I am a big Harvest Moon fan and was looking for the same fun in this game. It was a disappointment. I never could get the hang of putting up fences and I was often confused on what I was supposed to do next. The variety on the screen configuration was really good and some of the farming ideas very original. I would have liked better use of the touch screen. It is an okay game, it just misses the mark.
What was the previous gen game console that had a ame about a skateboarded who did graffiti?
I played a Graffiti Gen Cheat fun game I think for PS2 where you control this skateboarder who does tricks and puts graffiti on marked places in the game. It was very fun but I forgot what it was.Michael- I think you hit the nail on the head
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July 25th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Yes this game has some nice features that I wish HM had (like being able to skip forward in time half a day if you want to) but I played this game for a whole year of in game time and just found myself wondering what the person who made it was thinking.
I will be taking this game in to trade for credit, it was a HUGE let-down.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:44 am
I apologize in advance for constantly comparing this game and the Harvest Moon series. But, since farming simulations are limited, HM was the only other game I could use as an effective comparison.
Shepherd Crossing’s premise is pretty straightforward: You play as a young male or female character who has decided to move to a small village in the Alps. Your character, along with a helpful duck named Brummie, has to start a successful farm and manage to survive in the sometimes unforgiving country.
Pros of the Game:
- Interesting take on farming. While Harvest Moon series focuses heavily on the everyday tasks of farming, Shepherd’s Crossing is more concerned about the end process of harvesting and storing. You don’t water plants in the game and you don’t take care of your animals daily – instead, you focus on things like: alternating crop patterns to maximize your seasonal harvest, storing crops/grain/grass, and killing (that’s right, you can kill your animals in this game) animals for food for both yourself and some of your pets.
- Attempt at realism. The game tries to add details to the farming process that makes it more realistic. For example, there are several stages to Buckwheat, Millet, and Sorghum production. Instead of just watering the plant and harvesting it, you have to sickle the buckwheat, bundle it, wait for it to dry, and then place it in grain bags. LOTS of crops in the game require this multistep treatment. Crops are also prone to diseases, frost, and looting hares or boars.
- Decent amount of crop variety with a heavy focus on grains (which are fun to grow because of their multistep production).
- Lots of animal variety and interesting animal gameplay. There are 25 animals types, plus several color variations for many of the livestock. As I have already mentioned, the treatment of animals in this game is much different than in the Harvest Moon series. You will have to butcher some of your livestock in the game – not only to help feed yourself, but to help take care of your guard animals. Also, once you get sheep, goats, and boars, killing your livestock becomes necessary for pork and mutton, which you can’t buy from the general store. Taking care of lots of animals can be a challenge in the game for several reasons: your poultry can sometimes be killed by weasels, your lambs or kids can die if they don’t have a nursing mother, female goats and cows only produce milk after pregnancy.
- Nice graphics. While the character gifs aren’t particularly detailed, the background and animal / crop renders are pretty nice. Not super fancy for a DS game, but not ugly by any means. However, the anime screens are very nicely drawn and the character portraits are good.
- Challenging gameplay. The gameplay can be challenging if you don’t strategize your time on the farm effectively.
- You can play as either a boy or girl.
- There are 5 potential brides / grooms. There is one ’special’ bride as well. Wives bring in a type of monthly dowry and husbands bring in money as well as other goods (like meat or cheese). You can also have a child, though you don’t interact with it much.
- You are your own butcher/carpenter/cook. In the game, you can built certain tools for your farm (like a bee box or hay stand), you can also butcher your own animals (not graphically) , and you can cook for yourself and your neighbors.
- Almost everything in the game can be organized and placed where you want it to be place (as an anally retentive person myself, I love this feature!). You can move all your items, you can store produce baskets and grain bags where you want them, you can make firewood piles where you want, you can hay bales where you want, etc.
- You can expand both your house and your land several times.
- The game just has a ton of stuff to do (I’m still surprised by the amount of items the game offers). It might seem slow at first, but once you can started buying sheep, there will be more for you to do! And once you start sheering sheep and making wool blankets (which is a six-step process and can take all Winter Season if you have a lot of wool to knit), you’ll find time moves very quickly.
Cons of the Game:
- Time is not on a clock system. Instead, time is controlled by how much you do in a day. For example, chopping four trees down could constitute a whole day’s work. This can be frustrating because it severely micromanages your actions. At the same time, some players might consider this feature part of the challenge.
