For those gamers out there who haven't experienced Harvest Moon in the past, a quick summary is probably in order. At the core of the game is farm management - to succeed it is essential that the player grows crops, raises livestock and generally makes the farmstead as profitable as possible. Once the cash starts rolling in you can begin to make various improvements to the farm such as additional buildings, tools and even mod-cons to make your farmhouse that little bit cosier. In recent editions of the series the developers have introduced a 'family' system where the player can marry one of the many wide-eyed anime girls that populate the game world and produce equally wide-eyed offspring. So in summary - Harvest Moon is basically about taking up as much of your spare time as possible. The game works on an accelerated-time clock, with days lasting a few minutes, so the player must rush about getting as much work done as possible as certain events only take place once a day (your shipment of goods is picked up at a certain time on each day, for example). Do too much work and your character keels over from exhaustion, do too little and you won't produce enough crops and therefore will fail to get the vital funds you require to make the farm flourish - this delicate balance has been at the heart of all the Harvest Moon titles and is the main reason the series has been so successful. It really does feel like you're managing your own little tract of land and at times it can border on obsession.

Although every Harvest Moon instalment has a story behind all the farming-related tomfoolery, the developers have attempted to give this one a little more flesh on the bones. The Harvest Goddess and Witch Princess are the 'Ying and Yang' of Mineral Town, keeping everything in perfect balance. They don't get on particularly well, and after being rubbed up the wrong way one time too many, the playfully vengeful Witch Princess accidentally teleports the Harvest Goddess to another dimension. The loyal Harvest Sprites volunteer to follow in her footsteps and rescue her, but it soon becomes apparent that they've failed and someone else must free the Goddess from the realm she's trapped in. In a short piece of almost incomprehensible exposition, the Witch Princess informs you that she's purchased a farm and you have to run it - by doing so you should be able to bring the Goddess and her loyal sprites back from 'the other side'. The plot is insanely silly and probably does the game more harm than good, but at least the developers have tried. Unfortunately when you're stuck in a particularly cringe-worthy exchange, you begin to wish they hadn't bothered.

Anyone who has spent what must seem like a lifetime with Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA will be struck by a slightly unnerving feeling of deja-vu when they boot up the DS. Many of the character sprites are lifted directly from that game, which is a little disappointing. As things progress the feeling that you've lived this farm life before begins to grow, until it becomes pretty plain that Harvest Moon DS is little more than the GBA version with a different plot and some superfluous sections tacked on to it. The town layout is different, but this is hardly enough to justify the investment of countless hours of playtime.

Regardless of the recycled nature of much of Harvest Moon DS, it could have been saved by the unique features of Nintendo's handheld. Unfortunately, there's disappointing news here, too. The touchscreen - which some would argue is the crowning glory of the DS - isn't utilized in a productive manner. It can be used to manage items in your inventory, which is a neat touch but hardly innovative and requires too much hand-switching - after a while most players will find themselves putting down the stylus and simply using the d-pad and buttons instead. The only other instance where the touch screen functionality is brought to the forefront is when you 'pet' your livestock (oo-er), but to be brutally honest this just feels like an afterthought, and once the novelty of interfering with your animals has worn off, chances are most players will simply ignore this section of the game as it has no real bearing on how well the farm is run. As with many developers, Marvelous have fallen into the trap of resting on their laurels and have failed to make convincing use of the unique features of Nintendo's handheld, which is bitterly disappointing when you consider how well touch-screen functionality could have been integrated into the farming tasks present in Harvest Moon. Assignments such as digging up crops and fishing could have been made infinitely more interesting.

Harvest Moon DS ranks as a massive disappointment to hardcore fans of the series. Even if this was an entirely different game with new graphics and updated play mechanics, anyone who has given up their life to the stunning GBA game will find themselves questioning the sanity of going through it all over again, but it doesn't help that so much here is identical to the previous handheld instalment. It's not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but the tweaks that have been introduced are minor to say the least and those expecting the unique features of the DS to be integrated in a meaningful and fulfilling manner are going to come away feeling very deflated and perhaps somewhat cheated. As it stands, Harvest Moon DS is nothing more than a stop-gap product. The odds of Marvelous producing a more convincing DS iteration in the near future must be pretty high (given the popularity of the franchise) but it's a shame that they have decided to short-change their fan base with this thoroughly average release. If you've never experienced Harvest Moon before then this version is as good a place as any to start, but it's hard to recommend it when the GBA version does everything just as well and can probably be obtained for less cash.