3DS Review - 'Rune Factory 4'
by Chris 'Atom' DeAngelus on Nov. 14, 2013 @ 2:00 a.m. PST
Rune Factory began as a spin-off of the Harvest Moon franchise but has since taken off. At its core, it's still very much a Harvest Moon game and shares many similarities to that long-running franchise. The big difference is Rune Factory has combat. Between bouts of farming cabbage and milking cows, you're sent out to defeat monsters. Rune Factory is a family-friendly game, so every sword swipe sends the monsters home, rather than slaying them, and treasure chests can be full of boiled eggs and plant seeds or gold and ancient swords. Trying to mix the two play styles has led to some quirky titles. Rune Factory 4 is probably the least original of the lot, but it is also the most polished and accessible to date, and that counts for a lot.
In RF4, players take control of either Lest (a boy) or Frey (a girl), a young person on the way to the city of Selphia. Their airship is ambushed by bandits who knock the protagonist on the head and send them off the side of the vessel. Fortunately, this occurs above the home of Ventuswill, the dragon who guards Selphia. The hero wakes up with amnesia and this causes Ventuswill and the townspeople to assume that he or she must be the royal heir who was supposed to take over the town. As the ruler of the town, you must do odd jobs and farm in addition to issuing royal decrees and living in a castle. Even when the actual prince shows up, he cedes the job to your hero since you've been doing such a great job. There's a deeper plot involving the dragons, the gradual decline of magical 'runeys,' and your character's true identity, but it is mostly done in a lighthearted way. It's a fun story with a few dark moments, and things almost always turn out for the best.
Selphia is a thriving city, and there is a ton to do. You begin with a small farm behind the castle, and you can use it to begin a healthy and profitable farming business. As the game advances, you can get additional farms or expand the size of your original farm, get animal-like monsters to give you eggs, milk and honey, or use those animals as farm workers to automate some processes. It's very similar to Rune Factory 3, but it's more polished. Soil quality and fertilizer are a major part of the game, but they're more for die-hard fans than casual players. Everyday players can farm to their heart's content without worrying about soil quality. Serious players will rotate crops to avoid damaging the soil or treat their crops with expensive fertilizer and growth potions to get the highest possible yield. It's nice that both sets of players can play the same game without any issues.
You can also craft by obtaining a forge, a kitchen set, a crafting table, and a chemistry lab, which allow you to create items. More complex items require you to level up skills by creating weaker items first; otherwise, they take an exorbitant amount of Rune Points (stamina) to make. Once you've made items, you can start improving them. Using higher-quality material gives you a higher-quality base item, which has a higher resale value. You can also use materials to upgrade items with new attributes, higher stats, or other cool features. You can spend hours crafting the perfect set of equipment for your character, or you can turn it into a profitable business. Much of my early game money came from buying cheap wool supplies from a shopkeep and converting it into far more profitable yarn.
As always, the townspeople are a big part of the game. You can befriend almost everyone, and that unlocks abilities and side-quests. You can even have your character date and eventually marry one of the townsfolk in true Harvest Moon style. The translation is solid and imbues (almost) every character with a likeable personality. My favorite character was Arthur, the amusingly nerdy prince who would rather spend his days working on the local harvest report than attending to his royal duties.
The biggest new feature in RF4 involves royal duties. For just about every little thing you do, you unlock prince/princess points. If you do big things for townspeople, you'll get a bunch. If you take down monsters, you'll get a few for each defeated monster. These points are a measure of how much the townspeople will tolerate you declaring things on a whim. The more points you have, the more things you can do. You can get licenses to cook, forge, run a shop or drive an airship. You can order shops to sell certain items, that a festival be held, or that your backpack be upgraded. The more significant the order, the more PP it costs. It's a good system to encourage you to vary your mechanics because keeping everyone happy involves not focusing on one thing. You can still do that if you want, but it'll take longer to build up PP.
Rune Factory 4 Review
Part of what makes Rune Factory fun is that you're not pigeonholed into doing one thing. You can spend a month running your personal shop or make a giant, sprawling farm and carefully balance the fertilizer levels and nutrients to get the best possible crops. You can become a blacksmith and make your money forging weapons and armor. You could adventure all the time and not worry about making stuff. You'll progress faster if you mix things up, but I never felt like I was being held back when I let medicine crafting fall by the wayside. It also wasn't difficult to get back into it once I picked it up again.
