Harvest Moon (Nintendo DS)

In this game you grow crops andlook after livestock and if you do well are rewarded It is a fantastic game but its not very well explained and we felt very frustrated with it at first. Then we realised taht unlike a lot of other games you must read the manual because the tutorial in the game is hard to accass. Growing the crops is fun and easy - its really exciting when you get animals, chickens are the best when you first begin raising livestock because they dont need as much work as cows and sheep. It takes a while to work out how to use the inventory, but overall its a great game. The graphics are really cute and you get to have girlfriends etc (one of your success rewards).We go back and play this game quite a lot , so it has longevity, it just took us a while to get the hang of it.

It's decent introduction for the first ds HM game. It's really a 2D version of forget-me-not valley. With new bachelorettes, Lumina the daughter from the mansion all grown up. Then the magical girls: Leia a mermaid who is inside the basement of Daryell, Keria a sleeping beauty inside the 255th floor of the 3rd mine, Witch Princess and the Harvest Goddess (you nees to rescue 60 sprites).I didn't like the idea of rescuing 60 sprites to get married. It will require constant grinding. It's probably introduced to stop players zooming through the game. It does use the touch screen, petting your animals, brushing, milking and shearing.You've got more room in your bag now instead the same item being in different slot now all in the same slots e.g. 99 weeds.

After about a week the game would freeze almost constantly. The only option was to turn off my Gameboy and start again. But this becomes a pain after the 5th time. So I gave up.

I bought this as a birthday present for my little cousin, who loved Animal Crossing (As do I!). I thought this would be a fun and similar to the sweetness of Animal Crossing however my cousin (Age 6) took an instant dislike to it, there was far too much reading, page after page of un-important information he soon got fed up and didn't want to play. I decided I would set it up for him. Just like him I soon got fed up of pressing next again and again, the dialogue is so boring and unnecessary. Once I got past this, I started my life as a farmer, at first this was fun but after a few hours I soon got bored of HAVING to plant, water, harvest, fetching materials, spending HUGE amounts of money on upgrading with little benefits. This game became a chore and is very REPITITIVE. Animal crossing is a much better game with cuter graphics and a better way of life !I notice the manufacturers description suggests that building up your relationship with the members of the valley is a calm relaxing aspect of Harvest moon. HOWEVER you need money to get these character to like you and to get money you have to WORK. Also I find the idea of finding a wife a little strange to think of my 6-year-old cousin playing,(I know it's innocent but I still think it's a little weird).I probably should have looked into this game a little more before I bought it, but all the reviews I looked at said it was great fun, my advice is to think about who you're buying it for and do they mind doing repetitive tasks ?

Oh so addictive. This game in GBA version was one of my favourite games next to Pokemon and it consumed hours of my life. I got it again because I've been stressed lately and found this game to be an enjoyable, methodical timesink to use as a stress reliever. It is very fun, you do build up slowly.The premise, you own a farm with a set of tools, enough seeds for a small back garden and a can do attitude. You have to turn that into a thriving multi billion pound business (profit margins and costs are insane in this game). You build up year by year getting more land, getting more products, better products and then chickens, then cows etc. The game is very non linear, if you have the money then you can get whatever you want. There are only a few very sensible requirements like having access to home improvement facilities before you start expanding your home, or having an animal shed before you buy a cow.There are some issues:1. can get a bit grindtastic, it gets very repetitive in places when you are trying to make money and the rounds drain all your stamina so you can't do anything else for the rest of the day2. some things are very hard to get hold of and weird logic for example certain types of ores and tools which are non essential you will need to look up online how to get them3. the game can on occasion be a tad unfair. I had a three day torrential storm and all my crops and livestock were killed when they were safe in their shed because I didn't use the right building material. The game wouldn't let me leave the house in a storm. This has only happened once but the game can have some serious teeth.If i had the choice of this vs friends of mineral town for GBA I would do GBA but since I can get both this is enjoyable too.

Top notch game, worked perfectly for me.Mind you that this is the European version of the game, so the Sprite Casino only has the Card Matching game, not the Poker or Blackjack games, meaning that extorting the sprite casino out of those sweet sweet coins will take more effort and more time, since the Poker and Blackjack is so easy.

very happy with product, game is perfect and came with all paper inserts

A little frustrating to start with, not bad when you get going however it is long winded and the working days tend to fly past little too quick. The game is not straight forward to understand ( unless you are an avid gamer) and I would not recommend it to a young child under 5 years. Buying sheds and stables for your farm is very expensive and therefore takes you for ever to get any and until you have these you cannot buy any animals. On the whole a light hearted game and fairly amusing!