Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Developer: Neverland Co.
Publisher: Natsume
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Date: August 14, 2007
Posted: June 28, 2008
Imagine you are playing Harvest Moon; you decide to do a little mining, head out to your favorite cave and find yourself confronted with angry monsters set on killing you for invading their territory. Essentially, that is Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Manage a farm to make money, manage relationships to make friends, and manage monster to make the town safe.
Fishing allows for the acquisition of old boots and rotting tin cans.The game is controlled almost entirely with the D-pad and four buttons, save for the menu screen where the stylus is able to be employed. As with all Nintendo DS games, the stylus should be the main controlling device; what is the point of the DS having been uniquely developed if it is never fully utilized? Not to mention having dual screens in this game is rather wasted as well. While not in the menu screen, the top screen merely displays a poor drawing of the town area with a marker for the main character. In the menu, certain tabs will display additional, relevant information on the top screen; such as selected item information and farm specifics.
The game starts off like most any Japanese game, with a full motion anime video featuring the main character, Raguna, his female companion, Mist, and a random song sung in English. In the movie, Raguna demonstrates the two main aspects of game play: farming and fighting.
The player character has hit and run points with which he uses to perform all of his tasks. Unless he is being hit by an enemy or is out of run points his hit point will not decrease, as rune points are expelled first when performing actions. Both can be restored by using various items and utilizing food and rune orbs. Defeating enemies will grant experience points that will allow you to level up, thus increasing total hit and run points among other attributes, such as attack.
Graphically, there is not much to comment on, as Rune Factory looks like any other DS game. The characters are strangely reminiscent of Final Fantasy IX however.Game progression is based on “completion” of the dungeons found in caves around the town; of which there are 8 in total, each representing a different season of the year. In each dungeon lies enemies, enemy-generating machines, and a boss. In order to gain access to the boss, all of the enemy-generating machines must be destroyed in one dungeon run. The dungeon does not save your progress with enemies if you exit, and they will all respawn upon reentry. The enemies and machines are not difficult to kill, and if you are quick enough, you can hit both the machine and newly spawned enemies at the same time. The expending of run and hit points are all that limits how much of the dungeon can be completed at once. If a fight becomes too much for you to handle, running far enough away from a machine will stop the monsters from attacking, as they can only move a certain distance from their machine.
Carmite Cave is the first dungeon the player is granted access to, and at first entry the enemies can be somewhat intimidating. To counteract that, the player is expected to visit the dungeon many, many times before being able to fight all the way until the end boss. It seems as though because there are only eight dungeons in the game, they were broken up into multiple sections based on where the plots are spread about on the cave levels. After a few visits, the enemies are noticeably easy, and the dungeon can be relatively breezed through. Unfortunately, compared to the rest of the dungeons, the boss is terribly difficult, thus forcing the player to continue to run through the lower levels of the dungeon simply to grind skills and levels.
As in Harvest Moon games, the player has control of a farm with which seasonal foods can be grown. The seeds when watered and taken care of properly will be fully ripened in a certain period of in-game days which varies for each fruit or vegetable. To know when a plant is fully grown, you will see a glowy blue orb. These can be absorbed to restore rune points. When the food is picked, they may be sold for money, or eaten to regain health. The latter is half of the key to dungeoneering, the other half is absorbing the run orbs. Those little plots of soil found within dungeon caves are just like the ones on your farm, and grow food from seeds in just the same manner, and require the same care. This is also where the dungeon’s particular season comes into play, as seasons determine what can and can not be grown. For instance, just as potatoes can not be grown in the game’s autumn season, they can not be grown in the autumn dungeons, Misty Bloom Cave and Darann Cave. It is important to bear this in mind as to not waste money and time attempting to grow plants in the wrong season.
Unlike Harvest Moon, you may walk over your crops, allowing you to water the middle plant.Farming equipment is simple to use: use a hoe to dig up soil to plant seeds, water the plants once a day with the watering can, a hammer can break rock debris, a scythe can cut grass debris, and the axe can chop up tree debris. By holding the item use button, the tool can be “charged up” in order to hit hard. It is important to note that not all debris on the farm is trash, as some herbs can be eaten to restore hit points or cure poison. Each tool can be upgraded by finding ore through mining in the dungeon caves with the pickaxe, a small fee for the blacksmith, and a couple of days wait. Because each upgrade takes in-game time, you must be sure you will not need the tool in the upcoming days. Once upgraded, using the item will expend less of the player’s hit and rune points, and will perform better when charged.
Upon using tools, weapons, and performing various tasks, your character’s skills will increase. These skills can be viewed from the menu and are: swordsmanship, forging, mining, farming, camping, communication, pharmacy, decoration, logging, cooking, and fishing. Some are obvious as to how you raise them, like mining and fishing. But others, like forging and pharmacy, will not become evident until later in the game as you grow less dependent on the town for assistance and more on yourself. As your skills progress, using them will consume fewer rune points.
Just as weapons can be upgraded, so can your house. There are various building additions that can be made using wood pieces that have been collected by destroying debris and a bit of money paid to the builder. Different additions will enable new game play; for example, in order to marry you must expand your house to accommodate all of your bride-to-be’s stuff. Of course, to obtain a bride you would first be expected to court her, and just as in Harvest Moon there are several ladies about town just waiting for you to shower them with gifts.
Building a monster hut on your property will allow you to befriend monsters, or rather, enslave them. Friendly monsters are predisposed to particular jobs in one of two categories: fighters and farmers. Fighting monsters can be trained to battle at your side, to make combat easier on your character. The friendly farming ones can be used to perform mundane farm tasks so that the character may conserve run points for further battling.
Wireless play is available through the sea shell house on the beach. All you can really do though is trade screenshots and items.
This entire game is as if Harvest Moon had been cut in half and killing monsters had been tacked on to the side. If this was originally planned as an improvement upon the farming simulation game, it failed rather miserably, as Harvest Moon is a revolutionary game on its own. Essentially, the aspects mimicked from Harvest Moon are utilized to extend your characters stamina to perform more fighting. While Rune Factory alone is not a bad game, it is no Harvest Moon, and only hinders itself by attempting to associate with it.
TLDR: A farming sim with the addition of monster-killing action does not offer much excitement, and the complete lack of stylus use causes this game to fail as a real DS title.