RF4 has a lot of adventures. The game is packed with dungeons, both plot-related and optional. They're not overly complex but tend to have enough depth that it might take multiple days to complete one, especially later in the game. Combat uses a simple isometric style similar to the old-school Zelda games, and it largely involves swinging your weapon at enemies until they fall down. You can use anything from short-range daggers to massive broadswords and axes, each with varying speed and power. As you use weapons, you unlock the ability to charge them up for extra damage or unleash an ultimate attack that drains some of your RP but hits hard. You also unlock special rune skills that can be anything from fireballs to powerful swings of your sword but require a chunk of RP. Combat is fun, especially when you're trying to clear large rooms of enemies without getting hit, but it falls into some rote patterns after a while. There's only so much variety available with the combat system, and you'll probably fall back on the same few powers.
You can also invite your townsfolk friends to adventure in the dungeons with you, but you'll need to equip them, and that can be costly. On the other hand, you can also bring along any monsters you've tamed to work on your farm. These monsters are weaker in the long run but can survive well on their own. It's also hilarious to see a pair of chickens brutalizing their way through a goblin encampment. You even can gain special buff songs that power up your allies or convince them to attack certain enemies, if you'd prefer to not do the fighting.
The fun thing about Rune Factory is how these two elements combine. All the crafting, farming, making friends — pretty much everything you do in the game — contribute to your combat strength. There are stat levels for everything from swordplay to bathing to sleeping. The more you do, the higher your stats are. If you spend a lot of time crafting, befriending people, and growing crops, you'll get stronger as surely as if you punched enemies to grind levels. On the other hand, going into dungeons and fighting enemies allows you to do more in the social and crafting aspects. You unlock new characters for the town, new materials to use in crafting, and plot sequences that offer new opportunities or new places to farm. You're never stuck doing one thing for too long.
RF4 isn't the best-looking title on the 3DS, unfortunately. The graphics are fine, but they're not a huge improvement over the original DS titles and can be a little muddy in spots. The character artwork retains the modern Harvest Moon style of 'everyone looks roughly 12 years old,' which leads to some adorable art design but feels weird when marriage and romance come into play. The 3-D effect in this game is among the worst I've seen on the 3DS. It's muddy and doesn't add any sense of depth. I strongly advise playing without the 3-D because it only detracts from the experience. The soundtrack is good but not very memorable.
Rune Factory 4 is probably the most polished and well-crafted Rune Factory to date. It doesn't change the gameplay much, and that's sometimes to its detriment, but that also makes it a very accessible and enjoyable title. It's fun to play, regardless of whether you're crafting swords, running a high-yield farm, or battling monsters in a dungeon. There's always something to do, and it's always fun to do it. It has flaws, but none really take away from the overall experience, and there really isn't another game on the 3DS quite like it. If you're looking for an RPG where saving the world comes second to growing turnips, Rune Factory 4 is the game for you.
Score: 8.0/10
More articles about Rune Factory 4 Special
The best part is that you're not slowly making it through the game if you don't want to. I've been able to set up a few things, get a few things for my room, and fight through to the 2nd dungeon area and I'm still overwhelmed with how much there is to do. I have a system set up now to grow turnips, make money, etc. so I can do better in the dungeons.
It's an extremely well made game and the other characters in it are interesting to talk to. The game has a sense of humor, especially when you compare it to something like Story of Seasons which has really boring interactions in it.
I don't want to say too much but this game is worth the price of admission if you like farming games or any games like Fantasy Life or Diablo because there are a ton of items and the character can be customized a LOT.
To get any of the crafting station in Rune Factory 4, you first need to order the appropriate license. After obtaining the license for each crafting type, you will be able to purchase the work areas from around town.
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Rune Factory 4
by Kimberly Keller - October 9, 2013, 3:54 pm PDT
Total comments: 5
With so many things to do in this microcosm of a game, where do you even start?
