Rune Factory Frontier (Wii)

[kryss]

Well, I saved it for today, and so far it's living up to my expectations.

The main character from the first Rune Factory game is back, and the story seems to be set directly after the end of the storyline in said game (i.e. you're not married). You come looking for Mist who disappeared, and find her almost immediately. She then invites (read: forces) you to come and live next door to her and to farm the field there.

The controls are fine, though the quick-change "ring" system isn't as quick as I would have liked but that's a small gripe. A bigger pain is that you can't quick select produce to dump into the shipping box for sale so you have to select each item individually by the standard menu and put it in there. Gah.

The viewpoint in the game is fixed, which is a mixed bag, fine for walking around when you know where you're going but a pain in the behind for when you don't (especially when on the boat).

I've only got in 2 hours so far (I'm anticipating more over the next few weeks) so will get back to you with more soon.

[The Mole]

How text heavy is it? I know what the answer is going to be, but thought i would ask anyway.

How does it compare to the DS outings? I just could not get away with Rune Factory 2 but loved the first one.

[kryss]

It's much more like the first than the second - luckily.
Not so text heavy, with the exception of some plot points.

There are lots of animated cutscenes which look really cute too.

[The Mole]

I am glad i am not the only one that was bitterly let down by Rune Factory 2, changing the focus of the gameplay was a very bad move IMO.

I think i will wait to get a US version of this. Cheers for the comments.

[kryss]

Clocked in a good few hours on this and really am enjoying it.

It was far too easy to get all the tools in the second DS game simply by doing tasks. In this you get them when you reach set points in the game, like certain parts of dungeons, etc. Some of them are introduced to allow you access to new parts. Prices of certain items seem VASTLY inflated to make the game more difficult, like 9600G for one bag of Gungun Green (I think it was 800G in RF). In comparision a seed maker is 5000G. Mind you, by the end of the story section of Rune Factory I had about 3'000'000G saved up with nothing to spend it on. Hopefully changing the prices will make the farming parts of the game more difficult to make money from. I'm also assuming the price of the gemstones will use a similar system to RF2 where level 2 gems are level 1 gems price +10% rather than x2.

There's no rush to do stuff, I always seem to have more than enough time to do everything I have to and end up going to be at 5pm as I have no RP or HP left to use. I did just find something that will help in that respect but no spoilers.

[Kaido]

Thought I'd bump this since its been out for a couple of months in uk and doesnt seem to have received much comment.

I used to love harvest moon on snes and sank a ton of hours into it, but I never really got into the sequels on n64 or wii (notably the wii graphics for magical melody were a significant barrier for me), but this has been great. I must have put 40+ hours into it so far.

The graphics are gorgeous and the gameplay suitably paced. Its my first rune factory game but feels like the spiritual successor of that original. The dungeons, farming, fishing and other activities have kept pace over those 40 hours with only the conversations with other characters having become too repetitive. That said, I'm still shy of finishing a full year within the game and can think of several areas of the gameplay I've yet to fully explore.

All in all a great game to mellow over with a cup of tea and relax a few hours by.

[kryss]

I keep thinking I need to go back to this but MH3 keeps pulling me back...