Harvest Moon Forever: Whether to use the Stylus or the Control Pad in Sunshine Islands

Monday, February 22, 2010

Whether to use the Stylus or the Control Pad in Sunshine Islands

In Island of Happiness, there were few options to use the Control Pad. Almost every action was controlled by the stylus. Some players (including me) did not care for that, but others preferred it. With the sensitivity to players' feelings that is characteristic of the creators of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory, in Sunshine Islands, the 'sequel' to Island of Happiness, a player has the option either to use the stylus or to use the Control Pad in most cases. As I 'cut my teeth' as it were on the GameBoy systems, I opt to use the Control Pad. Another reason why I tend to favour the Control Pad is the fact that my heavy use of the stylus in the early days of the DS completely destroyed the screen of my DS. It had to be replaced...

Which takes me on a slight diversion to a warning I added to some of my Guides but not all of them. Always use a screen protector on your Touchscreen. Another way to minimise the damage that the stylus causes is by using a 'pen' stylus instead of the stubby little stylus sold with the DS or DS Lite. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, these 'pens' no longer are sold. Instead, you can buy a retractable stylus, which is the same width as a regular stylus but has a telescoping feature that allows you to lengthen it. Although I find these inferior to the original 'pens', they are better than the short stylus as the amount of pressure that a player exerts tends to decrease as the length of the implement increases.

Back to the main topic now, which deals with the occasions where a stylus is preferable to the Control Pad in Sunshine Islands.

If you are playing one of the Touchscreen mini-games (Petting, Milking, Shearing), you must use the Stylus. Apart from this, however, you always have an option to choose between Control Pad and stylus. I have discovered two situations where the use of the stylus is infinitely preferable to use of the traditional Controls.

The first is when you are harvesting Crops. With the traditional Controls, you cannot reach the middle Crop in a 3 x 3 square plot in order to harvest it. If, however, you use the stylus, you CAN harvest that Crop. An early mistake of mine when I first explored Sunshine Islands was NOT to test the stylus when my Crops matured. In fact, you can create rows without breaks and harvest the middle Crops in each row using your Stylus in Sunshine Islands in the same manner as in Island of Happiness.

The second situation is when you are giving a Gift to some one. If you use the Control Pad, you run the risk of dropping the item, becoming guilty of a littering offence. That will please the Witch Princess enormously but has more disadvantages than advantages in that it will upset other Characters, decreasing their Friendship and essentially waste the item. If you use the Stylus, however, you can give an item from some distance, rather than being forced to stand directly next to him/her. This is particularly useful when you are interacting with the tiny Harvest Sprites on Sprite Island as they tend to zip about the Island at incredible speeds.

You actually can perform your 'meeting and greeting' ritual with all Characters using your Stylus, which will save time as you can 'call out' to them from a distance and they will acknowledge your greeting in the same fashion as if you were next to them.

If use of the Stylus is so more advantageous to a player, why on earth do any of us use the Control Pad instead. The answer rests partly upon personal preference but partly on a dislike of using the Stylus for movement in general. Once I begin to use the Control Pad, I tend to stay with it and must force myself to remember that the Stylus should be used for certain actions. There are cases when the Control Pad actually works better for me. I do believe that the Control Pad is easier to use when 'charging' a Tool, for example.

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For all Harvest Moon fans and players

As Freyashawk, I have written about 150 guides for games, most of which have been guides for Harvest Moon games. These are published on IGN. IGN has given me the title of 'Mistress of Harvest Moon' and I strive daily to earn the right to maintain that title. Although there is a link page on IGN that lists all the guides published there, they are not organised by game, but rather given in alphabetical order. I therefore created this page in order to provide links to the guides I have created for each Harvest Moon game. If you access the General Guide for any game, links should be included to all other guides for that game in a section at the end. I will try to add links to ALL guides as time permits, but until I do, you always can refer to my user page at IGN for the complete list.

I wrote the Official Strategy Guide for Tree of Tranquility for BradyGames as well.
Harvest Moon Forever!

How to Use my Guides

I write three different basic types of game guides. I usually write a General Guide for every game, which is fairly comprehensive and deals with all aspects of the game. It may or may not be in the form of a Walkthrough, dealing with game aspects as they occur. My Innocent Life General Guide is an example of a General Guide that is organised as a Walkthrough.

After writing a General Comprehensive Guide, I often write a Calendar Guide giving birthday and festival dates, with additional information that may be helpful, such as favourite gifts for each individual. For all Harvest Moon games, I usually write a number of 'mini-guides', such as Events Guides for each year of gameplay, or Recipe Guides that give all recipes one can make. Fishing, Mining, Shipping or Item Value Guides are other mini-guides that can be very useful when playing Harvest Moon. Character Guides give detailed information about every character in any specific game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is devoted to all aspects of Courtship and Marriage, including schedules of Heart Events, Rival Heart Events and the likes and dislikes of every Eligible Girl and/or Bachelor.

Although this site is devoted to Harvest Moon, I have included links to game guides for other games. I created a separate link section for Animal Crossing Wild World as well, because I wrote more than one guide for that game.

N.B. All my game guides are published by IGN. This webpage has been created simply to allow players to find links to all my guides more easily.

Copyright Infringement Warning

It is really sad to discover that there are individuals who are willing to steal my guides and to attempt to publish them under their names. Fortunately, there are many players who recognise my guides when they see them anywhere on the internet and who are willing to alert me when some one tries to steal my material. I want to thank all those players for their help in these cases.

Some one stole one of my guides and tried to publish it on Gamefaqs under his/her name. The guide has been removed and the poster has been banned. I now have a contact in the Legal Department at CNet. I spend many months sometimes writing a guide. They are available for the private use of any individual without cost, but they are not available for theft!
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Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town

You will notice that I wrote far more guides for More Friends of Mineral Town than I did for the original 'Friends of Mineral Town'. At some point, I would like to publish more specific Events Guides for Friends of Mineral Town, but players should be aware of the fact that ALL Calendar Events Guides for MFoMT can be used when playing the original FoMT. The Events are the same in most cases in both games. If, therefore, you are playing FoMT and you wish to know the events that can be experienced in the third year of gameplay, refer to the 'Third Year Calendar Events Guide' for 'More Friends of Mineral Town'.