Harvest Moon has been an
extremely long-running series with many sequels and spin-offs. You’ve most
likely at least heard of Harvest Moon at some point, and have probably even
played one of them. Its simplicity and charm has allowed it to survive this
long, and the newest release, Harvest Moon DS, continues to keep the formula
intact while expanding the gameplay.
The "point" of this
Harvest Moon is to rescue the lost Harvest Sprites that have been banished to a
different dimension by a prankster witch. I use the term "point" loosely, since
the true point of Harvest Moon is to expand your farm any way you prefer. While
the game is fairly open-ended as to how you expand your farm, you’ll find that
that’s really all you do in a Harvest Moon. This one isn’t much different. There
will be events or side objectives that you can go for, but they usually involve
your farm in some way as well.
The biggest and most
obvious difference in Harvest Moon DS versus is the new menu system. All of your
stats, tools, bag contents, and a town map can be accessed from your touch
screen without interrupting gameplay. You also have a personal TV with stations
run by rescued sprites that can be accessed on the touch screen as well.
The gameplay of Harvest
Moon DS should be very familiar to anyone who’s played a Harvest Moon in the
past. You start with a small house on a plot of land. With your trusty rucksack
and simple tools you can begin to clear your land and collect plants, rocks, and
lumber. After gathering enough material you can build additional structures on
your property, expand your house, or even just sell them to make some money.
Everything you do in
Harvest Moon DS drains your stamina, a staple of the series. The main character
has different animations at different levels of exhaustion. If you overwork him
in a single day, he will pass out, forcing one of his neighbors to drag him back
home. The bad news is that you lose a percentage of your money when you let this
happen.
Once your plot of land
has some clear space you can plant crops. Seeds are purchased through the
supermarket or from various secret vendors. You can also build additional
buildings on your land to house chickens, cows, or even to store materials.
Once you’ve built a bird
or yodel house, you can own money-making pets. These include ducks, chickens,
sheep, and cows. These pets produce products that you can sell or cook with, and
can also be entered into tournaments or sold. No matter how you look at it,
though, they’re used to make more money. You can even buy an accessory from the
store that opens up a petting mini game on the touch screen. Succeeding in this
mini game will make your pets more happy, thus earning you more money with their
goods.
The Harvest Moon
calendar consists of four months: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Different
seasons mean different crops, and most crops die at the turn of the season. The
food you harvest from your crops will at first be primarily used as a means of
income, but Harvest Moon DS gives you more reason to keep the food you grow.
You can purchase a
kitchen, refrigerator, and various cooking tools in Harvest Moon DS. As you can
probably assume, the refrigerator is used to store the food you harvest to keep
room in your rucksack. The kitchen and cooking tools are used to cook different
recipes. These recipes come in extremely handy in Harvest Moon DS, since some
later activities require a lot of stamina to complete.
The kitchen,
refrigerator, and various other household appliances can be purchased through TV
shopping as your house is expanded. Each sprite you save can help you in some
way or another, and some start their own television channel on your personal TV.
One particular channel offers items to purchase that you can’t find in the local
shops. Other channels will tell you about the weather, give you game tips, or
even hints on where to find the remaining sprites.
Other services offered
by the sprites include watering and harvesting your crops for you. The more
sprites you save, the more they can help. The tricky part to enlisting them,
however, is that you must play their casino games to earn their help. In the
casino you earn medals instead of money. You can always buy more medals with
your money if you run out, but with medals you can purchase the help of the
sprites, or special rare items (including one-of-a-kind seeds and recipe books).
As I stated before, the
true objective of Harvest Moon DS is to rescue these missing Harvest Sprites,
and eventually their princess leader. Fortunately, rescuing most of these
sprites doesn’t require work outside of your usual farm maintenance. Certain
sprites will be released from harvesting, watering crops, gathering materials,
and even eating.
In addition to tending
to your farm, you can find yourself a girlfriend in town, participate in cooking
tournaments, enter your pets into competitions, or even explore the mine to the
north of town. All these activities are pretty trivial, but exploring the mine
will most likely take up a lot of your time in Harvest Moon DS (especially in
winter, when you can’t grow any crops). Not only does mining earn you pretty
decent money, but you will gather the needed supplies to upgrade your tools as
well as unlike some of the hidden items in the game.
But the mines are not to
be taken lightly. The first one that opens up seems pretty tame. Basically you
explore one room at a time, breaking rocks or digging up the ground for items.
As you explore you will stumble upon holes that drop you deeper into the mine.
Each floor has a staircase to escape with, but going as deep as you can is the
whole point. The deeper you go, the better the spoils. The first mine only has
10 floors, but getting to the 255th floor of the second mine wasn’t nearly as
easy. Especially considering the second mine had enemies.
Enemies in the mines
take the form of black versions of the animals you’ll find on your farm. These
enemies drain your stamina when they hit you. And considering you’re also
breaking rocks and digging as you go through these mines, reaching the final
floor in a 255 floor mine without passing out was a chore. There are 4 mines
total, and each one gets progressively longer.
Harvest Moon DS is
extremely addicting. Just like previous Harvest Moon titles, and the popular
Animal Crossing, for some reason living a normal life of chores in a video game
is strangely appealing. There were times I couldn’t put Harvest Moon DS down for
hours. Between raising your animals, upgrading your farm, harvesting crops,
exploring the mines, courting a girlfriend, gathering materials, fishing, and
cooking there is always something to do. And since Harvest Moon’s gameplay is
simple enough for beginners, now is as good a time as any to see why this series
is so popular.
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Review Scoring Details for Harvest Moon DS |
Gameplay: 9.4
With so many things to
do, and easy-to-understand gameplay mechanics and goals, Harvest Moon DS is a
great game for any age group. Finding all the hidden items and features is
difficult enough to give the completists a run for their money, while other
gamers can have fun with what’s readily available.
Graphics: 9.0
I personally have a soft
spot for the look of the original SNES Harvest Moon, and Harvest Moon DS looks
exactly like that. Nice, clean sprites, good animation, and an overall charming
look.
Sound: 7.0
The tunes are subtle at
first, providing a great background to your hard farm work, but with every day
of a season having the same music it will most likely get on your nerves. The
sound effects don’t add a whole lot to the overall experience either, but are
still done well.
Difficulty: Easy
The hidden items and
tools are actually pretty difficult to get, but since they are technically
hidden, I don’t consider their requirements as part of the main gameplay.
Harvest Moon DS is an easy game, mostly because there are no time limits, you
can’t die, and you can’t really fail at anything. It’s all about doing what you
want and doing it at your own pace.
Concept: 7.5
Harvest Moons have been
coming out for years, so it was only natural it gets a turn on the DS. I’m just
glad it’s in the style of the classic SNES version, but with all the features
and options of the more recent versions.
Overall: 9.2
Having Harvest Moon on
the go is great. Being able to save anywhere makes it the perfect portable game,
and since there’s virtually no learning curve you can pick it up and play at any
time at all. Gamers that are happy with just tending to the farm will be
perfectly content, while gamers that crave more have access to much more than
that. This is one of those games that just about anyone can enjoy.
