Customer Reviews

Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rune Factory 2

I'm writing to review to compare this second Rune Factory to the first one.

Great:
The AI is much better than it was in RF1
The Bachlorettes have a much wider range of personalities, and better thought out events.
The bulletin board system is a great way to raise friendship points and make money.
You can play as a boy or a girl in generation two.
New weapons such as a wand for spellcasting.
No major glitches; I haven't noticed any weird bugs in the AI such as I did in RF1
The scenery is really well done; I love the island.
No easy money like in RF1; you actually have to do a little work at first.
The backpack and equipment system has been made far easier to use.

Good:
The graphics have improved somewhat.
Your attacks look far more realistic.
You can see your shield when fighting!
Less glitchy than R1
Did I mention how the characters are far better done? They are all so neat!
The controls are done very well; I found them much easier than the first game's.
You can steal brides away from their rival wedding if they love you!
The music is gorgeous and fits the dungeons well.
The odd monster generators are replaced with more realistic energy points, hinting at a connection to the First Forest and a natural appearance of the monsters.
The monster spawn points change when you reenter a room; e.g. you will see woolies one time and reenos another.
In the first game, if you married, your wife would never, ever move. In RF2 in generation one she will move around your house, and when you are a kid she will be walking around town again.
Graphics wise I have notices less clipping than in RF1, and also lots of nice little add ons: such as the falling cherry blossoms in spring, how when you hammer a rock little chips fly off...

Bad:
The rain sounds better, but still will get quieter one one side of your speakers/headphones (in RF1, it would cut out entirely).
There is also a spot or two where they used the wrong voice actor(esse)s.
I was one of the few who liked the English voices in RF1, but even I can't stand any of the voices in this version save for a few. But you do get used to them, thankfully.
There is lag when several sprites are on screen; such as if you have around 3-6 people on a screen, or in a barn full of buffamoos.

Terrible:
The typos. There are far more than there should be. I'm less than an hour into the game, running errands for people, and I've found three all ready. There are problems such as one character saying another's lines, or sometimes if you receive a potion you get a random dialogue. Many other typos were reported, but I haven't heard if these are in the Japanese or just the English.

Good or Bad:
When playing as Aria or Ars, you can "date" the twins (Serena & Sera/Suu & Muu, both girls) and have a fake marriage ceremony. You can do this with all of the children of opposite gender (save for the twins are avaliable for both), which is a little odd since everyone is around 7, but also just a lot like playing house and very comical.

You have rivals for all of the bachlorettes, save for three in generation one, so it makes the dating a bit more fun, and more realistic in that you don't have half a dozen single women like you did in RF1, but it also gives you a timeline that you have to marry them by.

Overall I think this game is a fine sequel! I think I won't be playing RF1 as much, since this one has so many improvements.

I'll start off by saying that I've never played the original Rune Factory so I'm new to this series, but I'm a long time fan of Harvest Moon. With that being said, this game definitely has a lot of the things that made Harvest Moon great.

The farming is pretty much top notch. You have a wide array of stuff you can plant, and you can plant pretty much anything during any season. (though this sort of takes away from the whole planting certain things during certain times of the year aspect) I haven't married anyone yet and I've only gotten into the middle of the second season so I'm not aware of a lot of the remaining stuff I have yet to see. I'm assuming there is cooking since there is a skill for it and a ton of ingredients but I haven't been able to find a way to do it yet.

Anyway, farming is great as you can now walk over your crops which means no more wasting one square and surrounding squares of farmland just to be able to water the crops you plant. You can now maximize the entire field and use every square for crops... which is a feature that has been a long time coming.

One thing I'm not liking too much is that I've already been through several earthquakes and storms within the first 2 seasons of the game so it's destroyed quite a lot of crops and I'm the kind of person who likes things neat and organized on my farm.

The combat aspect of the game is fun and there are several areas to go if you want to fight monsters. However after doing this for a few days (actual days) of playing, I'm getting kind of tired of fighting them, it seems more like a chore and I usually just avoid them to mine and farm in monster areas. (or just take damage because I don't feel like killing everything every time I enter a level)

The thing I'm enjoying most is how fast the npc characters progress. You get to learn a lot about the characters in a short time and they almost have something new to say every other day so you won't get bored hearing them say the same thing day after day. The requests board is basically a "quests" board, which is pretty fun however I get kind of bummed when there aren't any new requests up and I find myself having nothing to do with my remaining time for the day.

