Nintendo DS Video Games

The islands are in peril! Years ago, a powerful earthquake struck the Sunshine Islands. In Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, it's up to the player to raise the sunken islands by finding the magical Sun Stones. Raise the islands to meet new characters, harvest new crops, and befriend animals such as ducks, monkeys, and badgers. In Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, players rejoin all of the beloved characters from Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, and get to meet a number of new friends as well. Players will grow and harvest crops, care for animals, mine, fish, and compete in festivals in their quest to restore the Sunshine Islands to their former glory. With a little luck, they may even find true love and start a family along the way.

User Reviews about Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands

Amazing game, can't put it down, easily the deepest and most entertaining Harvest Moon so far. Love the DS, love this game! -- Best Harvest Moon So Far

"Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands" is much more challenging than the former "Island of Happiness" game. This is because I sense a lot of structure in the game. The game's weather patterns are set a week ahead, so it's hard to cheat, making it fair to others.
Still, there's not a whole lot of tedious work, since your crops don't need a lot of water. Although you will have to work up to a higher experience level in which to obtain better quality items to make more money, so it's not as easy and random as "Island of Happiness."
The game forces you to work in all areas of the game mining, fishing, cooking, farming, and gathering to be able to move on in other areas. For example, you will need minerals in the mining area to make a machine that converts milk into cheese(which you can sell for more money)! The game's different aspects all mesh together in this way, creating a feeling of accomplishment. Besides that, you'll be trying new things in the game!
This game is extremely enjoyable for a mellow player like me, but is not recommended for people who demand action from video games.
-- Challenging Yet Fun

very good game play. and a lot more fun things to do. best harvest moon game yet. -- harvest moon sunshine islands

This game follows the Harvest Moon formula without deviating much, for better or worse. The fishing, mining, animal and friendship systems are simple and unimaginative. They include the bare minimum of interaction, and while the characters are more appealing than ever, the character development is as skimpy as always. The few highlights are the stylus-based mini-games with the animals, which add a little spice to caring for them, and the more complicated weather system for crops, which absolutely must be accompanied by an FAQ if you hope to grow anything beyond the most simple crops.

The gameplay is lengthened and slowed considerably by artificial barriers, like unprecedentedly high prices for services (such as home and farm upgrades, unlocking new areas, and the like) and a point system for the farming, mining and fishing. The Harvest Moon games are, at their heart, management games, and for me the fun has always been the knowledge that if I plan well enough - utilizing every square of space on my farm efficiently and building friendships diligently - I can get ahead. That just can't happen in this game. No matter how well you do, you have to crawl along at the game's pace and accept that you will not be able to advance until you've met the game's arbitrary point system.

If it doesn't do a whole lot right, though, it also doesn't do a lot wrong. It's managed to keep me playing, despite being rather jaded with the series, and the slow pace works for a portable game, since you can leave it for a few days and pick it up later without worrying about forgetting what you were doing. It's worth playing for a fan of the series, and may be great for someone that likes the game's style, but hasn't played any of the past Harvest Moon games, and so can't see the features that were improved with past games and left out in this one.

The one black mark I really have against the game is the racism. It's unintentional, but it's there. There's an exotic Asian woman in elaborate clothing from the mysterious "Far East," where "everyone dresses like this." And one of the two dark-skinned people in the game is a primitive savage, who speaks broken English, lives in a hut, and wears tiger-striped animal furs and spends his days hunting. (Think of a cross between old racist caricatures of a bushman and Native American, like you might see in an old 50s movie.) Most players might not notice this, but it made me uncomfortable and I could have done without it.

-- It's Another Harvest Moon Game

My opinion is biased, as I've played just about every one of these games.

Pen tool- Unlike Island of Happiness, you aren't bound to the pen, which was annoying. BUT! You have to switch in and out of it, and once you're used to how it works in IoH, it seems sort of pointless.

Otherwise, it's almost the same game, just with more stuff and without the trouble of having to find every single person (that was a good experiment, bad in practice) and they give you wheat and rice to cook with from the beginning. It's like they fixed everything many things that were annoying about IoH but also made it feel like an expansion rather than a remake.

It's still not as good as older titles, but it's a wonderful addition to the series.

-- Better than Island of Happiness