- Limited villager interaction. This is the biggest issue I had with the game. Even though you can marry someone in Shepherd’s Crossing, you really don’t have that much to do with the villagers. The town in Shepherd’s Crossing is similar to the town in Harvest Moon 2 for GBC, which means that most of the time you can’t actually go and visit anyone. You are pretty much limited to your own farm, the general store, or the registry office. Sometimes you can trigger events that let you go and see a villager and other times you can cook meals, which will let you visit with a particular villager (of the game’s choosing). However, the interaction with other characters in the game is sorely lacking, especially since a marriage system is an aspect of this game. *However, once you get to know villagers a little better, they will start visiting you on their own and even giving you really nice gifts.
- Stretches of nothing. There can be a lot of ‘down time’ in this game. Plus, most crops and animals take a LONG time to reach maturity – about thirty days (or an entire season). This means that you might have a hectic 10 days of harvesting and then nothing to do for the next 20 days, which can get boring.
- Limited sandbox. This issue is addressed above. I think if the game had more places you could actually go, the boredom factor might not have been as big a deal.
Overall, I think this a very interesting and enjoyable game. While it does have its faults, I appreciated the attempt at (sorta) realistic farming goals. I thought the game offered hours of addicting, entertaining, and challenging gameplay.
But, just as final caveat: if you enjoy the Harvest Moon series more for the marriage system and villager interaction than the actual farming, this game might disappoint you.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Let me say that I am a huge fan of the Harvest Moon series; I have been playing them loyally since Harvest Moon 64 came out. When I heard about Shepherd’s Crossing 2, I expected it to be a complete rip-off of my beloved farming simulator. I was, however, entirely wrong.
Shepherd’s Crossing 2 is an extremely addictive ranch sim. I mean EXTREMELY addictive. Like trying to break a bad habit, it keeps nagging at your mind to come back for just one more round. An exaggeration? Not at all. I gave my copy of the game to a friend, since my initial impression was so-so (see below for pros and cons, and I know, I’m such a good pal), thinking, “I have my Harvest Moon games, I won’t need this.” Guess what? Now I need another copy. I NEED to play more.
So yes, it’s very fun and addictive. The farming interface is simple yet complex; as another reviewer stated, you don’t water your crops in this game. However, you do want to plant strategically, since your fields have a limited amount of use before they need to be fertilized and rested. There are also plenty of crops to grow; the more you grow, the more you unlock, and everyone knows variety is the spice of life. Sadly, there are plenty of periods where you feel like you have nothing to do but stare at your crops, waiting for them to grow. Happily, you can press a button (L or R, I can’t recall) to skip ahead half a day. Thank God for that feature.
My biggest complaint is due to my animal-loving nature. In Harvest Moon games, you never have to kill your animals to feed you or your pets. Shepherd’s Crossing 2…well, it IS a ranching game, so I should’ve known better. Still, it’s heart-breaking when you splurge on too many dogs merely to realize the only way to give them enough food is to slaughter your livestock. Choosing between cute little doggies and precious livestock was just too difficult for me.
Another thing that sucks about this game is the social life, or rather, the lack thereof. You can only see people when the game randomly decides it’s appropriate, such as when you cook a meal. However, that didn’t bother me too much, since I’ve played the original Game Boy Harvest Moons.
For those of you who couldn’t stand to read all my blathering, here’s Shepherd’s Crossing 2 in a nutshell:
Pros:
*Addictive gameplay
*Variety of crops to grow
*Planning when to grow crops is fun and challenging, and crops cycle through many stages before you can really use them (i.e., buckwheat must be cut, stacked, and dried before you can use it as food)
*Lots of pets and livestock, which are utterly adorable and each have their own purpose
Cons:
*Having to butcher your own animals you so tenderly raised (at least it’s hard for me)
*Social life and getting married (though the dialoque, when there is dialogue, is quite amusing)
*Long stretches of waiting for something to happen
Really, it is an excellent game, and I truly hope they make more in the series. It’s not Harvest Moon, and I’m glad for that. Now I have two series to be excited about.
July 27th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Being a fan of DS hex strategy games, I was hoping to like Commander: Europe at War a lot more than the 2 stars I’m forced to give it. The reason? The terribly frustrating control scheme, clumsy interface, and the idiotic decision to turn OFF all the DS’s buttons. Even SELECT and START are disabled, forcing you to use the stylus for everything except scrolling the map, which is accomplished by the direction pad, or touching the stylus to the edge of the screen (more on this problem later). In other games like the excellent Panzer Tactics, usually SELECT toggles between map view and unit view for the top screen. CEAW has no such quick and easy view toggle. To see the map, you have to tap on one of the dropdown tabs and select either Zoom Out or World Map. Both options are worthless. In Zoom Out mode, the hexes become so small that they become a confusing mess of glyphs. Unit graphics are replaced by symbols representing each unit type (X, O, V, Y, [X], etc). Any unit that hasn’t moved yet blinks, making for a really distracting experience. In World Map, the entirety of Europe is shown, but each factory or unit is a small dot of 4 pixel. YES! 4. Blue dots are you and allies, red dots are enemies. This is more than useless for planning strategy.