As far as graphics, they are fantastic, the music gets a tad repetitive yet it's catchy enough to have me whistling some tunes when I'm not playing. There is the problem with the game lagging down badly when there is more than a few NPC characters in a level with you. Which is pretty irritating when you're running through levels of your barn to take care of animals since you'll normally have 4 to a level. They really should have addressed this issue before releasing the game.

My one big gripe is that I'm already finding myself running out of things to do during any given day, so I'm going to bed early just to get the next day going. I wish there was more of a challenge with monsters, seeing as how within a day of playing you can pretty much take on all the monsters with ease. I'm hoping there are more monsters to come, as there appear to be a lot of locked off areas (which I guess open up in generation 2?) Either way, it's boring fighting monsters now as it's the same dozen or so monsters with no challenge.

Overall the game is shaping up to be quite fun and I hope it only gets better. I would say it's one of the top Harvest Moon games out there except one major bummer is that you get this gigantic house with a kitchen and two beds right when you start, which kind of makes it less fun to actually build up your own house and watch your wealth grow.

This game is definitely worth purchasing if you are a fan of the series or if you're totally new to the series, as it's definitely a lot of fun and satisfies your Harvest Moon addiction.

Okay, first off, if you don't already know, this game was originally coming out October 21, but was moved to Nov. 18. Also, since I've never played Rune Factory 1, I can't compare this to it. Sorry.

Now, Rune Factory 2... A great mix of farming and dungeon crawling. Sounds weird? It is. But... it's a good weird. But was it worth the wait?


Your character, Kyle (Well, that's the default name,) wanders into the town of Alvarna with no memory. A girl named Mana finds him and gives him a farm to work on. You work on the farm, then grab a sword, spear or staff, and go kill things.

Graphics: Great. The 3-D characters really work well with the 2-D backgrounds. Some people might not like how the characters look, but personally, I love it. The swordfighting looks great, and so do the spells. 9!

Sound: Just beautiful. Great tracks, voice acting (which I LOVE!) and the music really suits the mood of the dungeons. Anyone besides me compare the sound in the spring dungeon to another track? *cough*Hyrule Field Theme*cough*. 9.5!

Gameplay: Pretty good. You decide witch button (Y or X) to use spells with, two control shemes, all-in-all pretty good. Unfortunantly, there's also a glitch for me where Kyle goes very slow in my barn (Basement level 2) and on the pier in Alvarna-Dock. 8.5!

Lasting appeal: There's so much to do! Fish, mine, smash monsters, blow up monsters, slice monsters, farm, help people by doing requests, SO MUCH!!! 9.5!

Overall: What can I say? It's an awsome game. So much to do, great graphics and sound, the request board is really cool, the farming and dungeon crawling mixes really well. 9.1!

So, was it worth the wait... YES!!!

Typically, where novels or films are concerned, a sequel seldom attains the quality of the original. Where games produced by Natsume are concerned, the reverse often is true. This certainly is the case with respect to Rune Factory 2, one of the greatest games of all time, in my view.

Rune Factory 2 spans two Generations. In the first, your character is male but in the second Generation, you play as your first character's child, giving you the option to play either as a girl or as a boy.

The plot in the 1st Generation is devoted mainly to basic survival and a wealth of courtship opportunities. In fact, the main purpose of your character in the 1st Generation is to choose a wife and have a child. Most Events occur in the course of performing 'Requests' for characters. These are 'Quests' of various kinds that appear on the community bulletin board and offer romance, humour, danger as well as chances to discover more about the other characters in Alvarna.

Although you can defeat or tame Monsters in the 1st Generation, it is only in the 2nd Generation that the real 'action plot' unfolds and every area on the map is unlocked. Cooking, forging weapons and accessories and creating other items becomes possible only in the 2nd Generation when your child attends the School built by the father.

Do not underestimate the enjoyment of the 1st Generation of the game by mistakenly perceiving it as nothing more than a conduit through which the 2nd Generation game becomes available. The 1st Generation game resembles a traditional Harvest Moon game in many ways, offering opportunities to farm, ranch, fish, mine and court an eligible girl. If there were no 2nd Generation component, Rune Factory 2 in the 1st Generation would be a wonderful game. The fact that it offers two games in one makes it utterly incredible.

Characterisations in Rune Factory 2 are even more detailed than those in the original game and the combination of humour, romance and adventure is irresistable.

The graphics and music in both Rune Factory and its successor are breathtakingly exquisite. Added touches in the form of showers of cherry blossoms in Spring, the twinkle of fireflies in Summer and colourful falling leaves in Autumn make the landscape truly magical. A player could be content to live in this world for many years!

