Harvest Moon- Island of Happiness

Harvest Moon Island of Happiness is a part of the Harvest Moon franchise. It is however, a bit different. The player can choose to play as a boy or girl (i played as a boy so teh review is from that perspective)

In Island of Happiness, your character is shipwrecked on an island. There, he meets old man Taro, who gives him a farm and tells him to grow crops, raise animals and other farming duties. As the player reaches specific goals or does specific actions, new people come into the island. The user also has to build bridges, roads etc. on the island.

I found this game a lot more diffficult than the previous Harvest Moon games where the goal was just to farm, make money and court girls. In IOH, the player is expected to spend all his hard-earned money in building roads etc. Even the festivals don't happen unless a bridge is built. And these constructions and not cheap at all.

The player's health is very bad too. Even before I plough and water two 3x3 patches, the player runs out of stamina and collapses. His stamina does not increase in the course of the game, either. Only after the diner and cafe, things improve a bit.

Most of the love interests and not on the island in the beginning (with the exception of Natalie). Bringing them on the island is pretty hard and on top of that, if you don't do something for a month, the people leave. This was the worst part. After I went through the trouble of getting all of them, they leave!



Making money is pretty hard at the beginning but it gets easier later on. Due to the absence of Harvest Sprites, all the work of watering and everything has to be done by the player throughout the game which was another major drawback of this game.

Thankfully, the love interests of both the girl and the boy look cute. I found it difficult to decide which girl to court since all looked so good. I settled for Lanna at the end.



Getting married is another hassle. However, I am not going to describe that in detail.

Overall, the difficulty level has been raised significantly due to which I did not enjoy Ioh as much as the previous games.

If you have to play this game, you need a walkthrough at every step. You can get one at ushi no tane- http://www.fogu.com/hm7/

The place where you can find best bargains on NEW games is Amazon.com and sometimes play-asia.com.

Plot-4.5
Graphics-4.3
Challenge-4.2 (not a very positive aspect, though)
Sound- 3.4
Overall gameplay-4