Let's Play Rune Factory 3!

[Skyblade]

So, I guess we should start by asking "What is Rune Factory?". It's a spin-off of the classic Harvest Moon franchise, originally developed as a tenth-anniversary celebration game, that was so successfully that it spawned its own series, and has wound up getting a game onto my Top 5 Greatest Games list.

I actually think that the history for this series is really fun and relevant to the game, so if you're interested here you go. Harvest Moon was a game created by Yasuhiro Wada. When he started making a game, he was dismayed by the fact that most of the games centered around combat, and he set out to create an alternative. He was inspired to make a farming simulator because of his own experiences with the culture shock of moving from rural Japan to Tokyo. He felt that there were a lot of aspects of rural farm culture that would be appreciated in the city if it could be translated to them.

So Harvest Moon was a game created to break down cultural boundaries and to create a fun game without combat.

Ten years later, Yashimoto Hirofumi wanted to create a game to celebrate the series tenth anniversary. Similar to Yasuhiro, he drew from his own experiences. Specifically, from his time playing Dragon Quest, and one of his favorite activities, going around and talking to the NPCs after beating the game, to see what would change about what they said.

Yashimoto wanted to pull RPG elements to the series. A storyline, questing, dungeon exploration, etcetera. But, most important of all, he wanted a game with no faceless NPCs. In his own words “I want to create a small but rich microcosm in the DS, where every single person’s lives shine like jewels in a treasure box."

The resulting game was Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. It changed a lot about Harvest Moon, beyond just introducing combat and other typical RPG elements, and a number of those changes would later be reflected back in the main series (I had also heard that Yashimoto had also wanted a project to shake up the relative stagnation the series had found itself in, but I haven't been able to find confirmation of that).

However, the game we're playing is Rune Factory 3. This is the game that I feel perfectly captured Yashimoto's idea. This is a game in which every NPC feels alive. Where not only do they change what they say after ever major event, they also change what they say almost every day. To the point that there are entire sub-stories that will play out with the day to day dialogue with the townsfolk, completely outside the quests and actual storylines that you'll play through.

We're going to be playing that game together here today. Rune Factory 3. One of my favorite games of all time.



After that fantastic intro, we get dropped into the world of Rune Factory.

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Literally.

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Aw, yay, I'm being saved by the kindhearted village lady.

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And you're just going to have to deal with it, Grandpa.

So while the old man complains that he doesn't want to have monsters in his house, the girl just says that she'll take care of it and that he can forget about it.

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The monster then changes into a man. This is our main protagonist. Normally, I'd be worried about the young lady's reputation, what with a strange man waking up in her bed. But she already tucked a strange monster into said bed, so...

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Uh-oh. Do I sense an amnesia plot coming on?

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Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I mean, you're probably still half asleep, not to mention concussed from a fall from who-knows-how-high. Things being kind of dream like is understandable.

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Yay, a person! Now I can find out where I am, and what's going on!

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Or maybe not.

But then the kind lady who rescued us shows up, and chats at the Quiet Girl, whom we learn is named Raven.

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How should I know? There haven't been any name selection boxes, and the game just calls me "???".

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Yep, amnesia plotline incoming. Ah, good old gaming clichés. Though I do actually really like the way it's handled in this story.

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This does not sound good.

For those unfamiliar with the series, this idea almost always turns into "I have a farm for you to run".

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Sir Percival Blakeney Baronet.

Well, this is the point where we get to choose our name, but that won't fit in the text box, so I'll go with Sky.

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You know, I quite like the name as a diminutive form of "Skyblade", but I don't think I would describe it as "manly".

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Is the Sharance Tree like a village meeting spot or something? Or is it the town prison?

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So at least I'll have visitors in prison.

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Well, I have no idea where I am, who I am, or what is going on, so I guess I might as well go exactly where I'm told.

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Well, at least it's a fairly inviting tree.



I will still be updating Pokémon XD, but shion had expressed some interest in this, so I thought I'd get it started. I'll have another one of these out soon, just to get into the meat of the game, then updates will probably come relatively slowly for both games. Real Life is picking up (and this game is slow paced already), and I've not got a lot of time. But I want to see how good a job I can do setting one up for this game.



EDIT: Thank you, EoFF, for eating my images, while still nicely displaying them on the preview. Thank you also for setting my edit box settings to right justification, something I'm still not sure how to correct. Hopefully there is still some enjoyment to be found if I've gotten this working right.