Finally, Rune Factory 2, like its predecessor, stands as an eloquent testament to the fundamental philosophy of Harvest Moon. The message of these games is to learn to appreciate all forms of life, to work with society and the land in creating a partnership that is beneficial to all. Selfishness and greed result in missed opportunities. It is only when your character interacts with every individual in a positive fashion, exercising patience, understanding and compassion, that you will gain the ultimate rewards and in doing so, create a better world for every one.

The Summary: Rune Factory 2 is sort of a sequel (though completely playable by itself) to Rune Factory. The game starts with a boy, Kyle (default name, which is changeable), who loses his memory and comes upon a town where Mana (a girl with an overprotective father) offers him a farm. Hence, you start farming, fighting monsters, taming monsters, trading, making friends, making girlfriends, cooking, making babies, etc. etc. An extremely lovely addition is the second generation, where you can play your own child (girl or boy).

The Great:
-Beautiful graphics; there are cherry blossoms falling, the characters are well drawn, and they even have varying expressions. The most delightful change in graphics that I've noticed was the surroundings. Rune Factory 2's graphics has exceeded my expectations. The town is set near sea, and everything is gorgeous; you really have to see it to understand. Rune Factory's graphics was extremely good, but I thought this sequel's graphics just added to the theme of the storyline much more. Whereas the other Harvest Moon games was set in a rural land, Rune Factory 2 has a much more fantasy, fairytale feeling to it. Also, as an addition, the map on the top screen has the character moving around as opposed to Rune Factory's map, which only has the character stopped in the general area.
-Wonderful soundtrack; one of my favorite things about the Harvest Moon series is its amazing music. The Rune Factory series is outstanding; the general (when you're farming or outside) music is whimsical and light and it's one of the reasons I don't get bored of constant farming. The music in the "dungeons" where the monsters are reflect each map perfectly. The voice-acting could be better, but it's pretty good.
-Awesome gameplay; probably the most important aspect. The farming is fun, and there are a lot of variable activies for the player to do so that the game doesn't become mundane. You have to farm, make friends and lovers, do quests (a LOVELY addition to this sequel), cook, build, fight, tame, etc. etc. The lists keeps going on and on. A lot of things to discover!

The Moderate/Good or Bad:
-The tools. One thing that I personally hated was the fact that we didn't have to upgrade the tools in order to water/farm/hoe/etc. more than one square, since upgrading took a lot of my effort during the first Rune Factory. Many people probably felt this was relieving, but I was personally a little scandalized since upgrading was one of the activies I thought was synonymous with Harvest Moon tools. Of course, this leaves for many other things to do and more opportunities to farm more, but I feel that the upgrading of the tools is what makes a part of the game what it is.
-The currency. Boy, what inflation! Everything costs a LOT more than it did in Rune Factory. Perhaps this acts as a foil to balance out the easy tool feature, since we don't need to upgrade *and* make more money. I personally didn't have any objections. It's definitely more of a challenge. Prepare to work a little harder.
-2nd generation privileges. As you play, you might notice that the first character can't cook, go through certain places, etc. That's because only the 2nd generation can. This could be good or bad, since that means the storyline is definitely deeper and you can focus more on farming on the first generation. I think it's a great touch to the storyline, but it could also be a hassle.

The Bad:
-Not much. Other than personal opinions that I have, this game is objectively pretty awesome. The changes from Rune Factory depends on the player's preference. Other than that, you should DEFINITELY try this game out.

Harvest Moon? Awesome.

Rune Factory series? Even better.

This is game is an absolute delight.
You play a young man who has lost his memory. He arrives in a small town and is given a house and a field. He must till the soil, sow it and harvest the crops to raise money. There are fish and ores to collect, and errands to run for the villagers.

There are some young women he can flirt with and eventually marry. But watch out- if he doesn't show interest the girl might be snatched by a competitor. There are dates on which each girl will marry another guy.
Unlike the first Rune Factory game, there are only 4 cave areas. These are limited and there is no bosses in the first part of the game. But there are plenty of regular monsters for him to fight and capture. Some monsters give produce, others help out. There is no leveling upp weapons or tools in the first part. There are fields in the caves that can be sowed.
As in similar games there are a few events that takes place in town on certain dates.

Once he gets married, has a child and builds the school, the second part of the game begins. Years later he remembers who he is and runs away in the middle of the night, leaving his wife and child behind. In the second part you play the child as he/she takes over the field and receives lessons in school on cooking, medicine, upgrading weaponry and tools, and magic books. The child can sneak into areas of the caves that was inaccessible for the father. Beware - the monsters are now way tougher. It is up to the child to discover the fate of his/her father.

