Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

"A great Harvest Moon Import."

Having acquired this game a few days ago, I've spent quite a fair bit of time and energy into it already and so far I'm very pleased with what I've seen.

You start the game as a boy named Laguna (RAGUNA) who is walking around lost, and has amnesia. You end up collapsing outside of the home of a girl named Mist (MISUTO) who takes care of you and tells you you can stay and work on her farm. She starts you off right away, handing you a hoe and a watering can after making sure you're fed. So far, fairly standard Harvest Moon fair. As you follow Mist to the actual farm, you're suddenly attacked by a creature. Without hesitation you pull out your mighty.... err... ground tilling instrument of destruction! A few whacks and the creature is down for the count...

That pretty much sets the entire mood for Rune Factory. The game is a very good blend of Harvest Moon style farming with Secret of Mana style combat. I say very good, because it's not perfect, but it does work a lot better then one would think... Everyone I know's initial reaction to Rune Factory was "Harvest Moon with fighting? What the hell?" but I assure you the systems work fairly well.

Best of all the combat system is completely seperated from the farming aspect. That is, if all you ever did was farm and forage you can do that and only that. It isn't, however, true the other way around. If you just want to play a SoM style hack and slash, you WILL have to do some farming to unlock various runes/caves to explore. Same is also true if you want to raise animals. Since there are no regular animals in the game, you are reliant on capturing monsters and raising them. You can capture bee monsters to produce honey, or sheep monsters for wool, etc etc.

The graphics on this game are a somewhat mixed bag... The backgrounds are beautifully rendered 2d and the game engine is solid at 60FPS. I never once saw any of the games dip below that even during boss battles. The loser in the graphic category sadly goes to the models. They aren't terrible, but they lack detail... when I first started I often confused some males with females and vise versa. Some of the character models also have poor animations. Mist in particular looks like she holds her arms up as she walks.

Music in this game is quite good even for harvest moon fair. I've always been a fan of HM music, but thankfully Rune Factory's music is a lot more varied. Everything from your farm, your farm house, the town, the outside areas to explore, and the runes all offer their own music that really make use of the DS's sound (headphones help a lot as the DS speakers still leave quite a bit to be desired).

The towns people also feel a lot more alive in this game. Their personalities really shine through, especially with their voices. You have no idea such a huge improvement it is for character interaction. While most lines are still only text, quite a few lines are spoken and the first time you talk to someone during a particular time of day, they greet you correctly. (If you talk to Mist in the morning, she greets you with a nice "Ohayo." If you talk to Torute ((shy bookworm)) in the afternoon she says a stuttery "ko...konnichi wa"). It just really helps in making the characters more alive, and none of the spoken text is ever repeated so much that it gets annoying.

Items and weapons are quite varied, at least more so then you'd imagine for a game just starting to tredge into the waters of battle. It can be a bit confusing at the start of the game as you literally have to hunt down people who'll give you all the tools you need.

To go a bit more indepth with the combat system, it can be a little stiff at times, especially if you aren't using a sword. In fact, I'd never recommend fighting with anything but the sword as speed is of the essence in most fights. Unless you are many levels higher then who you're fighting, monsters will easily kill you in a few hits. Dodging is a lot more important in this game then it ever was in Secret of Mana. Especially since you don't have any quick healing items (at least not early on) and stopping to eat something wastes too much time if you're in a boss battle.

Now, for import friendliness... If you know kana by heart, you will have zero trouble playing this game. All names of people and places are in either hiragana or katakana so it's easy to see who's being talked about. Also most of the menus are done completely with pictures, as are your stats in the menu. There are a few things that can be a bit of a head scratcher if you don't know any kana/kanji but for the most part it's pretty straight forward.

Overview time...

Graphics 8/10
I love the backgrounds, the close up pictures, and quite a few of the monster designs. The big downfall is the low quality models and model animation used for the characters, still once you get into the game you don't notice it as much.

Sound 9/10
Varied musical track that feels right for the series. Probably the best sound track to date in a harvest moon game.

Gameplay 8/10
I took a little while to decide on this... If you want a truly classic harvest moon game and can't except any substitutes... you may not like this game. The combat is a very nice addition and breaks up the monotomy of just planting crops all day, but if you want to avoid the combat aspect of the game completely, the game feels pretty poor. I'm not sure why exactly, the farming aspect is near identical to FoMT... It may simply be because if all you do is farm you'll have a LOT of extra time in the day (RF days are twice as long as FoMT days) and the majority of exploring and foraging happens in the caves/runes. If however you do go into the caves and enjoy the foraging, monster capturing, etc it really adds a lot more depth to the gameplay.

Overall 8/10
A very solid game with a lot more variety in gameplay then the current harvest moon titles. I really wouldn't mind seeing more follow this "New" Harvest moon series in approach. There are a few sticking points, but it's overall a very enjoyable game and a fairly easy to understand import.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/06