Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness is a great game and even half decent controls don't make it bad.
--Graphics--
This game has been greatly improved since HM:DS. Instead of re-using the GBA game's graphics, Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness is now the first 3D Harvest Moon game for the DS. The surroundings are nice and everything just looks a lot better. The sprites do look kind of weird at first, but they are still better then the sprites in the old Harvest Moon DS games.
9/10
--Gameplay--
As I said before, I find that the new Touch Screen controls aren't bad. It works just like in Zelda, where you touch the screen in the direction you want to go. You talk to people and pick things up by tapping on them. A small thing that annoyed me(again, comparing it to Zelda) is that wehn you see something in the distance, you can't tap on it and your character will run to it and pick it up. You need to manually run to the object and then tap on it. Not a big deal, but you get over it. One thing they put in that helped me is that when you want to throw something into the shipping bin/feed box, an arrow will appear over it when your character will throw it there. Which means you won't mistakenly throw your object on the ground that much. Sometimes your character wont respond when you want him/her to run and you might have the tap the screen again to make it respond, but overall the controls aren't horrible.
7/10
--Music--
Once again, Natsume has filled their latest Harvest Moon game with great tunes. Each season and area has their own theme and they're nice. However, one thing that I didn't really like is that in the Winter, when it snows, there is no music what so ever. And it snows a lot in Winter so I found it kind of dull. But, the other 3 seasons have great music!
8/10
--Story--
Another great story! Finally getting away from the traditional "old man dies and gives you a farm", Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness has the best story yet. You start off on a boat going across the sea. However, a nasty storm comes about and whipes your ship on a deserted island. With only the 4 other passengers on the boat, you guys decide to turn this run down island into a thriving community. You can unlock new villagers by doing certain tasks and the story just gets bigger and bigger.
10/10
--Overall--
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness is another great HM game! Getting married isn't as tedious as it was in the previous DS game. The controls aren't as horrible as Gamespot says, well at least in my opinion. Overall, a great game and definetely any DS owner needs to check it out.
8.5/10