Title: Rune Factory: Frontier
Developer/Publisher: Neverland / Marvelous Entertainment & XSEED Games
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Release Date: 03/17/2009
Number of Players: 1
Rune Factory: Frontier is a game similar to a Harvest Moon or previous Rune Factory games, where you play as a young gent who finds himself in a new town and must assimilate with the new community by talking with your neighbors, learning to farm, and exploring your surroundings, including the mysterious floating island that is shaped as a whale; madness (Please refrain from any 300 references). There is a lot to do in this game, but you have to be self-motivated to do it, or you may lose focus and motivation to continue playing.
At the start of a new game, you find yourself running off from your village in order to find a girl who happened to run away a day ago without telling anyone where she was going. You find her later that day in a new town, where she invites you to stay, and even gives you your own house, with a large farm in the front. Once you have your house, you are free to do as you please, more or less. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t provide much direction, so you kind of have to make your own adventure, or at least wait until the game throws you in the right direction. Let’s go over some basics first.
The first thing that is quite apparent is the farm in your front yard. This field is fairly large, allowing you to plant an assortment of things, but you’ll have to clear it first, as it is full of weeds, rocks, and stumps. Naturally, you can’t do all this in one day for a variety of reasons, the most apparent being that you don’t have the tools necessary for the job. Fortunately, the townsfolk are fairly nice and if you talk to them, they will give you some tools and advice from time to time, so you are forced to talk with people constantly to either attain needed items, or progress the story to be able to do new things. I don’t particularly like this mechanic, as there is no rhyme or reason why these things play out. For instance, how am I supposed to know that I should talk to the nun to get a axe? For this reason, you’ll be going around the town, talking to everyone every few days so you’ll be sure that the game isn’t waiting for you to talk to someone in particular to progress the story, which it could very well be doing.
Anyways, I went completely off topic. Your field. Once you clear it, you can use your hoe to till the field, and then plant stuff. Your basic crop is turnips, but you can purchase much more exotic things later on. Once you have the seeds, you simply select them and plant, typically planting 9 seeds together. Then you have to water them every day until they are fully mature. You can then pick them, and either keep them around to heal you, or sell them for mad profit. You should probably read your manual too. I know, I know, it’s almost sacrilegious to do so, but it took me a good half-hour or so trying to figure out how to sell stuff, so I did the unthinkable and looked in the manual and found my answer. Apparently, there is this box by your farm that you put stuff in to get shipped off, naturally.
Like I alluded to a few times, the game works via a clock, which goes by standard-game-time at about a minute per second. There are 6 days in a week, 30 days in a month, and 4 months in a year, each one being a season. Each season has its own mood and style, and in terms of farming, each season has certain plants that will grow and those that won’t. I believe you are forced to sleep at 5am, but can end the day at any time before that if you like, which you will, and wake up at 6 am the next morning. If you do decide to stay up all night, there is a chance you will catch a cold that will use up your RP, which is pretty lame.
Rune Points, or RP, allow you to do just about everything in the game, from working your farm, to fighting. Every time you perform an action in the game, such as swinging a weapon or using your hoe or other farming implement, you use up a certain amount of RP. When you use up all of your RP, every subsequent action you do uses up HP, until you faint and wake up in the infirmary the next morning with reduced HP and gives you a possible cold. I’m not sure how well I like the idea of RP…I guess I understand why it was implemented, but I just don’t take too kindly to it. My dislike mostly stems from the fact that this greatly limits what you can do each day, and constantly makes you think about your actions. For one, if you feel like farming for a day, that’s about the only thing you can do, as just watering a few plants, and by few I mean about 90, will deplete your RP completely. Now, 90 sounds like a lot, but come on…watering a few plants means you can’t do anything else that day? Sure, sleeping only takes a second, and you can still walk around town and talk to folks, but I just don’t like it. Also, you can eat foods to replenish some RP, but most of the foods that are around replenish like, 2 RP each, which is nothing. There is a nice bath house that will completely replenish your HP and RP for 10 coins, but that doesn’t open up until later in the game and it’s just annoying to have to keep going to it, especially if you’re on Whale Island.
Whale Island is this floating island above your town, and hopefully you are keen enough to water the sparkling plant or else you’ll never get to the island. Once you do water this sprout, it shoots up into a giant beanstalk which you can climb to reach the floating mass. Here, the actual story is presented to you, as you are spoken to by the gods, or some spirit rather, who enlists your help to get him a new Rune so he can continue his existence, but aside from that, you don’t really know what else to do aside from living your ordinary existence by walking around the town and tending to your farm. The island does provide some action though, as it houses a dungeon; perhaps the only one in the game. The dungeon is relatively small, although there are some areas not accessible to you at first, so you will go back and explore and plunder. There are a few enemy types, such as goblins and worms, and then fox-things and cow-like creatures, as well as rats with bow-and-arrows and all sorts of things. You can purchase a sword or lance from the town’s blacksmith, or receive a random weapon from talking to certain characters, such as a scepter that can shoot out fire, or other magic spells. There’s not much to fighting though; just swing the Wii remote or press the A button, and that’s about it. You’ll want to keep moving to avoid attacks, but no real countering or avoidance moves or anything special.
