[Review] Rune Factory 4

My Harvest Moon/Rune Factory collection, as of 8/30/14

In the beginning, there was Legend of the Dragoon. It and Pokémon Red were the first games I played. I also played Final Fantasy and Dragon Warriors IV to absolutely no end, but those came later, with NES emulation, though we did have the actual NES Final Fantasy as well. Around the time where I was beating the pants off of Dragon Warriors IV, I also began looking into Harvest Moon.

I was utterly confused. The original Harvest Moon plops you down in a town with little to no explanation, leaving you to wonder what you're supposed to do, where you're supposed to go, and how you're supposed to do this farming thing anyway? It was not for me, not at age ten.

But after I got a Playstation 2, I also got Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland, and I tried again. Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland is a somewhat reduced version of the other games in the Harvest Moon series.

In it, you are given a very small farm, told your objective (save the homeland, since it's about to be wrecked by developers) and given several questlines where you can accomplish it. This all required only a year's worth of in-game play. In my first play through, I did not save the homeland. The homeland was given a game-over, try again, ending, leading to the determination that allowed me to go through every single one of those several questlines and save the homeland over and over and over. I loved that game and those characters, but in searching the internet to figure out what I had to accomplish for certain endings, I realized that in Save the Homeland you couldn't marry any of those vibrant, thoughtful, interesting characters that you helped save the town in the game-- and essentially, save the world, since that entire game was that town. And you were helping them; they weren't helping you, a fact I appreciate now, since the world was saved by every girl who would have been a bachelorette in another Harvest Moon game. Regardless, this realization that Save the Homeland was an abbreviated version of the rest of the series led me to collecting as many Harvest Moon games as possible. New Harvest Moon games are an instant pre-order for me, no ifs, ands, or buts.

I've missed a few, due to not currently having the system, like Hero of Leaf Valley, the remake of Save the Homeland that added back in the features removed from the original, made for PSP. I am still trying to find a good price on it, so if you know, tell me! I've called GameStops almost two hours away to try to find it, so trust me when I say I'm serious.

I did not play the first three Rune Factory games, though. Rune Factory and Innocent Life were two games put out as spin-offs of Harvest Moon in 2006. Rune Factory was a fantasy Harvest Moon; Innocent Life was a sci fi Harvest Moon. Rune Factory took off and Innocent Life did not. I wasn't much interested in either. I prefer my Harvest Moon straight up. However, so much hubbub has happened over Rune Factory 4 that I decided to pick it up, and since they finally allow you to change your gender, I decided that it was definitely the one, over the older games.

Rune Factory 4 begins when your character comes tumbling down from an airship and lands on a dragon. Each character is well and fully imagined. More frequent cut scenes allow more character building to occur than in any Harvest Moon game. There are often radiant events that show the characters are having interactions with each other, not just you. They talk to each other in groups, with speech bubbles appearing over their heads. They sweep or cook or eat when its time. Each shop is run by the owner and a helper, who trade off working, so that it actually seems that everyone in the game is doing a job-- finally! In Harvest Moon, it often seems like everyone is wandering around without purpose. Not so in Rune Factory, where the stores are obviously running and the town guard is obviously guarding.

Festivals are incredible, too. Everyone has dialogue about it, getting psyched up the day before, or maybe asking for help finding something to help them in the contest. The festivals are numerous, and only appear when you-- as the prince or princess, which is a conceit particular to this Rune Factory game-- announce one by royal decree. The characters also talk about each other's birthdays. They get each other gifts, and then sometimes talk about it the next day. Some of the radiant events you see are built up over the course of days, with rumors and all the characters talking about it. It is a wonderful system that I wish was implemented in the normal Harvest Moon.

Now we get into how Rune Factory 4 is similar to but quite different from the Harvest Moon series as it currently stands. Farming is most similar to the earliest of the Harvest Moon games. You have a field which is full of rubbish and must be repeatedly cleared, not like the two by four squares which never became overgrown by weeds in Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. You have a limited number of crops. After completing a certain quest, "Ship a Level 2 Turnip!" stores will begin carrying the highest level crop you've shipped, so you can raise the level of the crops all the way to 10 from 1. This can be done in various ways, one of which is a fertilizer bin where you put weeds-- another feature I wish the regular series had. Crops can spontaneously drop seeds, or you can harvest them with a sickle, which causes seeds to drop but the crop to be destroyed. (Also a thing I want in regular Harvest Moon.) You can also befriend monsters to live in the monster barn on your farm, where they might help on the farm, drop items like wool or milk, or work helping with the crops.