Unlike most turn-based war games, CEAW is played on a continuous board, with no levels or intermissions. Personally, I like the mental break of levels, so I can feel the march of progress as I pass milestones. Here, it is one unrelenting assault. I’m playing the Germans and have conquered France, but now the Russians and Allies are coming at me from both fronts, with massive and overwhelming numbers. The Allies are storming Normandy, and I’m impeded by a Russian winter on the east. This may be historically accurate, but it’s quite unfair and unbalanced for the player. You can declare war on countries, but you can’t invite them to your alliance, so I can’t get other countries to join my side. You also cannot declare war on Switzerland at all and take them over. They just camp there with troops, doing nothing, like in real life.
In normal view, units that have moved don’t get greyed out, making them harder to distinguish. Their nation flag simply stops blinking. A whole screen of blinking icons is not pleasant to look at. You can’t use the shoulder buttons to cycle through the units. You must first tap on one of your units to bring up the menu, then the < - or -> button on the top of the screen. Often, it’s impossible to tell who’s attacking your unit during the AI’s turn. The screen doesn’t center on the attacker or the defender or put some sort of highlight outline around them. I’ve even seen the hour glass icon obscure a unit (in the lower left corner) being attacked, or have the attacked unit be partially out of frame. There’s no unit vs unit showdown animation screen of any kind, like in every other hex game I’ve played. All that happens is a red flash shape with a number in it if a unit takes damage. If no damage, you’ll hear an attack sound (machine guns, or bomb), but see nothing. Another major annoyance is that sometimes you can accidentally lose your attack turn if you tap too fast. Every move requires a second tap to confirm the destination or target. Tapping too fast causes the computer to sometimes think you are trying to scroll and will nudge the map slightly! I’ve missed several attack turns this way. Instead of attacking, all I’ve done now is placed my unit right next to the enemy’s. Also, you can’t use B to cancel a unit move or command. You have to tap something.
Next is the slow AI. During the computer turn, the screen can show the hour glass icon for quite a while — 3-4 minutes on average if there are a lot of computer-controlled units on the map like I do now with the Americans, British, and Russians attacking me. I’ve even had it think a turn for almost 7 minutes. This is quite unacceptable as its turn took longer than mine, not to mention being a big drain on the batteries waiting to play again. Enemy move perimeter and attack radius is not displayed by coloring the adjacent squares, making it hard to determine how far they can move (useful for planning retreats or attacks to stay out of the range of fire). Since moved units do not grey out, it’s impossible to tell which enemies can still move during the AI phase, making planning strategy more cumbersome than needed.
Defeating an enemy unit can also be a frustrating experience because units are allowed to repair up to +5 on their turn, instead of the traditional +3. This is too much and it can take many turns to destroy an enemy, when you’re doing -1 or -2 damage to it with each attacking unit. Another major complaint is that air and land units cannot occupy the same hex, limiting your attack potential. This is a big problem when the enemy is entrenched and healing each turn.
One thing I did like is the ability to research new units, but this too is confusingly handled and clumsily done. You can buy factories, but only up to 10 (this rises later.. I’m at 14 max now in 1944). There’s 5 different tech trees with 3 subcategories each, which you can prioritize, but it costs “Focus Points” to switch back and forth. Exactly what the tech upgrades do is a bit of a mystery. There’s no text accompanying the tech tree level diagram. Only a picture of the unit, an attribute icon, and a “+1″. When upgrades are available, I have no idea what upgrading them enhances. There’s no display that says, for example, Attack: 60 -> 65, or some other visual comparison of the unit’s values before and after. Lastly, the game automatically ends in 1945 without warning, whether you’re winning or losing, for no reason other being a stickler for historical accuracy! This is pretty stupid if you’ve invested many hours playing (and waiting for AI) and having no gratification other than a statistics screen at the end of it all. You can’t keep playing after 1945.
Overall, I would not recommend this game, unless you are a die-hard World War II military sim/hex gamer and willing to put up with major frustrations. It could’ve been a lot of fun, but it’s ruined by a terrible design. The controls are maddeningly frustrating and unforgivably cumbersome, coupled with a slow AI and confusing unit feedback/info design. I recommend the much better Panzer Tactics, but chances are, you probably already own it if you’re reading this review. The graphics in CEAW are better, but the interface is downright horrible and ruins the entire experience.