Nearly as significant as the introduction of combat is the visual style of Rune Factory, which looks nothing like the Harvest Moon games of the past. The monsters are ultimately what make the dungeon-crawling worthwhile, because the more you go adventuring, the more monsters you can befriend, and thus the more efficient and profitable your farm becomes. Perhaps most significant are the monsters themselves, which can be befriended and then used to perform simple tasks on the farm or to provide you support in battle. You'll find ore that can be mined and used to forge new farm equipment and weapons, as well as field space that maintains the same climate year-round, allowing you to grow seasonal crops whenever you want. The real-time combat you'll engage in isn't terribly satisfying, but the caves contain a number of important resources. As any diehard Harvest Moon fan can tell you, all this farm labor is more fun in practice than it might sound, but that doesn't negate the fact that Rune Factory takes a while to get going, and even once it finds its rhythm, the pacing is pretty low-key.Īfter you've plowed a certain portion of your field, the mayor of Kardia will grant you permission to explore a nearby cave, which happens to be just brimming with monsters. Different crops will flourish during different times of year, and though some crops will come to fruition more quickly than others, slow-growing crops often command a higher market price. Crops can be sold for cash, which can then be used to buy more seeds, better farm equipment, and a variety of other goods and services that can be purchased in town. Growing crops is as straightforward as always, requiring you to purchase or otherwise procure seeds, till the soil, plant the seeds, and then water them daily until they reach maturity. Past the introduction, Rune Factory isn't in a huge hurry to reveal the secrets of your hazy origins, and the focus quickly turns to making you into a proper farmer. You're taken in by Mist, a young female farmer who rather generously provides you with a house to live in and an open field for you to tend to.
Your character wanders into the town of Kardia at the start of the game, exhausted, hungry, and without much sense of who you are or where you've come from. It starts out like any other Japanese RPG.until the girl hands you a hoe.
Still, this is all mostly for the sake of established Harvest Moon fans, and the overall pace of the action in Rune Factory doesn't feel much different from its predecessors. The introduction of combat to Rune Factory is a significant one, and though it's a big change of pace from the farming, fishing, and family-building that have been at the heart of the Harvest Moon games, it avoids feeling tacked-on. Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon takes the well-established farmlife formula of Natsume's Harvest Moon games and transplants it into the type of baroque fantasy world found commonly in Japanese RPGs, complete with an amnesiac protagonist and plenty of dungeon-crawling.
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