I've been dealing with some computer trouble this week, in between marathon sessions of Rune Factory Frontier. Masked Writer's been turning his game up a notch to cover for me, and man, I appreciate it.
Enough about me, though. Let's talk about dating sims.
Frontier is a direct sequel of sorts to Rune Factory 2. You're the kid from Rune Factory, who suffered from amnesia before being found by a girl named Mist. Now, Mist has run off to an isolated village called Trampoli, where a lot of the Rune Factory 2 characters live, and you're following her. Upon showing up there, you're handed an abandoned farmhouse, a cheap hoe (no, you're a--) , a watering can, and a weed-covered stretch of land.
Have at it, kid. You're a farmer now.
(Boy, I've been taking Photoshop for granted.)
While you're beating weeds into submission, you also may notice a giant magical floating island well above the village. Whale Island has been there for as long as anyone in the village can remember. As it turns out, it's easier to get up there than anyone could've imagined.
Whale Island is currently in trouble. As it will happily tell you, the only thing keeping it afloat is a magical Rune, and due to unknown forces, that Rune is shrinking. If the Rune loses its power, Whale Island will fall to the ground, destroying Trampoli. It falls to you, Big Damn Hero in training, to save the day.
Rune Factory Frontier is an action-RPG for people who want to chill out and relax. Despite the urgent danger of its central scenario, everything in it moves on farm time. It's a game about cycles; there's always tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Scenarios wait until you trigger them to progress, despite the constantly ticking clock at the top of the screen, and you generally want to do your chores around the house before running off to hit evil with swords.
As you might expect, a game that's basically about farming is... about farming. You spend a lot of time looking for item drops in dungeons and slaying monsters, trying to get the equipment and experience to survive a trip to the floor below. If you never set foot inside a dungeon, though, you won't be able to upgrade your farming equipment, and the efficiency of your ability to grow crops will take a significant hit.
You can also tame monsters to do your farming for you, which is easily my favorite part of the game. Elephants water crops, ants harvest fruit, slimes remove inconvenient rocks, and little mage demons destroy tree stumps for you. When they're all hard at work, all this game's missing is a glass of lemonade and a deck chair.
Rune Factory Frontier's biggest problem, which isn't a problem so much as it's a defiance of expectations set by other games, is that it's meant to be played a bit at a time. If you sit down and bang out a week's worth of chores at once, it can be repetitive. If you play it once a day or so, though, doing your chores and checking in with your buddies at the village, it can pull off a convincing illusion of life in a sort of idealized fantasy country. The Harvest Moon fans are going to eat this up.
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