I feel like Rune Factory has ruined me for the traditional Harvest Moon experience, honestly. Like I can’t really say the farming itself is bad even if the animal breeding mechanics are absurdly grindy, as the sprites are reasonably helpful. At the same time, while I can’t really say the actual characters and their relationship storylines are necessarily bad, I’ve been super spoiled by how much variable dialogue there is in the Rune Factory end of things. Like, if talking to the townspeople every day to improve their friendship is a game mechanic, you should probably change it up often enough that the characters are interesting and have some fun things to say, right? And the game actively punishes you by decreasing people’s friendship if you don’t feel like mashing through the same dialogue every single day.
This also applies to the sprites, who can fall below a given friendship threshold at which point they won’t help you with farm work, which means you won’t be able to make the big harvest bucks. Also, their dialogue is harder to mash through because it keeps bringing up menus! I’m sure it’s probably easier to just shove gifts at them but it’s still a real pain. In terms of characters I ended up settling for the Doctor, but like, honestly, I wound up liking Carter way more than the rest of the cast and wouldn’t you know it, you can’t marry him! It sucks! I mean I guess it makes sense given he’s of the cloth even if there’s no reason to assume the Harvest Goddess requires a vow of celibacy, but I loved his absolutely unhinged dialogue. I want more sermons from that weirdo.
Aside from that I think the game’s pretty solid, and there is a whole lot of game there to keep you going. Like, it’s definitely not bad by any means, even if there’s a little jank and grind in the way (don’t talk to me about the horse’s hitbox), but damn, I did not feel terribly compelled to keep playing past my character getting married. Maybe I’m lacking some of the nostalgia factor, but I kind of just wish… I’d been playing the princess and demon lord tv show… that shit slapped honestly let me play that shit.
Also the game should warn you if the name you enter is the same as a character in the actual game because holy shit using “Ran” like I usually do made things confusing. I guess that’s a me problem but lmao.
This also applies to the sprites, who can fall below a given friendship threshold at which point they won’t help you with farm work, which means you won’t be able to make the big harvest bucks. Also, their dialogue is harder to mash through because it keeps bringing up menus! I’m sure it’s probably easier to just shove gifts at them but it’s still a real pain. In terms of characters I ended up settling for the Doctor, but like, honestly, I wound up liking Carter way more than the rest of the cast and wouldn’t you know it, you can’t marry him! It sucks! I mean I guess it makes sense given he’s of the cloth even if there’s no reason to assume the Harvest Goddess requires a vow of celibacy, but I loved his absolutely unhinged dialogue. I want more sermons from that weirdo.
Aside from that I think the game’s pretty solid, and there is a whole lot of game there to keep you going. Like, it’s definitely not bad by any means, even if there’s a little jank and grind in the way (don’t talk to me about the horse’s hitbox), but damn, I did not feel terribly compelled to keep playing past my character getting married. Maybe I’m lacking some of the nostalgia factor, but I kind of just wish… I’d been playing the princess and demon lord tv show… that shit slapped honestly let me play that shit.
Also the game should warn you if the name you enter is the same as a character in the actual game because holy shit using “Ran” like I usually do made things confusing. I guess that’s a me problem but lmao.