Rune Factory 4 (Unfinished)

Things I keep accidentally doing.

1. Eating things I don't really want to eat, because the "use" button (B) is the same button normally used as "cancel". (Yes I totally wanted to eat that weed and poison myself.)

2. Give people and pets stuff I didn't really mean to give, because they stand right next to me and I was actually wanting to pick up stuff instead. ("Oh my, thanks for giving me this level 10 crop that took 90 days to grow!")

3. Talking to people/pets when I want to pick up stuff instead. There should be a "BTW You're stepping on my egg I want to pick up" option in every menu.

3. attack and destroy save spots/treasure chests. Because I really didn't want to save, really.

4. Allies attack and destroy save spots. Because Amber really didn't want me to save, really.


Well all in all its a pretty fun game despite the controls I need to get used to for the reasons above. I don't think I would find a normal harvest game really that interesting unless I like the characters (Harvest moon has potential, but I will never touch Animal Crossing). Rune Factory though, because of the character designs and the fact that there are RPG elements, I felt like it was "almost" the perfect game. There are still things I wished they improved on though (besides the terrible controls, which again for reasons above).

While the character designs are great, the avatar models are pretty terrible. I hope in the future they can improve on the graphics to something like Neptunia's level (probably impossible for a 3DS...). More importantly I'm not terribly sure about that plotline... then again I'm progressing really slowly in plot considering that you could stall it forever in order to raise your crops.

As expected of a game like this its rather grind-heavy. Grinding for high level crops, grinding your cooking skills, grinding for items, grinding for levels... each one in itself doesn't take a lot of time to do, actually, but given the limited time you have per day sometimes I find myself doing all of one thing and not getting done what I wanted to do for other things. Especially harvesting when all your crops are ready. Other times, I finish things faster than I thought I would and then I'm like "well crap what am I going to do now?" This game takes even more planning than the Atelier games sometimes...

There's still a lot of other things about this game I haven't check out yet (like marriage) although my interest is already waning after I finished the first arc of the game. Nevertheless the game is quite amusing to play. I'll probably keep at it for a while then switch to Ayesha since Escha is coming out later... time managing games about time management!

Also, Amber calls me "Master" after I start dating her = +10 points for amusement.