The shipping bin is the biggest improvement in Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands. You have four open equipment slots that you can fill, but in order to use a tool you must select it with the touch screen then press Y. You can control movement via touch screen or the d-pad, which makes watering and harvesting crops much easier. Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands improves upon Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness’ control scheme. While you can grow stuff right away, you have to build a chicken coop before you can purchase any animals (although you have a barn, so that is a bit stupid). You own a ranch with a large plot of land on which to grow vegetables and raise animals. Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands plays similarly to Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness.

However, the story isn’t really the point, but it does offer some guidance which is nice since so few Harvest Moon DS games do. It actually has a story, albeit a very thin one. Yeah, right away Harvest Moon Sunshine Islands has one up on Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. In order to raise the islands you must find Sun Stones and give them to the harvest sprites.

Once there, you find out the small island chain was once much larger, but an earthquake caused many of the islands to sink beneath the sea.

In Harvest Moon Sunshine Islands for the Nintendo DS, you are a rancher who has come to a little island community to take over a ranch. While it is a remake of Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, it one of the best Harvest Moon games since Magical Melody for the GameCube. Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands was released in Japan almost a year ago, but is only now coming out in the US.

Harvest moon sunshine islands guide