Harvest Moon DS is a great game yet it all comes down to personal opinion. As always it is a niche game. Simple.
The story, as in all Harvest Moon games, take a bit of a backseat to actual game play. The set up is always simple so their is never a plot twist or anything surprising. Then again for the most part in Harvest Moon games the story is almost always just an excuse why you have a farm in the first place. This time their is a Witch Princess character named... Witch Princess. Simple already, huh? Also making an appearance is the Harvest Goddess. The Witch and the Goddess are sort of rivals and they battle each other with their magic. So at one point the Witch casts a spell to keep the Harvest Goddess from saying her surprise intro catch phrase " Tadaa!" Yet the spell goes wrong and turns the Goddess into stone. Then in attempt to fix it the Witch ends up sending the Harvest Goddess into another dimension and then proceeds to send all 101 Harvest sprites to the other dimension. This is where you come in. You must... Well... Do almost anything in order to save the Harvest Goddess and the harvest sprites. How do you bring them back? Anything you do will probably bring them back. Such as cutting wood, breaking rocks, harvesting and shipping crops, fishing, all of which and more help you collect the sprites back. Very simple.
The game takes place in a little town with a couple of characters, most of which have very different personalities. And like many Harvest Moon games their is a group of bachlorettes that you can choose from to marry. Aside from the six normal girls to marry that come with rivals. Rivals are guys in the game that will marry the girls if you don't after 4 years in the game. Giving you sort of a time limit, yet 4 years is plenty of time to win over a lady with the normal showering of gifts that the character enjoys. Aside from the 6 normal choices, their are 4 special girls that are a little more tricky and unique than the other girls, yet these special girls don't give you rivals and most require a lot more time and effort to win over. And as a bonus if you have FoMT and have it in the GBA slot in your DS while playing you can go ahead and try and marry the bachlorettes from FoMT, yet by doing so the credits will roll and it will end your game. No one likes that.
What about the music? The music is very calm as in all Harvest Moon games. Nice little tune to listen to you while you do your daily routine. And even though it is repetitive, it isn't something that will annoy you. Neither will it be a song that will get stuck in your head and you will hum in your free time. Just something simple and fun. Yet it is nothing to laugh at either since the music sounds like something you would hear in an RPG "in town" music. I really liked listening to the music most of the time and with the Sprite Channel you can buy records and listen to them on the go. Most of the songs consist of little tunes from previous Harvest Moon games and it put a smile on my face when I heard the Harvest Moon 64 intro song on the list.
A couple of new stuff was placed in their such as the sprite casino and the touch screen use. The casino revolves around 3 games. Poker, Black Jack, and a matching game. Simple games that are pretty good time killers. You can easily fly by a few hours in the casino alone if you are into that sort of thing. The touch screen is a must in this game. Most of my time playing the game, I had the stylus in my hand during game play for quick switching to navigate the menu on the bottom screen. It isn't very complicated since it is a kind of drag and drop, point and click type of situation. And if you get a touch glove you can pet, brush, milk, and sheer with the stylus on the touch screen. Once you approach the animal and use a certain tool or just interact with them the lower screen will become a mini game type of scenario. You get points by furiously scribbling on your animal to pet or brush them. Milking is basically scribbling in the area of the utter as fast as you can. Sheering is scribbling on your sheep as fast as you can to snip all of it's fluff. Something I found cool is if you are fast with scribbling is that you can get more milk than you could with out using the glove. If your fast you can get large milk and large wool from new sheep and cows.
Over all I really enjoyed the game and I am still playing it on a daily basis from when I got it on pre-order. But then again it is all just opinion.