Rune Factory 4, the sixth title in Neverland Co’s hit series, is easily the most immersive and well-rounded installment yet. Rune Factory has always been more expansive than its sister series Harvest Moon, building off of the social and farming focus to include battles and broader skill sets. Rune Factory 4 is no different, adding in new elements and polishing previous mainstays. With so much to see and do within the game, this simulation is perfectly set up to sabotage any social life you have as you get sucked into the world of Selphia and all it has to offer.
True to tradition, players take control of an amnesiac hero, whose gender is determined by the player for the first time in the series. Our hero is travelling by airship on a mission to deliver a mysterious object to the god-dragon, Lady Ventiswell, in the town of Selphia. Unfortunately, no sooner have they announced their intention when looters show up, knocking out the protagonist and all their memories. The object falls off the airship, followed soon by our hero.
Usually a fall from that height would prove deadly, but luck is on our side as Lady Ventiswell’s head conveniently breaks the hero’s fall as they land in Selphia’s palace. Ventiswell, or Venti, mistakes the player for the prince they’ve been expecting and trains you to rule over the town. The real prince does show up soon, but is perfectly okay with the hero taking over, preferring to focus on his own business interests in town instead.
The role of town royal creates a perfect segue into the game’s mechanics. As a royal, players are responsible for the town’s well being, and can increase their royal power by accumulating prince or princess points by attracting tourists or helping out the townsfolk. These points can be used to throw festivals, expand businesses, open shops, obtain various licenses, increase different storage spaces, or even to decide who wakes you up in the morning.
Festivals are a fun diversion, and the citizens of Selphia certainly find a reason to celebrate on a near weekly basis. These holidays are usually competitive and wonderfully varied, so they never grow old. They can range from simple farming competitions where you advocate for your chosen plant, fishing competitions, or even fun mini-games such as the Turnip festival where you throw balls at falling turnips worth different points.
If you manage to place in a festival (and don’t think it’s a done deal, the townsfolk don’t take festivals lightly) a trophy appears in your basement. If the trophy was for a mini-game festival, you’ll be allowed to play it again any time you want by inspecting it. The trophy room also contains the high and low records for each fish you catch, the option to change the difficulty level for the game, and the winning pictures, complete with character commentary, for an illustration contest Neverland Co. had before the game’s release.
Once unlocked, farming opens up a world of possibilities as different crops can be used in cooking, forging, crafting, medicine, as gifts, or as a simple means of income through shipping. Each plant has an ideal growing season, takes a different amount of time to grow, and can be easy or hard on the soil. A good supply of fertilizer is needed to upkeep the soil’s richness, and monsters can be asked to help out with the farm’s daily chores, which of course means they’ll need a daily supply of food as well.
The townsfolk provide their own source of distraction of course, and the game does a good job at keeping daily interactions fresh and interesting. Not only are there normal conversations to have with everyone, but also optional mini-adventures to partake in. These can range from simply running around town on a comical wild goose chase, to more involved stories that take you back to previously completed dungeons as you unravel a new mystery. Characters all have their own quirks and some conversations are so surprising you may find yourself laughing out loud.
The dating scene in Rune Factory 4 has been expanded, most notably with the addition of long-term relationships before marriage. It’s a small but welcome addition, which allows you the freedom to learn more about the characters without the permanent commitment of wedlock, and there is definitely a wide selection of characters to choose from. The inevitable inclusion of rivals also serve to spice up the dating scene, as it adds a bit of challenge to winning over your chosen guy or gal.
The last heavy hitter for attention is, of course, the battles. In past games this is where the series really shines, and Rune Factory 4 is no different. The main story requires players to traverse through dungeons and complete boss battles if they hope to find out what happens next in Selphia’s saga, but there are plenty of other reasons to charge into the dangers of battle, such as completing townsfolk’s requests, finding items, and leveling up different magic and weapon skillsets.
The game does a good job at increasing battle difficulty as you progress, and even posts warning signs suggesting what level your character should be at before entering certain areas. If grinding is your thing, enemies and items do randomly respawn after you leave an area, so you can literally run back and forth between sections, including boss battles if you’re looking for really big points.
It is important to consider befriending monsters, which can be done by carefully offering gifts as they try to attack you. Townsfolk can also join your party (up to two monsters and/or people at a time) if they aren’t busy and if they like you enough. Each monster and person has their own specialties and weaknesses which can be important to take into consideration, but sometimes it’s just funny to pick someone like the sweet nurse or lazy blacksmith and force them into battle.
