Filed under: DS
Since I’ve bought Harvest Moon – Back to Nature for the Playstation, I’m a fan of this series. Later when Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown was released, I also bought it, and played it. This is game was pretty awesome. Now a few years later after some games like: Harvest Moon – A Wonderfull Life (GC) and the Special Edition of HM – AWFL… a new one was released. In March 2007 the gates open for a new Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon DS. What a shi**y game.
Someone of you might wonder why the heck I review this game so late. Well this have the reason that I bought other games for the NDS and was fully satisfied with: Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown.
So now here comes the game. You start like always. You choose your name… the name of your farm… the name of your dog and (since HM – AWFL) the name of your cat. Seriously… who needs a cat? Isn’t it better to choose between a dog and a cat like in HM – AWFL? Well… the dog looks like a cat but… anyway. So after you finished with the name thing, you can see how the Goddess and a stupid witch are fighting against each other. Somehow the witch was able to turn the Goddess into stone and let her disappear. In addition to this, she let also the little dwarfs disappear. After her rage was over she realized that she now have made a mistake and choose you to find the dwarfs. Yeah that’s right she did something wrong and like always you have to take the rap for somebody.
Now when the story is clear, maybe the witch tells you how to get those dwarfs back… the answer is no. Just no. You don’t get an advice what to do. Just one sentence: “Grow some vegetables or get a girlfriend or something like that”. Wow… what a nerve! So you can compare the situation with like this. Take a three year old kid, several books about quantum physics, Einsteins theory of relativity and a white room. Just throw the kid in the white room, give him the books and the theory and say to him:” Solve this! You’ll have much time to do this!”. Seriously… when you don’t played HM – AWFL, you’re f*cked. You don’t know the characters , but they know you well, you can’t see in which house you can buy which things (in additon they don’t have opening and closing times on their doors), and you have to do secret things to unlock some features. The characters are from the Forget-me-not Valley and from Mineraltown. But this is only in the US Version. Yes you’ve read right. The possibility to link or combine with HM – FOMT isn’t given in the european version of the game. That means: I have to import this game from America or order it in a shop like Gamestop only to combine both games? Even some minigames are’nt usable for the Europeans e.g. Blackjack. But in both versions it is NOT possible to marry the Godess. Yeah now, without these features, I can’t wait to play this game! The Gameplay is very tricky. On the NDS you have nine, yes nince, buttons to choose from. So why don’t the try to use every button? I mean, seriously in HM – FOMT for the GBA you have: six buttons. That’s three buttons less than the NDS have.And why I write about this? Because you only use like four buttons. Select isn’t in use and with the L button you can whistle for your dog and cat. They tried to use the touch-pad to make it more easy for you to sort objects in your bag or switch through the menu. Start is the Pause button instead of opening the menu like in every other game of the series.Then there’s one more thing which doesn’t make any sense in my eyes. In the menu, which you control with the touch-pad by the way, you can select that you can’t use the stilus. Seriously, was it such a hard decision to let this thing completely away?
Like in every HM game you go from A to B, grow this, harvest that and pour those plants.It’s Harvest Moon. But the time is running much faster than in HM – FOMT. That means: When you finished pouring your plants, the day is like over. To make it more difficult the guy you play is a real p*ssy. After a few time swinging his Tools, he collapse or get sick. Yeah! What a man! The woman will scramble to get you!
My fazit: Okay the game has some cool stuff, like link to my HM – FOTM… which I can’t use because I’m a European. Nice. But Seriously? I hate this game! Really I hate it! If you want to hear a second opinion: If you want to save costs, buy Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown. Ist much more fun and pretty much easier.