Aside from getting some action into the game, another reason to beat up on these monsters and explore the island is to attain a myriad of items, which you can use for numerous things, from forging new weapons, to creating new food, or simply to sell it for profit.
As somewhat of an RPG, there are plenty of leveling characteristics. Aside from the main leveling aspect, where you raise your HP and RP limits, there are also 10 skills you can level up by performing appropriate actions. For instance, there are skills for tilling, watering, sword attacks, hammer, magic, etc. Every time you level up, you use less RP for that move, and in the case of fighting skills, you become stronger.
Beatin’ up on some baddies. And remember, those blue orbs will continue to generate new monsters, so make sure to destroy those first.
Once you’ve had your fill of Whale Island and the joys of farming, you’ll have nothing left to do but explore your smallish town and talk to the inhabitants. By doing so, you will attain new items, learn new things, and open up some possibilities. Some people will give you quests, like obtaining an item for them, while others will give you a new weapon or farming implement, which can help you to clear your field. Talking to characters can also improve your relationship with them, leading to marriage for some ladies. You will have to woo them though, and aside from talking to them, you can give them gifts that you think they will like. Aside from working your magic with the laides, you will also learn of a variety of things, such as what these characters can do for you. For instance, there is one kid who can expand your house by building a variety of additions rooms for you, such as a barn, kitchen, lab, forge, and so forth. These rooms all provide some benefit and new activity to perform.
All of the aforementioned rooms, aside from the barn, allow you to create new items, from weapons to food, and are all done in the same fashion. First, you need the necessary items, recipes, and skill to attempt to create an item. Once you’ve got all of that down, you play a very simple mini-game to determine your success. A bar will shift from side-to-side on a meter, and you want to stop that bar in a certain section. If you do, you get the item, if not, you can try again. The barn is a bit different. Here, you can pet the creatures you have “captured”. Once you build a barn and obtain the pet glove, you can go up to a monster on Whale Island and pet them a few times, while being assaulted by them the pricks. After a few pettings, they will trust you and you will automatically transport them to your barn, where you can visit them whenever you like.
Making a weapon in the forge. Stop the bar in the blue for a successful job, but get it in one of the small green sections for a perfect, which will increase the level of the item being made.
And that’s about it. You just keep doing these activities from day to day. You’ll see certain events unfold as the next day approaches, and meet new characters and have new things happen, but it’s not necessarily from things that you’ve done. This means that you may have to wait a few days before the story can progress, which is annoying, and leads to players wonder what they are supposed to do next. The game lacks a bit of focus, or guide, so it’s hard to know what you’re supposed to do. You may go to Whale Island, but realize you can’t progress there, and then go back and try to talk to everyone, and nothing, only to wake up a few days later for some new character to waltz up into your town; a bit frustrating.
The Review
Storyline:
The story follows the main character as he winds up in a new town and must then make a life for himself. In between farming and meeting the neighbors, he starts to explore this mysterious, floating island and learns about the spirit who lives there and needs his help. The story is ok, but doesn’t play THAT much of a role as this is more of a free-roaming, do as you like sort of game.
Gameplay:
There are many pieces to the game play, but to make it simple, you farm, talk to people, explore dungeons, and make new items. Each one of these dynamics is easily, perhaps too easily, performed, and the bulk of the game seems to be on character interaction, so hopefully that sort of thing won’t bore you.
Sound/Music:
The music is a bit repetitive, but that’s how these games are. Each area has its own theme, and it’s doable. Some characters also have some voice acting, but it’s very sporadic and random.
Graphics:
The graphics are ok, but nothing spectacular. There are nice anime-style cut-scenes, but they are few and far between and quite short.
The Good:
Frontier does feature a variety of gameplay and if you are into the whole Harvest Moon thing, then there is plenty to enjoy.
The Bad:
I found farming a bit boring and repetitive, and the fact that you lose RP by doing it is quite annoying. I would like to do an assortment of things in one day without having to worry about not having enough RP or replenishing it in kind. It also sucks if you don’t have enough to tackle a dungeon area. Item management is a bit clunky as well.
The Ugly:
What I found most annoying was the way the story progressed “randomly” by just waiting for time changes to occur. You could talk to everyone, go as far as you can in Whale Island, and farm, and not progress the story at all until the game was ready to do it on its own. Also, “random” characters hold key items that you need, but there is no indication that they have these items so you’ll spend a large amount of time searching, and then talking to everyone before stumbling upon the solution. Just bad.
Overall:
Rune Factory: Frontier is a decent game where you can do an assortment of activities, from farming and conversing, to dungeon crawling. If you like games like Harvest Moon, then you’ll enjoy this title, but I found it to be a little slow-paced and the fact that you have to wait and wait until some story elements come into place, without knowing when that may be, is frustrating and leads to idle playing/wondering. There is plenty to do in this title though, and if you like farming and doing such tasks and talking with an assortment of characters, then this game will keep you plenty busy.
Final Vote: 3/5
What Others Thought:
TestFreaks: 8.6/10
MetaCritic: 79/100
GameRankings: 81.14%
Tags: Marvelous Entertainment, Nintendo Wii, Review, Rune Factory, Rune Factory: Frontier, Xseed Games
