Nintendo DS NintendoSpin.com / Reviews / Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

Posted on September 25th, 2007 - 3266 Reads

Rated Everyone Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon Nintendo DS Review Silver Award

-- Written by Clark Nielsen



 Harvest Moon is a terrible series. Monotony isn't supposed to be so addictive, but you'll put 20 hours into one of these games before you start to question whether or not you are accomplishing anything and another 10 hours to reach a point where no more progress can really be made. Oh, and Rune Factory is much worse. Previous Harvest Moon games, while fun and engaging, lose a lot of their appeal once you get into a solid cycle of watering plants, brushing cows, and talking up the local girls. Rune Factory is a special kind of Harvest Moon, though, because farming and dating are only half the game.

Where other Harvest Moon games don't have much of an overall story to tie things together, Rune Factory is based on the presence of monsters in the world's many caves. As the new guy in town, you are obviously the most qualified to explore these caves, relieve them of their monster inhabitants, and figure out where these beasts are coming from. Once you've beaten the boss of one cave, the mayor will grant you access to the next. Thus, there is a story to follow, but there's no need to rush through it. Harvest Moon is all about setting your own pace. Even though there are seasons to follow, life goes on forever. You'll need to do some spelunking, however, if you want to meet certain goals. Relationships with the girls often rely on events surrounding the caves. Iron and wood are best accumulated in caves. And livestock is only found--wait for it, wait for it--in caves.

Yep. You no longer buy or mooch animals from the neighbors. Instead, you befriend the monsters in the caves by petting them with a special glove. When monsters go to live on your farm, you can then ask them to follow you into battle, assign them to water and harvest your plants, or just use them for wool, milk, and eggs. That means there is a monster similar to a sheep, a cow, and a chicken. You can keep over 50 monsters on your farm, but that means it'll take a while to feed and brush them every day (unless you are a heartless farmer and don't care if your animals love you).

So exploring caves is important, but these adventure elements cause Harvest Moon to lose much of its charm. Harvest Moon has always been a series anyone could enjoy, because it was simple and understandable. As soon as you throw in a sword and status ailments like paralysis, however, you've lost a lot of people. Casual gamers may have a harder time getting into Rune Factory because of these inclusions. But the usual Harvest Moon business is still intact. You still need to harvest crops to earn money to upgrade your house, buy a kitchen, and afford gifts for the ladies. The cast of characters feels much larger this time, too, especially since there are 11 eligible brides! It's pretty cool that you can choose to marry the rich brat, the rich brat's maid, or even the girl who runs the bath house.

Depending on the girl of your fancy, it can be tricky to earn their love. Tabatha's love points, for instance, only rise when you bring home and take care of monsters. But that means spending a lot of money and wood on building monster huts. Other girls don't seem to like anything you give them, which may require buying recipes from the library and hitting the kitchen. Along with food, you can also make potions and forge new weapons and tools with materials found in caves. Oh, oh! And did I mention you could purchase spells from the library? There is so much to this game, it really will take you 30-40 hours to do it all. Rune Factory is huge.

Along with the adventure elements, though, this Harvest Moon further isolates its roots by completing changing the graphics. The design is more rustic and RPG-like since it is appealing to the whole "fantasy" theme. It's not as cute, which may be for the better. The backgrounds are stationary drawings while the characters and monsters are 3D objects. It's difficult to tell what a character looks like until you talk to them, at which point you get a clear, up-close, 2D drawing. Perfect for scoping out the best-looking gal (nudge, nudge). Rune Factory also sounds great with a lot of mellow but catchy background tunes and quite a bit of voice acting. Some of it is a bit creepy, like the shopkeeper rasping, "Thanks for coming... as always!" But it's kind of fun to have it there.

If there is anything I don't legitimately like about Rune Factory, it is that the adventure side isn't as deeply fleshed out. It's really just a basic hack 'n slash where you repeatedly swing your sword or, in some cases, use a little magic. What exacerbates this is the reliance on stamina. You only start each day with 100 stamina points. Everything you do, whether it's smashing rocks, milking cows, or chopping weeds, takes stamina. That said, it's not too difficult to run out of stamina by 10:00 in the morning. And once your stamina is gone, your health starts to drop. Fortunately, the more you use your tools, the less stamina they take. And when a crop is ready to harvest, a little stamina bubble will appear above it that'll fill your meter by a fourth. It becomes necessary, then, to plant crops in the caves and not pick them so you can reap the stamina points.

Final Comments:
For all the love I give this game, I hesitate recommending it. Rune Factory is so time-consuming. Not only is it long, but it's addicting. This is fun stuff, though, and fans of Harvest Moon will thoroughly enjoy it. That is, if you are a fan of Harvest Moon with a little hardcore gamer in you. The adventure elements are a great, new addition for the franchise, but they don't make Harvest Moon as accessible as it used to be. Perhaps that's a good thing. All we need is a world full of people who can't pull themselves away from their virtual crops to take care of their real crops. But I gotta hand it to Natsume; they've managed to take a hit formula and make it even better. Rune Factory 2, I'm just going to sign my life away to you right now.

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