Tale of Two Towns was alright, imo, although nowhere near as good as FoMT. Unlike some of the other DS Harvest Moons, this one uses a crop system similar to older HM games (i.e. no stupid sunlight requirement), although you can water twice a day to speed things up if you water early enough. Instead, there's now a "freshness" mechanic where vegetables, fish, and various other ingredients and items will slowly rot over time and thus be worth less and make lower-grade recipes. The ability to choose between starting with a crop-based farm or an animal-based farm is interesting, although you can use farm space and machines you've unlocked regardless of which farm you're on (just changes which festivals you can attend, how much space you have for your animals since they travel with you, and how long it takes to get to the farm and villager's houses) and you can switch villages at the end of each month.
The main problem with the game is expanding your farm. You can only expand once per month unlike previous HMs where all you need is money and materials, and you can only expand the farm you're currently living at which means it'll take several years before you finally finish everything. On top of that, if you try to progress the story by attending the weekly cooking festivals, the farm expansion will instead be replaced by a cave expansion, meaning you can't expand your farm at all. However, expanding the cave is required to unlock the mines and a major shortcut between the two towns, meaning if you focus on that you'll be stuck with a tiny farm for a very long time. You can also unlock certain seeds earlier than normal if you win the cooking festivals, giving further incentive to push the story first.
I think I got halfway through the second year before I got tired with how slowly everything seemed to be progressing and stopped playing, but others have really enjoyed it and it's far from the worst HM game I've played. It's worth mentioning that I didn't really focus on either just expanding the farm or just the cave like some players recommend, though, so that may be a reason. On another note, I've heard that the 3DS version has some kind of bug that the DS version doesn't, but as I played the DS version I don't know what it is or how game-affecting it may be.