Harvest Moon/Rune Factory General Discussion

[aliscka]

The last one hadn't been bumped in quite a while so I thought I'd make a new one!

Conversation topics:
-games you've played, and which ones are your favorites
-which ones are your least favorites?
-if you had to choose, HM or RF? why?
-features you'd like to see in new additions
-the future of both the series

 

[A-Link]

Never played Rune Factory, but I did play Harvest Moon for the Nintendo 64 like a decade ago. I remember when I would buy chicken and cows and watch them as they grow.. then die of overage or less food or something. Then there would be a funeral (LOL), but it did have an effect on me. The game was amazing, but has plummeted since after the 64 version. The other games were crap, and the graphics just felt too weird.

 

[Isabelle for president!]

My first HM game was SNES one and it's still my second favourite after Hero of Leaf Valley. People may say it's my favourite, because of nostalgia, but it's not. I've played SNES many times and I liked how simple this game was. No 5 stars system, no weather system etc. Of course it had huge flaws, but I find them less annoying. I never felt any time pressure in both, though both games ends after second year. I really loved puzzle mining system in HoLV, minimum stamina usage and lots of items when you solve the puzzles. I wish they could bring it to other games.
I've also played Sunshine Island, Cute, Tale of Two Towns. I had Grand Bazaar, but I dropped it immediately (not my thing). ToTT was boring as hell after a while and I this run through the mountain to the other town until you build a tunnel and Harvest Goddess popping out and saying you've done something that doesn't even matter like 'Yay you jumped 10 times', 'Yay you jumped 25 times' some items were literally useless for me. IS and Cute were good and I liked the mine challenge, but wow, I don't understand the reason in this many floors, especially in Cute.
I still follow news about HM series, but tbh, I don't like the direction it goes. I have the feeling I would lost my interest really quick.

If I had to choose it would be Rune Factory. I love the series. I've played every game (except Gaiden: Another Day). I just like RF universe concept overally. It has big potential, story is better than in HM, but it's still very simple, sadly. Characters are interesting and they're lively and expressive. It gives me nice balance between HM features and fantasy games. I kinda wish they would bring back meaning to farming from the first game. In the first game it was helpful/important to rise crops inside of dungeons, but now farming is just a way to earn money, rise friendship lvl, cooking etc. Though, I guess more people actually like how it turned out, because it gives they choice to ditch farming feature if they want to. If you're tired of farming you can hang out and forget about it for a while, so it's reasonable. I could go with more forever (better music than Hm etc.), but I don't have time for that right now and I doubt anyone would like to read block of my rumbling anyway.

Unlike modern HM, RF main characters has set personality and look, so it would be nice to have feature like avatar change and voice in RF like in Fire Emblem Awakening. For HM they could bring a few things from RF...and stop with this beep noise with every single letter in the chat box (it's not cute, it's annoying).

 

[Lady Timpani]

Omg I love Harvest Moon!

I started out with DS shortly after it came out, then backtracked to MFOMT and picked up DSC when it came out. Other than those, I've played the original, Tree of Tranquility, A Wonderful Life, and Tale of Two Towns. I'd really like to get some of the others (mainly Magical Melody and HM64), but I'm pretty strapped for cash right now, and I'd rather get Story of Seasons first.

I think my least favorite is AWL though. I've never been able to make it very far past the end of the first year, which is kind of lame because I love all of the bachelorettes. Maybe someday.

 

[Holla]

I first played Harvest Moon DS (yes the boy version) and I found it fun but really difficult (I was only about 10 at the time). I later sold it along with another DS game for $30.

Since I got my 3DS in July of 2013, I've picked up Harvest Moon A New Beginning, which I loved for a while but became too easy way too quick (Like I don't even need to farm anymore and I'd still have tons of cash). I've nearly finished the main story anyways, I just need a few more pearls to build that fountain.

Anyways just a couple months ago I thought I'd give Rune Factory 4 a shot (first Rune Factory game for me). For not being a huge RPG fan Rune Factory is actually pretty good. I think I'm on the second story arc, but am currently taking a break as I more recently got Fantasy Life and have been playing that instead. I definitely plan on returning to finish the story line of Rune Factory 4 though.

Finally, since summer of last year I have been excited for the new Story of Seasons, but the release date keeps getting pushed back! I was gonna ask for the game on my birthday (March 25th), but the game has further been delayed again until March 31st. I just hope the extra wait is worth it. Also it looks like money might be a bit more difficult to make in Story of Seasons vs A New Beginning, as you have to wait until merchants come to the town to sell things rather than ANB's 24/7 accessible shipping bin.