This is among my favourite games along with Rune Factory 1. It's part Harvest Moon, part Animal Crossing, part Pokemon, part Monster Rancher. If you like any of these games, you'll love Rune Factory.

My 10 year old daughter just got this game on Thanksgiving and has not been able to put it down. Previously the DS games she really liked were Pokemon Diamond, Animal Crossing and Naruto Ninja Destiny and Naruto Path of the Ninja, but has never been as totally engrossed with a video game as she is with Rune Factory2.

The graphics are the best I've ever seen for the DS and the music is pleasant. My daughter says she likes the story line and the combination of farming, socializing and adventure. She says she's never played a game like this.

First off I must say I bought the first Rune Factory and I loved that game. The only issues I had with that was that it was too short but seriously it took me a good 40 hours to still beat it and it didn't even force me to actual marry someone (I just like beating games and not really doing side quests). Which was all well and good for me, because it was very satisfying game.

This game is a lot more fun (still playing in fact). First you start of as a boy that needs to marry someone to get to the "real" game. At first I was in a hurry to marry someone so I can have a kid and be that kid. Let me tell you guys, being the first generation is okay, all you experience don't go away it gets transferred to your child. So my communication level was pretty high before I switched over to the point where my animals were hearting me at one a day and that still happened when I transferred to my kid which was a big help! Also if I knew this before - your plants that are in dungeons don't go away, this would have been super helpful to me because the dungeons get a million times harder as the second gen and so having those mana there from crops would have helped a ton!

I guess my point is - do not rush through the first gen like me. I'm sort of an impatient person and at first I just wanted to marry one girl so I can move on to what I thought was the "real" game and didn't take full advantage of all the things I could do as the first gen which is the only thing I regret. Though I still had a lot of fun as the sec gen, the dungeons are way harder than the first one.

Another interesting thing is things are super more expensive than the first one so it does cause you to "save your pennies" and really think about what you want to buy and if you really need it right now which I thought was a wonderful add on, you're just not all willy nilly with buying things like a lot of other games are. I think this is a wonderful idea to enforce good spending habits on the younger gamers that play this.

This game is super fun. For anyone that likes Harvest Moon with a little bit of an RPG spin. As a warning it gets pretty addicting, sometimes I think I'll only play for an hour and 3 hours have gone by, usually I'm pretty good at keeping my gaming time.

The bright box caught me, and I ended up buying the game right when it came out. Right now, late June 2009, is a few months since then. Now that I am almost towards the end of the storyline part of the game, I feel I can make a good heads up for everyone else.

From playing the SNES Harvest Moon, and PS2 Save the Homeland(and by the way I didn't like either of them) - and this is my first RF game, I thought I kind of had an idea of what to come for Rune Factory 2. I wasn't too far off, the game is basically about farming, raising money and raising family, like most Harvest Moon related games. The game plays in a simple manner. Unlike the Harvest Moon games, though, this game, Rune Factory 2, is structured fairly well, easy to control, and there are a lot of things to do with plenty of free time. All those factors made me feel that it's a better game than HM games that I played, despite that RF2 requires patience and a seperate piece of memo paper, and I just wish that the developers didn't make the game so obvious and rough around the edges. I'm going to explain why I felt that later on.

Starting from the stuff I liked - the game is well structured. By that, I mean that it's very neatly organized. Graphics are very clear - it's very clear which patch of land is meant for farming and not. It's clear which patch of water can be used for fishing. The map on top DS screen puts your character exactly where your character is, on scale. It's so spot on that if I need to rush through dungeons, I can navigate just by looking at the map and not the actual screen. I can look at the character's Health or stamina, which is represented by two bars, and know how close I am pushing it before my character faints. I really do appreciate the graphics of the game in that sense.
Another thing is that the devs put some thought behind controls. It's easy to sell and buy stuff; all you have to sell is to move items from your character's inventories to the merchant's inventory, and to buy, you take the merchant's items from her/his inventory and move it to your inventory. As far as basic controls go, all of four face buttons are assigned to an action of a kind; X is for controlling your pet monster, Y is for magic attack, B is the item, and A is for whatever tool or weapon you have equipped. To switch to another magic/item/tool in inventoryhold L and the corresponding face button. This interface is very handy when fighting monsters, because it's fast and easy to change equipment as needed on the fly. The only oddball control in the game is that to run, you press R shoulder button once and your character stays in "run mode" where s/he will run all the time until R button is pressed again(then, s/he would just walk all the time). The otherwise excellent controls help, because there are a lot to do in the game.
The game has a lot of chores that your character can do for reward. The reward is either small money, an item, or simply friendship boost. This is good way to spend time when your typical mining/fishing/farming routine is done, and helps the game become less boring, which IMO is one of the biggest flaws of other HM games. In RF2 this is also a primary way of moving forward in the story. The quests are more rewarding than what you can do with townsfolks from HM games, I think this was why the game was more addictive. After quests are done, it's easy to permanently save progress, as a portable games should be. There is a save spot every 5 or 6 games, so if really urgent, I have been able to save a game progress in less than a minute. Those traits all make a great basis of a good game - good interface, good controls and addictive play. So much in fact that they make the shortcoming of RF2 more obvious. IMO the game could have been a lot better, but I can tell that it was rushed.

