To add insult to injury, if you do not talk to every character every single day you have a 30 percent chance of losing 100 friendship points with them. They mutter generic responses, offer no engagement, and have very little personality.

This is not the case in Sunshine Islands, which features the majority of the same characters from Island of Happiness. In the average Harvest Moon game, the characters are what make you want to socialize and forget about the lack of story events. The characters, like the narrative, are missing that spark to be compelling. Unfortunately, it’s more about getting the stones to raise the other islands to unlock gameplay bonuses than about advancing the story. Now, my fellow Harvest Moon fans, we are usually used to the story taking a backseat to the gameplay and characters, but Sunshine Islands really makes the story the lowest priority. The narrative just feels jaded, as if the developers went with a generic main idea and didn’t flesh out the story in any way to make it more exciting or compelling. There’s a reason why the explanation of the story was so hard for me write and seems so bland: there’s not much interesting or memorable about it. If you can find a certain number of sun stones you will be able to restore the islands and make the land complete again. As the daring and brave main character, it is your duty to find them. It’s as though there are missing pieces to make the puzzle complete. The islands that remain haven’t been too prosperous since the loss of the other islands hurt them in many ways. Sunshine Islands features a plot very much in the vein of your average Harvest Moon: many years ago a great earthquake occurred and as a result, it caused many islands to sink to the bottom of the sea. Usually, I’m brimming with ideas when it comes to writing my reviews, but Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands leaves me feeling like I’ve played all of this before – and with nothing new to say. Naturally, this makes writing this review a little difficult. Sunshine Islands may be a follow up to Island of Happiness, but does that mean we have to have essentially the same game with very little to carve itself its own identity? It seems like Natsume took Island of Happiness, added a new control scheme and a couple characters, and put it back on the market. The game is so painfully similar to Island of Happiness that it practically feels like the same title just fine-tuned a little bit. When I first started playing Sunshine Islands, I had an intense feeling of déjà vu.

Hm sunshine islands house upgrades