Puzzle de Harvest Moon review

The Action bar on the right side of the touch screen determines which randomly chosen tools are at your disposal at any time; whether it's seeds, water, fertilizer, a harvesting basket or a patrol animal with special abilities. Points are earned through harvesting, either via the automatic basket or by rubbing the tip of the stylus across a completed crop, but here's the odd catch - you can harvest any available plant, not just the ones you personally planted or fertilized.

This was presumably done to add excitement to the experience or provide additional scoring opportunities for those who lack seeds to plant, but what it really does it encourage sloppy harvesting. In every match we played, we were able to scribble aimlessly across the touch screen, picking up major points from every completed crop in range. Though harvesting your own plants yields double points, we were able to win by a wide margin without planting or tending to a single crop on numerous occasions. If you can win the game without fulfilling the primary objectives, what's the point of even playing?

Equally disheartening is the complete lack of varied gameplay. Each single-player mode - Normal, 2 vs. 2, Quota and Survival - lightly alters the same drab play experience, adding little incentive to stick with the game beyond a handful of very similar matches against the computer. Single and multi-card support for up to four players is a nice addition, but only true Wi-Fi play would have earned this game a (very) limited recommendation.