Rune Factory: Frontier
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: XSEED Games Developer: Marvelous Entertainment Inc. Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation/ Adventure/ Family
Graphics & Sound: Stepping into the world of Rune Factory: Frontier is a nice experience. The first thing you'll notice is the opening sequence, typical in that it is a shuffle of anime scenes backed by the patented high-pitched female singing voice. The difference is that the music is fast-paced, bouncy jazz rather than heavy techno or J-pop, and there's a lot less of the flying robots and dripping-fanged demons we typically expect in these fantasy RPGs. Turns out that Rune Factory: Frontier isn't really a typical fantasy RPG. It's more of a casual game masquerading as RPG, which explains the very smooth production values in its music, the stylized graphics, and the seamless blend of 3D graphics with short snippets of anime. Other nice touches include a wealth of spoken dialogue, well acted for the most part. Most segments bleed off into text you'll page through as you navigate the game's world, but what voice-acting appears here is well done. The world you explore in Rune Factory: Frontier changes according to seasons and time of day, making for a more immersive experience. You have plenty of opportunities to interact with your environment in ways that change the appearance of houses, items, and your character. The large cast of characters will reward interaction and exploration by giving up new content as you progress, which keeps you from feeling like you are limited to just a few party members or a lot of generic NPC townsfolk.
Gameplay: That Rune Factory: Frontier is at heart a casual game can't be denied. There is a noticeable lack of goals or progress here, suggesting that you are playing for the sake of playing, a principal tenet of the whole casual-game phenomenon. Setting up the entire story is the notion that your character follows his friend Mist to a strange town, finds that she has settled there, and decides to set himself up down the road from her house. Because that's what anyone would naturally do, right? Better that you just accept the story as "New guy moves to town" and leave it at that. As new guy in town, you'll do what any new guy does, namely start growing turnips. If that sounds a bit Harvest Moon to you, it's because the origins of the Rune Factory series are tied to the same developer, Natsume. Harvest Moon fans will feel right at home, but there's something different here in that the feel is less cutesy and more reminiscent of a traditional RPG. Getting to know the girls around town immediately becomes a feature of exploration, and it's fun to watch your character go all red in the face and see stars when interacting with any female. If you make the right moves and spend time with a particular girl, you'll have the chance to get married. Before matrimony, you'll want to get some work done... like those turnips. If turnips don't sound like your thing, you can graduate to many other crops and grow food in just about any area of Rune Factory: Frontier. There is a benefit to farming, which comes when you time your crops well and start noticing the floating spirits called runeys that cluster everywhere in the game. Collecting these runeys and placing them across various areas of the game will produce harmony and balance that helps your crops grow and confers other benefits. Make sure that farming is your thing, because there are few other ways to raise capital. Entering dungeons and battling monsters will reap some benefits, but the game pushes you toward capturing monsters and training them as help around the farm. It's all about the farm and the girls, in the final analysis. Patient players that want deeper gameplay than most casual games offer, and don't want the anxiety of battles with epic enemies and bosses that RPGs bring, may find the perfect balance here.
Difficulty: There's almost nothing that you'll bump into while playing Rune Factory: Frontier that can be described as difficult. Perhaps some of the timing required to get your crops out of the ground or the battle mechanics qualify, but the ultimate challenge is moving the game forward when there is so little structure or guidance. Rune Factory: Frontier doesn't do linear in any shape, form, or fashion. You can go off on your own for a very long time and get wrapped up in farming and harvesting, or battling monsters, and the only thing like failure you'll encounter is a bad harvest or mandatory hospital stay. Heavy reading requirements make this inaccessible for younger players, but even they can learn some of the basic elements of the game. Lather, rinse, and repeat makes for an enjoyable session, whether you're playing Rune Factory: Frontier for 20 minutes or 20 hours.
Game Mechanics: Thinking about how well Harvest Moon works on the DS, with just a few buttons and the D-pad, we have to wonder why the Nunchuk was required here. The most common tasks in the game require the same one or two buttons, and navigation in menus would work just fine on the D-pad. As it stands with this implementation, the Nunchuk analog stick is mapped to movement around the game world, and menus. The (C) and (Z) buttons aren't doing things so important that they couldn't be mapped instead to the Wii-mote. Gestures don't play any role in the game, although motion controls can be used in areas where you can otherwise press a button. Controls are definitely the weakest aspect of Rune Factory: Frontier, overcomplicated and redundant at the same time. Players that want this brand of relaxed, ambling gameplay don't want to deal with clunky controls; keeping it simple is the name of the game. When Rune Factory: Frontier stays true to its roots it works well, with the better additions being farm jobs outside of growing food, and the additional depth in your interactions with the ladies. Add the runeys and the monster breeding/training elements, and you've got a full plate. There's plenty of replay value, and players are frequently rewarded with new features and elements in the game, but the overall pace of Rune Factory: Frontier is glacial. When you look like an RPG but play like a seek-and-find game, things start getting strange. We're all for experimentation, but here's hoping the next entry in the Rune Factory series embraces its farming roots and stops trying to be everything to everybody.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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