Dungeon crawling can be frustrating, especially when you don’t know where the next save point is. If you die, you get sent back to the clinic, and usually have to pay a steep price for your medical attention unless Nurse Nancy wakes you up instead of the doctor. Some dungeon rooms even contain magical blockades that prevent you from proceeding until every monster is destroyed, made all the harder when portals are present that keep sending out new enemies until you break it. This is an understandably smart mechanic, as it prevents you from running past the more difficult enemies in favor of just finding the boss. However, if you do get stuck, there is an escape spell conveniently located at all times on the left hand side of the touchscreen that can be used for a small amount of RP.
There are other elements to focus on, like fishing or bartering, and the game offers nearly infinite ways to feel the rush of achievement. Besides farming, battling, and socializing, players can open up their own shop, learn recipes for cooking or other crafts, and can even raise a skill level just by walking or sleeping. Obviously some skills actually require a lot of effort to raise them, but it nonetheless feels good to see “skill level up!” flash onto the screen with congratulatory music as you play. This constant reward system successfully creates an addiction to the game as you’re always achieving something and improving your character’s stats. Even something as simple as opening a treasure chest, which you might think is a reward in itself, contributes to your “searching” skill which improves your max RP and intelligence level when raised.
The game makes it very easy to view and learn about all these skills. In fact, it’s easy to learn about almost everything you want right from the touchscreen’s menus. The UI is intuitive and easy to navigate, showing the time, date, weather, money, and map on the touchscreen at all times. The map shows what rooms you’ve explored in dungeons, or if you’re in town, it shows the location of every citizen and visitor. There are also buttons for the escape spell, your backpack, and notebook. Your notebook shows active requests, but can also show the calendar or your shipping log when you hold down L or R while clicking it.
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Opening your backpack is like falling through the rabbit hole into a wonderland of information. Items you are carrying are shown on the right hand side, and equipped armor, weapons, abilities, and spells are displayed on the left while the top screen shows your player’s stats. There is also a nifty tab on the side that slides out to show all available abilities and spells. The top section contains six tabs that lead to other menus: main, skills, recipes, party information, friendship levels, and general settings. Each menu contains a wealth of knowledge about everything, such as bios for the townsfolk, what each skillset does for you, and stats on all your befriended monsters.
If you want to quickly equip or use an item outside of the backpack menu, pressing the L button brings up a quick selection menu that appears at the bottom of the top screen. Gameplay is paused during this, making it easy to grab a potion or change weapons in the heat of battle. Items are also sorted into four categories, which you can view by scrolling up or down, making it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The graphics are really the only thing that falls short of expectations. There are moments whenever a potential love interest is introduced where the game plays a short anime video, but for the most part you are stuck with graphics reminiscent of sprites and a static picture of whomever you are talking to. The static images are nicely drawn though (you can even hide the speech bubbles to see their whole outfit by pressing X), and character’s expressions and sometimes posture changes based on what they are saying. A nice touch is how the seasons affect character appearances, so expect to see townsfolk in swimsuits while on the beach in summer, and bundled up in winter. The time of day and weather also affects the town’s appearance, but since one real world second is equivalent to one in-game minute, you have to be quick if you want to catch someone in their pajamas.
The normal gameplay graphics have hard, somewhat jagged edges and try to cram a lot of detail in. It’s not insanely bothersome, but does make the game hard to play in 3D. However, this seems a fair tradeoff as the lack of graphical information means the game is crazy fast. Every room, store, and area seamlessly loads after an ultra-quick fade to black eliminating downtime and keeping the game going. This is very important for a game like this, as you run from place to place constantly and any lag would become annoying almost immediately.
Rune Factory 4’s soundtrack is enjoyable for the most part. Each season offers a different score for the town, and each dungeon also changes it up. Festivals, weather, stores, and time of day bring with it their own mood music as well. These tunes provide a nice variety to the game, but can also become tiresome when you hear the same town song for 30 in-game days. It’s really a built-in pitfall for any simulation game, and one can hardly expect developers to create a new melody for every day of the year. Sound effects are done well, even taking into account details like what shoes your character has equipped when you run.
