Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

"Highly recommended to Harvest Moon fans"

For the record, this review is for the Japanese version.

Overall, this is a rather nice game, which I recommend to anyone who

a. Likes Harvest Moon games.
b. Would like Harvest Moon games if not for the fact that the gameplay gets repetitive after a while.
c. Liked a few Harvest Moon games but became annoyed with how they all seem to be remakes of each other.

This game has all the Harvest Moon features fans love, but with enough original qualities to actually consider it a new game. The action RPG aspect of the game adds an extra dimension and breaks up the monotony of the farming, but it doesn't have enough substance to carry the game on its own, so those who don't like any other Harvest Moon games probably wouldn't like this either.

Graphics - The environment graphics are 2D, and the characters are 3D models. Generally, everything looks pretty nice. However, the 3D models look really bad when the game shows them up close (very rare), and the poor collision detection on some larger monsters allows the main character and other monsters to walk into them, which looks silly.

Gameplay - The farming is the usual Harvest Moon thing. Seasons are 30 days long. There are a variety of veggies, flowers, and weird crystal-growing plants to cultivate, but each type grows in one season only. However, the interior of the caves near your farm are protected from the outdoor climate and stay like one particular season all year round. Some plants can only be grown in caves because they take longer than 30 days to grow.

You can level up a plant by putting fertilizer on it, then harvest it and put it in the Seed Maker to create a bag of seeds that will produce a whole set of nine leveled-up plants. You can keep doing this to get very high-leveled plants that sell for a lot of money.

Instead of animals and Harvest Sprites, Rune Factory has monsters, which you domesticate from the selection of enemies in the caves near the farm. There are monsters that give produce (e.g. cow-like monster which can be milked), monsters that work on your farm (watering or harvesting), monsters you can ride, and monsters that are only good for taking with you into combat. With the exception of those that cast healing spells, I never found monsters very useful in combat. The animals can't have babies unfortunately. The game lets you keep a lot of monsters, though. Over 100.

The battle system has smooth control and functionality, but it's a little shallow (simplistic). It's still enjoyable as an addition to the game's farming aspect. If you want to try to play the game without any fighting, you will severely limit your choices of livestock, farm work help, and potential wives.

With the variety of ways to farm, some "secret" plants, a large selection of potential wives, and the storyline to delve into, the game has a lot to do to keep you busy for a long time if that is your desire. You could probably complete the storyline pretty fast too if you prefer.

Plot - I enjoyed the plot; it's interesting and well-told. All of the characters have distinct personalities and are fleshed out enough for you to feel for them. The storyline is really generic though. If you've ever played other RPGs or read any fantasy books, you won't see anything new from this plot. Also, as you might expect from HM, the main character is the biggest hippie ever.

Music - I was pleasantly surprised. There's one piece of music that makes me want to leave the DS sitting on so I can listen to it while I do other things. The town music gets old though.

Polish - It would be Harvest Moon without glitches, would it? I ran into a seemingly unfixable glitch that prevented anyone from using magic, ever. There's also a graphical glitch that makes rooftops disappear and makes Ragna appear on top of things that are supposed to be in front of him (such as trees). Sometimes it cheats you out of livestock produce if you try to get it from a monster that's standing close to the same kind of monster.

Anyway, the game is supposedly going to come out in English some day, so go buy it when it does.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/07