I don't know about HM DS, but I know about HM Island of Happiness. That game was aweful!
The controls were so bad, that I never got very far into the game. The whole concept sounded nice, Harvest Moon combined with the typical shipwrecked theme. They could have done a little more, compine the gameplay with Lost in Blue somehow, so you use your farming skills in order to survive and keep the town running but instead it was typical HM in the end. This may not be bad, but the terrible controls made it aweful to play, even for simple tasks. Then tehre was the rubbish friendship system. Like in older games, every town resident have affection for you that increases when you give them presents and talk to them. However, unlike in previous games, if you don't talk to them for three days in the row, their mood will drop and they don't want to take any presents or want to talk to you anymore for some time. So you are forced every day to walk into town and make sure that you have talked to every single citizen. This combined with the aweful movement controls made it very soon very annoying to play. And it was important to max your relationships otherwise you are stuck with the basic equipment and buildings on yourt farm because no new citizens were drawn to the island.
A really terrible game and I tried my best to like it but with this aweful design? No way! Maybe if the controls weren't so bad designed or you could at least use the standard button controls like in previous games but they forced you to use the stylus which was very unaccurate in this game.