I'll now move onto the things that test patience. It's not exactly a secret that Marvelous Entertainment's games are usually glitchy. Rune Factory 2 runs better than most other games from that dev, but so far I have to be careful especially when Mana was teaching cooking receipes in second generation. If I had chosen the "wrong" lesson to learn at the wrong time, the game would freeze mid-lesson. Eventually I got to learn all the things Mana and Barrett teaches, but it's still annoying.
Another thing is that there are a lot of things to memorize. So much, that without a piece of paper to note, the only other option for a player to take is to cheat and use a guide. Townsfolks actually do tell you most of the things needed to progress, it's just that after a while they stop, and the player is screwed at that point. I bought the game early when there wasn't really a guide available and this resulted in a lot of trial and error process for me that I felt wasn't necessary.
Oh, that leaves to a few final minor complaint for me. The game really skips on little details at times. For one, there are a few good ideas in combat. Problem is that a lot of them is done to you by the monsters and you can't do the same thing back to them. The enemies can gang up and do these crazy combos on you, and they can also knock you into the walls, leaving you dizzy. Some enemies can attack while being hit, they can paralyze you, and silence you. Guess what you can't do. Plus, there are shields for you that you can't really use to block anything, it just reduces damages. I mean, to me, it it looks like a total waste to put something in the game that can't be done by you.
It also isn't very cunning. The game is divided into two "generations" where half of the game is blocked the first few tens of hours. It's really, really obvious where those area are. For instance, there's a road that CLEARLY leads to some other places that is blocked off with a fence or stone statues. When you try to examine it, RF2 will tell you "I can't pass", or "I can't read the words on the statues." I mean, that kinda kills the mood, don't you think? The game's not really good at all at pleasantly surprising the player. Maybe it's to the weak writing that is to blame. I think you may have noticed, but the story is really really lame. The characters are kind of interesting though, so it luckily evens out in the end.
By the way, speaking of the characters, most people if they're like me, will have some hard time adjusting to the character portraits. They're all blushing all the time, I mean this game is Japanese and all, but that's really distracting.

Thanks for reading my review. Obviously, the game was enjoyable enough for me to not mind writing out this long script. For me the game felt like a mix of Princess Maker 2 and Diablo, but for children instead of adults. It's very off beat compared to a lot of other RPGs out there, and while it's not the best of its kind I think it's worth playing. I recommend buying it when it falls into 10~20 dollar ranges.

I second what others have said about the typoes. They are legion! Seriously, if you can play for even 1 hour without running into a typo, grammatical error, or text glitch, you are very lucky. Here's a few samples of the typoes that I can recall off the top of my head... When you buy a Recovery Potion from the Hospital (for 3 Herbs and 300g), after the potion is mixed up, the game tells you that you got an Insect Skin (instead of a Recovery Potion). When you give a Sweet Potato to Rosalind, she calls you Aaron (even though your name is Kyle). Apparently the translation team had trouble agreeing on what to call some of the items. Several items are referred to by multiple names (Ex: Sweet Potatoes and Yams).

The "my game slows down when I'm in my barn or on the docks" glitch is graphical lag. If 4 or more characters/monsters are on the screen at one time, the game slows to a crawl. It's like super slow-motion! The whole game lags noticably compared to Rune Factory 1 (which runs very fast), but when you get multiple characters in the same screen, the game grinds nearly to a halt. Mayhap the graphics engine could have done with a bit more debugging.

That being said, there are good parts, too. There is more story and text, the ability to choose your gender in the 2nd part of the game, the monster AI has been seriously upgraded, the game is more challenging (which is nice for those of us who beat RF1 in less than a year of game time), the scene backdrops are amazing, and the opening song is very nicely sung and animated.

In short, if the lag doesn't bother you too badly, it's a nice game. It could have used more polishing and debugging before being released, though.

Signed, Pamela T.