Harvest Moon DS

Harvest Moon DS - (DS)
Developer: in-house
Format: DS
Genre: action

It's a bit like having a farm in your pocket

This is another cult, in-the-know title that ports so well to the handheld consoles. You're either up with the Harvest Moon franchise or find the idea of micro managing some cutesy Manga-lite characters as they make things grow, totally perplexing.

In the Harvest Moon world, things such as BSE and turkey-flu don't get a look in. The most blood rage you'll see here is if you nick your finger while closing a farm gate. Start off with a basic homestead in Forget-Me-Not Valley complete with a few chickens, a handful of seeds and a whole lot of dreamy hope for a prosperous future. Then build it up over a period of 30 game years, adding silos and chicken sheds, wooing the local farm girls, finding lost harvest sprites and the ultimate; marry and have a baby while the fruits of your labour blossom and bloom around you.

If you've read this far, you're probably already converted. So what's the DS version got to offer? More of the same, simple and idyllic excellence BUT this is part of the problem and Harvest Moon falls down at the first muck-spreading hurdle. There's just too little invention here, little to push the game on from its PlayStation, SNES and GBA outings. There's an evil Witch Princess who's throwing a spanner into this agricultural works by zapping the Harvest goddess and her 1001 sprites and every corner of the HM world holds mini games, cookery contests, crop festivals and plot secrets but there's a woeful lack of use of the second DS screen and the potential of the touch-screen facility. You can get away without ever really using the stylus altogether and that's a shame. If you've played it on the GBA - you'll find little additional to attract you.

To view more images, click here