Anyone else excited for Story of Seasons?

 

[aliscka]

Super excited for SoS.

Can we get some Magical Melody love up in here? That's my favorite HM game... granted, I've only played that, ToTT (AWFUL game), ANB, and the GCN version... and the only RF game I've played is 4. Still, Magical Melody is a standout to me.

I recently bought Animal Parade and I'm really excited to start playing it!

ANB is fun, I'm still only in the first year, but I'm taking a break from it because the game is kind of... boring. :/ It's cool that I got to customize my avatar and I get to put stuff around the town, but it feels as though it's trying way too hard to be New Leaf, and it just doesn't have the same magic to it.

 

[Jeff THE Best]

-games you've played, and which ones are your favorites

Okay so, by that do you mean any games or games in Harvest Moon and Rune Factory? If it's the second one then, I have tried Rune Factory once, and found that it was kind of like Harvest Moon. My first Harvest Moon game was the one on the gameboy advance. (The boy version) I really liked that game. I own one on the Game Cube also. I don't remember the name... And I also own Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. It's really different from the other ones that I have played... A bit too different. I like it when there are several places that you can go. In this game, well, there is where you live, the woods, the mines (You don't even dig down levels, :'( ), and like two other places... The thing I like is that you can change how the woods look. It has kind of a minecraft-ish look to the dirt...

-which ones are your least favorites?

I would say Harvest Moon: Lost Valley

-if you had to choose, HM or RF? why?

I would chose Harvest Moon because those are pretty much the only ones that I know.

-features you'd like to see in new additions

Bring back the level mining!

 

[Lady Timpani]

Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. It's really different from the other ones that I have played... A bit too different.

The reason TLV is so different is because it's not part of the Bokujou Monogatari series, which is what Harvest Moon is known as in Japan. Natsume, the company that's translated HM for years, wasn't chosen by Marvelous to localize the new BokuMono game (coming out in the West as Story of Seasons, localized by XSEED), but Natsume still owns the rights to the name Harvest Moon, so they could basically produce any game they wanted and slap the name on it. Kind of sucks because quite a few people don't know that this is so, and they're getting TLV and being extremely disappointed by it.

Even though I understand where people are coming from when they say they're grateful to Natsume for localizing the HM games for all these years, I still think it was lame of them to pull a trick like that. Especially since it came so close to the intended release date of SoS, which makes me suspect even more that they did it on purpose.

TL;DR TLV is a "Harvest Moon" (Bokujou Monogatari) game in name only and you should get SoS if you're looking for the real one.

 

[ShinyYoshi]

I have quite the love for Harvest Moon it started when I was really young and we had Harvest Moon 64. From then on my collection has just grown.

I have: Harvest Moon 64, GBC, GBC 2, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, Back to Nature, Save The Homeland, DS, DS Cute, Friends of Mineral Town, More Friends of Mineral Town, Sunshine Islands, A New Beginning, and Frantic Farming (but I don't really count FF).

Out of all of them, Friends of Mineral Town and A Wonderful Life (also their girl versions) have been my absolute favorites. That was a really hard decision because HM 64 and DS/Cute were also extremely awesome. I'm not sure why I never got Magical Melody or Animal Parade or some of the others. I'm also looking to add Story of Seasons to my game library pretty soon

My least favorite would probably have to be A New Beginning. It just didn't really give me that usual "harvest moon" feel when playing it and I did something I never do when playing a Harvest Moon game: I got bored and stopped playing right after I got married.
That never happens in HM games for me.

Sadly, I have never owned/played a Rune Factory game. I didn't really know they existed for a long time and when I finally took the time to look up the games, they looked like something I would enjoy. I never got around to buying one, though. I'm sure I would like them just fine. So I have to pick HM over RF by default.

 

[Beardo]

I loved A New Beginning, but Rune Factory seems cool, so I might have to try it out.

 

[Bluedressblondie]

-games you've played, and which ones are your favorites

I've only really played a couple HM ones...but they're really good!

-which ones are your least favorites?

Again, I've only really played a couple.

-if you had to choose, HM or RF? why?

HM. Because HM. I only recently got into the series (like a week ago or something) but I think that the HM ones I haven't played sound more interesting than the RM games that I would like to play.

-features you'd like to see in new additions

In HM you should be able to time travel, only have your crops be like turnips in AC where if you do it they all die.

-the future of both the series

I think they'll all thrive!

 

[aliscka]

IF WE DON'T HAVE THE OPTION TO MARRY THE SAME SEX SOON I'M GOING TO SCREAM.

