Harvest Moon DS: Sunshine Islands

I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed this game. As much as I recalled from the past, I had assumed that I barely spent a year ingame. But I loaded up my game recently and found that I was almost at the end of Year 2, with many accomplishments. This Harvest Moon game has a relatively comfortable feel to it. The world is not so big that you will take a whole day to go around (like AP), but it is not so small that it will take you little time to go around (like FoMT). The characters are not the most original out there of a HM game, but they do appear lively enough to talk to. A negative aspect well known about the series is the Sun/Water planting system, but I found little issues with it. Really, it only matters if you raise crops more than take care of your animals; I was more of the animal farmer anyways. Moneymaking is fairly easy as well. You can expect having little money in your first season, but it'll take off summer and soforth. This game is promising, but I understand why this can be seen as one of the boring games of the franchise. Personally, it will keep you occupied for a month or two.

The game is by no means 'bad.' It is fun to watch your farm grow, the slow pace makes progress feel all the more rewarding, and it is certainly nothing if not addicting. The downsides, however, are many. The events feel few and far between, as well as their actual impact seeming generally trivial. Taking care of everything between events falls into a sense of tedium instead of fun. Just because you're raising crops, and the pace is intentionally slow doesn't mean you should feel like you're doing a menial task instead of playing a game. There are other flaws. The game feels sort of like it's kind of cobbled together. There are visual glitches and hiccups here and there that make this evident, especially regarding item screens and cooking in particular. In terms of mining, you have to learn that you can turn without moving while charging, because you will find yourself falling to your doom if so much as your little toe touches a pitfall. Aesthetically, I personally find the graphics inexplicably bothersome. In generally, the whole production, while fun to an extent and a good way to pass some time, feels vacant and lacking.