because you have to put the objects into the four slots instead of scrolling and the game is really really hard. Despite these annoyances, they are really easy to get over. I like a lot of things in this game that weren't in previous games. I LOVE how you can have four equipped items at one time. Very useful. It was a pain on the other games to scroll through a huge list of items to get what you want. I love the cute 3D sprites and the new characters are awesome.

Vaughn. The game is way more challenging than previous HM's but I like it like that. It gives me motivation to plant crops instead of just running around and trying to get all the guys/girls to like me xD. It feels so good to see my farm gradually build up from nothing and the hunger bar makes the game feel more realistic.. kinda like the sims. Overall, no matter what people say. I LOVE THIS GAME. Period.

For any true fan of the series. You won't be disappointed.

 

[Garamir]

Meh, the controls are fine, they just took a little time to get adjusted to. In some ways, it's faster then old harvest moons. Only things that annoy me are the damn confirmations for putting feed in the bin or shipping things. Oh, and seemingly random stacking. Otherwise, It's still a great harvest moon experience.

 

[NatsuMatto]

Gotta say I'm really disappointed that this game seems to suck. I'm a big HM fan, and put many hours into FOMT, RF, and Innocent Life on the PSP.

I'm not sure I want to even bother with the ROM after hearing the comments.

Hmmm, I thought Innocent Life was pretty bad. Playable, but nothing compared to RF. It was very nice, lots of eye candy, but I thought it was just.... bland.

To be fair, Innocent Life came out long before Rune Factory.

I agree that "IL" got a little boring to me, but I think that was because the game wanted to be more of an "exploration" game rather than a traditional Harvest Moon game that focused on farming and romance. Sure, you had a farm in "IL," but it very quickly becomes incredibly easy to maintain your farm with barely any effort (the robot helper, for example). Not having any romance angle in the story also gives you a lot less to do, and while the nearby town seemed like it would offer lots of opportunities for interaction, there really wasn't much going on there.

That said, I actually really loved the visuals in the game-- the characters, the buildings, the scenery... I thought it was very impressive at times. I loved the "buggy" car, the tent that allowed you to sleep anywhere, and a lot of other things. Like Rune Factory, you spent a lot of time in this game going through ruins... although there are no monsters or anything to fight (probably why it was a little less exciting).

Like most HM games, I played it for a good number of hours but ended up quitting before getting to the end (Friends of Mineral Town is the only HM game I've actually finished). Still, I had a good time with "IL" for what it was worth.

I've spent a bit more time with ISLAND OF HAPPINESS, but I am not really getting into it at all. There's no way this is faster than other HM games, and the return to impassible crops is a huge step backwards.

 

[reimu]

Meh, the controls are fine, they just took a little time to get adjusted to. In some ways, it's faster then old harvest moons. Only things that annoy me are the damn confirmations for putting feed in the bin or shipping things. Oh, and seemingly random stacking. Otherwise, It's still a great harvest moon experience.

If you drag the item from your hands to the shipping bin/feed bin you don't get the confirmation screen

The items are only stacked if they are exactly the same in rank, you can stack them manually but the items stack to the lowest rank in the stack. Hope that helps.

 

[Garamir]

If you drag the item from your hands to the shipping bin/feed bin you don't get the confirmation screen

The items are only stacked if they are exactly the same in rank, you can stack them manually but the items stack to the lowest rank in the stack. Hope that helps.

Oh. That makes sense. It's still annoying, but at least I understand why it does that.

 

[Law]

Messed about with this in No$GBA got a bit earlier, didn't get too far in though. Walls of text all over the place.

Moving around didn't seem that bad, though. Maybe if I put it on my flashcart and play more of it I'll see more of the problems, though.

 

[Lametta]

It's kinda boring even for a HM lover like me. Controls are too messy and I still have to figure out where the building materials go... it's impossible to put them in the building for materials

I guess I'll get rid of it soon waiting for Rune Factory 2 in english.

 

[Prime]

This game starts off so slow >_>

 

[shakirmoledina]

they need to come up with something interesting like mining for HM:FOMT
building stuff is just not working

 

[Curley5959]

This is ok, I guess.. I need to get more in depth worth it though.. Maybe a 2 hour trip would do it..

 

[wackygoose]

wont load on my R4 using the latest fw