Literally. Like, the whole "but they can't make a baby if they're of the same sex!11!1!!!" argument gets really old. For ****'s sake, they can adopt.

 

[Eldin]

Ugh love HM. I started with Back to Nature which is still one of my favourites. That and MM I have probably enjoyed the most. I can't even explain why I love MM so much, because I hate those bubble graphics, but I just do. I've played through that game so many times I've married nearly all of the bachelor/ettes at some point. ;-;

Otherwise I've also played Sunshine Islands & A New Beginning for handheld, and A Wonderful Life (& the female version) & Animal Parade for console.

The two I'd really like to find are DS Cute (or Friends of Mineral Town if I had a Gameboy/Gamecube adaptor) and HM 64, but I rarely see them.

As for Rune Factory I have RF1, RF4, and Tides of Destiny. Love them all, especially 4. I'd say I like RF & HM evenly, because HM has always been one of my favourite games but I love the RPG elements in RF, so they're both great.

@Lady Timpani;

I agree, I think the whole TLV thing was a crap move on Natsumes part. And honestly the game hasn't been received very well and I think that's partly because some people felt tricked by the "Harvest Moon" name. The whole game seems rushed to me, because it was, so the quality just wasn't there. I think if they took the time to make a decent game it would have been fine, but they didn't and we ended up with what seems like another Hometown Story. It looks more like it should be a mobile phone game rather than a 3DS game.

 

[LyraVale]

Well I haven't played Rune Factory, and A New Beginning is my first HM game...but I have very mixed emotions about it.

On the one hand, I love it...but I can't really say why I love it. I mean I love the animals, I kind of enjoy farming, I had an immediate crush on Neil when I met him so I couldn't wait to marry him, and I was really excited when that happened. lol I like that it's challenging, and I spend a lot of time looking things up on the internet (I don't know why this is a plus lol, I guess I enjoy researching and figuring out how to do things) and there's always something happening, a lot of details, a lot to remember, a lot to unlock, build, conquer, or accomplish. So much so that you actually do feel like a farmer sometimes, for better or worse.

On the other hand, I have so many complaints (it's repetitive, doing chores is boring, the town decorations are so ugly/boring I don't want to build any of them, it takes up so much time, a lot of details to remember about crops/seasons, some of the tasks are so hard to do that it's not worth trying--like befriending animals, many trips to the ancient ruins, etc--it's all a little overwhelming). Some things are pointless to do, for example all those recipes, I only make a few things that I know are worth money and could care less about collecting recipes. And speaking of impossible, I don't think I'll ever be able to make any of the clothes, since the ingredients are impossible to get! I understand some things are easier if you can do wifi with other players, but that's not an option anymore.

I only really picked up ANB so that I could experience it before getting SOS. I think in spite of the drawbacks of the game, I'll still end up getting SOS, because even after complaining, I still like the idea of HM. I feel better after reading that some of you guys that are more familiar with the series aren't that impressed with ANB. It makes me want to try SOS even more. I just feel like they put a lot of extra things in ANB that don't need to be there (like who cares how many times I've caught a certain fish or all of those stats that are in the bookcase). They could have put better content in, instead of that stuff. Hopefully that will be different in SOS.

I still haven't got to have a baby yet, I'm only in the middle of year 2, and I just needed a break from all my chores! XD But I'll probably pick it back up, play until I have a baby, and then be done with the game. I just want to experience that, and I'm sure I'll lose interest after that for sure.

 

[aliscka]

I'm also incredibly mixed about ANB.

Like, it's fun. But it doesn't feel like Harvest Moon. One, no mood music! Like wtf? And there are some intense moments in the game. Two, the gameplay is simply awful. The way you store things in your bag is idiotic and you barely utilize the touchscreen feature at all. Three, the bachelors/bachelorettes are really cookie-cutter. I've never seen more standard love interests. I wish they were more interesting. Four, the Harvest Goddess and the sprites have almost nothing to do with the story, which is disappointing because I love the Harvest Goddess. Five, WAY too easy to make money. Seriously.

But it's still a cute game and the music is pretty cute and cheery and even if all the characters are boring, I'm still attached to them. Also, I think the character customization is great. Would give a 6/10.

 

[Libra]

I've never played RF or HM. RF4 came out in Europe a while ago and I really did consider getting it, but decided not to. I've never played HM either, but I think I'd like to try SoS. It looks like fun. At the same time, it might also be something I get bored with super-quick. Anyway, no one knows if it even will be available in Europe one day, so in the meantime, I'll just read this thread and stuff.

 

[aliscka]

Bruh I definitely recommed getting RF4 if you're into fantasy RPGs. It's a fantastic game.