The Rune Factory series has proven time and time again that it has grown from merely being a Harvest Moon spinoff into a force of its own. This latest installment is easily the best of the series so far, smoothing out any problems in the previous titles, and adding in just the right amount of content to create a fuller experience. Rune Factory 4 provides an infinite amount of gameplay that doesn’t end once the main story does.
Summary
Pros
- An almost endless amount of gameplay
- Expanded features from previous games in the series
- Fun and comical interactions
- Personalized experience
- Varied gameplay style
Talkback
Thank you for the review.
I'm glad that you think this is a fun game, and I hope that I will too, once I buy it.
It LOOKS like this game makes much better use of the second screen than Harvest Moon A New Beginning..though I think I'll wait for Rune Factory 5 to see if they take advantage of everything the 3DS has to offer.
Cooking License Rune Factory 4 Reviews
Great, thorough review. Thanks.
The game sounds really fun, like Animal Crossing with more of a point to it. I might check it out in the future, once I attend to a bit of 3DS backlog. Never played a RF game.
Rune Factory 4 Recipe
I will give a flower to my nearest relations daily until they love me enough to get this for me for Christmas.
I have played this game!! and i love it so much!! yayy!! rune factory 5!! I can't wait to play it!
Game Profile
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Genre | RPG |
Developer | Neverland Company |
Players | 1 |
Worldwide Releases
Rune Factory 4 | |
Release | Oct 01, 2013 |
Publisher | Xseed Games |
Rune Factory 4 | |
Release | Jul 19, 2012 |
Publisher | Marvelous Entertainment |
Rating | All Ages |
Related Content
For the first time, the Rune Factory series caters to the choice of a female protagonist at the beginning of the game..YES! That being said, there's way more 'YES!' to the game than that.
The game's main storyline paces at the player's discretion where you can choose to do a variety of things. Some people claim that the Rune Factory series is almost stressful with how much there is to do but this is what makes the game great. There's always something to do: farming, interacting with towns people, crafting, fighting monsters, taming monsters, fishing, cooking, exploring dungeons, etc. And this game in the series serves new treats to the table, as well.
The farming aspect of the game is similar to past games. You have an expandable field with expandable barns that you can fill with monsters who will tend to your field. But wait! There's more! This game introduces new seeds. That's right. Seeds that can create weapons. And seeds that can create an entirely new dungeon to explore!
The towns people are as cute and entertaining as ever. Events in the game work a little differently, however. Events are random. So, one day, you may be walking through town or into a shop when an event will begin. Which, though it definitely makes the game more realistic, can be a little irritating when you are attempting to trigger certain character events. Nonetheless, many events are fun and are worth any inconvenience. The games dating sim aspect introduces a new part to romance: you and your loved one(s) will be straight up boyfriend and girlfriend until one of you proposes to the other. Romance events are also very cute. Super cute.
Crafting in this game made a lot more sense to me in this game than in the past games of the series. There's a lot of new weapons to make and upgrade as well as farming tools, armor, and accessories.
Battling is similar to how it has been in past games and magic definitely becomes a lot more important to your character's survival. In this game, bosses are hundreds of levels strong. Not kidding. And there are tons of bosses. Super fun.
Monster taming is one of Rune Factory's qualities that make it so wonderful. Monsters can end up being super useful to you in dungeons as some can be very strong. And, being able to have a party of up to two, you can bring even more with you!
Fishing and cooking are the same as they have been in other games but still enjoyable and preparing fish before shipping them rakes in some easy cash.
Exploring dungeons. There is literally so much to explore. The game offers tons of dungeons that the storyline will take you through but there are also secret dungeons hidden in between trees that are only available at certain times of the year and you can literally grow a dungeon in your field. Dungeon exploring in this game is a massive improvement from its predecessors.
And you are a prince/princess in the game. YOU RUN THE TOWN. The game has 'Prince/Princess Points' which are points that you can acrue through running your town to either build new shops that sell new items, expand your backpack and other storage places, expand your farm and barns, PUSH AWAY TYPHOONS, and more! You even get to open your OWN shop where you can sell goods you find in dungeons, farm, or craft to the towns people for gold.
I seriously had/have so much fun with this game. There is so much going on and so many new challenges that this game just will not let you put it down. I HIGHLY recommend.