Crafting is a major part of Rune Factory 4. You have a forge, various cooking stations, a chemistry lab, etc. You can make your own weapons, medicines, and food through recipes you can learn through recipe bread you've bought from the owner of the local restaurant, Porcoline. This means that you have to keep virtually everything you find, which means the inventory system can be hard to manage unless you're very, very careful, and you might end up selling or using a higher level seed, for instance, than you actually meant to. All of these activities are linked to skills that level as you use them. Your storage trunk will end up full of various stones, gems, sticks, monster drops, herbs, weapons, shields, and potions. Your fridge will be full of raw food materials and cooked dishes, which you can't always justify shipping, since you need to regain health and rune points (essentially health and stamina/magic) while you quest or after doing a lot of crafting.

Doug and Dylas pretend they hate each other, but are actually very close.

The game is divided into the main quest line, which involves the questing and dungeons, and complementary questlines, involving romance, farming/crafting, and festivals. Essentially, town life and dungeon crawling. Dungeons and new areas unlock as you complete previous dungeons and participate in town life. The dungeons are the main quest line, following a story arc that involves the god-dragon Ventuswill and a line of monsters that are mysteriously turning into humans after you battle them, complete with memory loss. You yourself have memory loss after falling from the airship at the beginning of the game. There is a lot to do, but none of it really takes very long to do each day. The days are fast paced. I generally begin each day by spending a couple of hours on the farm, then a few more talking to everyone in town before I select a companion and go questing with them. This is another awesome feature of Rune Factory that I wish could be implemented in Harvest Moon, though I understand why it can't be. You can choose one or more of your friends or romantic interests to go questing with you, fighting monsters and helping out by telling you about treasures. You can become quite attached to them after they spend almost all day in-game with you. They level as they journey with you, as well, and you can upgrade their equipment. You can also choose one of your monsters as a mount or just to go along with you (this has a mini-story sequence that is one of the radiant events). In Harvest Moon, there's no real reason for anyone to journey with you, since there aren't quests. The only way this could be implemented would be if you asked someone to go to a market with you, if a game included more than one town or a caravan feature, or if mines more closely resembled dungeons. After questing, I head back home, up my RP again if needed, and do crafting or fishing.

Currently trying to decide between Vishnal and Arthur as a romantic interest.

Though Rune Factory 4 is entertaining and fun, and I especially appreciate the little details regarding villager interaction, it is essentially both RPG-lite and Harvest Moon-lite. None of the features really go into depth because there are so many of them that you can't devote much time to them. Caring for crops and monsters takes all of two seconds. Questing and finding new areas is essentially a Diablo or Zelda-esque time fighting through monsters, saving, teleporting, and then being done for the day, with little extra work involved. This means that everything falls into a routine, making it really seem like this is what everyday life in a fantasy village would involve.

Rune Factory 4 is a genuinely good game. It is polished, practiced, and accomplishes everything it seeks to accomplish. It avoids the grind of the Harvest Moon series, which can be a bummer if you like the grind, but with so much else to do, it softens your regret. The detail to character is amazing and the voice acting is just enough to help without overpowering (a shout out to Edward Elric's voice actor, Vic Mignogna, who is also voice actor to Vishnal.) You will grow to genuinely care about these characters and the story, even if it is a touch simplistic. Overall, a solid 3.5 of 5. That being said, the Harvest Moon series contains better gameplay; Rune Factory has more compelling characters. Harvest Moon is full of micromanaging, statistics, and the day to day running of a farm. The gameplay of Rune Factory 4 is mostly concerned with easily completed tasks, supported on a framework of interesting characters and radiant cutscenes. The weak gameplay keeps a good game from becoming great.

And as a post-script, Happy Anniversary, Virtual Obsessions! This is my 100th post, almost 4 years in, putting me at an average of 2 posts a month. :)