How do you feel about Harvest Moon DS?

Nintendo DS [ Game Guide ]
Lynzahai
New Seedling
New Seedling
Posts: 5
Joined: Jun 22, 2022 7:07 am

Post  Posted:

I just picked it up to fill my collection, and the more I play it, the more...strange it feels. The medals you have to win in a casino, that you cant access until you find the right sprite, that you cant utilize until you find all the sprites of the same color, that you don't know where they are because their locations are often randomly generated, that you NEED to utilize because the games gives your character virtually no stamina, which can be superseded once you have 200,000G for an item that you can only buy on certain days of the week? All because there are no Power Berries?!
You see where I'm going? A lot of strangeness in this one, what do you think? Do you like this one? Do you not? :-|
Terdin
Growing Garden Gnome
Growing Garden Gnome
Posts: 98
Joined: Aug 20, 2021 1:58 am

Post  Posted:

You can use the medals to hire sprites as soon as you've found even one sprite in a team. No need to find all of them. There are also accessories and seeds that can be bought for medals. And I've rarely used the watering team. My most hired team is the fishing team. Besides, only three of the sprites are located at random. The rest have specific locations, or specific amounts of doing a task.

Sure, the first few days or weeks are difficult, but once the watering can has been upgraded a bit so it can water a larger area, it takes a lot less stamina and time. For most of Spring Year 1, I use the yellow grass and bamboo shoots to recover, which one depends on how much stamina has been lost, and how much fatigue has been gained. Once I can afford it, I get a few turbojolt XL, and bodigizer XL from Van, to make digging for trinkets in the mine easier. The save and reload trick is key to earning money there.

Some of the strangeness of it, are stuff I like, like being able to wake up completely refreshed the next day by working until fainting from exhaustion (only do this before midnight, or you lose a day). Being able to get many large bottles of milk from each cow. And being able to fish from inside a building to keep time paused.

I did buy the kappa hat as soon as I could, as it lets me level up the milker and clippers faster, by reducing fatigue drain to 1 point even after 10 pm.

There's also a bunch of stuff you can use to create your own challenges. It's not like you run out of stuff to buy after a year or two, unless you happen to activate the billion G glitch.
User avatar
FarmingForDaysMan
Snazzy Sheep Sweeper
Snazzy Sheep Sweeper
Posts: 249
Joined: Jan 10, 2022 5:57 am

Post  Posted:

HMDS is one of my favorites! I’ve played both DS and DS Cute, and I like both games (Unfortunately I had to throw away my copy of DS Cute). If you haven’t already, I’d recommend playing Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life or Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (the GameCube games and DS games share mostly the same characters with the exception of the special marriage candidates). Cher has an excellent and very helpful guide on this game. If you’re referring to the watering team, then I can tell you that you won’t find any of those sprites on your farm land.
Boogle
New Seedling
New Seedling
Posts: 17
Joined: Jul 11, 2022 6:13 pm

Post  Posted:

HMDS is one of my most favorites! The marriage candidates all have such interesting stories, and the gameplay is pretty straightforward. Being so complex, and yet straightforward, is one of my favorite qualities of it! It used to be my favorite game, now it is my favorite HM game (I’ve played 8?…) and second favorite game. If you are looking for something a little less confusing, but still incredibly fun, you should try Rune Factory 3. This one is a step up, because your wife and animals actually help you. Also, the characters are better put together I think. Also, as a side note, I actually became more intrigued in HMDS as time went on, there’s always more to discover. I am sad at the amount of glitches though, some rendering festivals useless. Overall, the best HM game (besides *maybe* SNES), and second best Marvelous/Natsume game.
Post Reply