The Spin-Offs and Posers
Rune Factory, the fantasy-infused Harvest Moon spin-off series that, while still considered part of the official series, tends to feel like it's own entity all together. The first game of the series came out in August 2006, only a few months after the release of Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon, which I talked extensively on in the previous post. 2006 must've been the year of experimentation for Marvelous ALQ and it's producers, because both of these games were unlike anything that had previously carried the Harvest Moon title. The fantasy spin-off ended up being far more successful than it's futuristic counterpart, however, now totaling 6 games as of 2012. Sadly, there is no news of any future games as the actual developers of the series, Neverland Co, recently went bankrupt. Even so, the series is very beloved, and managed to reach a much different audience of players than Harvest Moon did originally.
This is mainly because that while the Rune Factory series has all of the basic aspects of a Harvest Moon game, such as farming, animal raising, and befriending/romancing the people of whatever town it takes place in, there are some very different added features that helped it appear to a new audience. First of all, in Rune Factory, you don't raise traditional animals, like cows and chickens. In this series, you tame and raise wild monsters!
Some popular monsters include:
The Buffamoo!
The Cluckadoo!
And even stylish Goblins!
There are many, many different monsters to find and tame. All monsters, after tamed, can help your character in different ways, such as ones that do still produce products like milk and eggs, and others that are more suited for joining you on adventures. As this implies, the biggest aspect of the Rune Factory series included combat, which is the main reason it reached new audiences. You could still farm and enjoy the social aspect of the game, but now you also had to go exploring the wilds and fight monsters, and improve your characters skills to finish the games story line.
Personally, I've only fully completed Rune Factory 4, which was the first game that gave you the option of playing as either a boy or girl. The rest of the series only had a male player available, with the hesitant exception of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, but that one is kind of a special, and very confusing, case.
As I mentioned previously, there are 6 games in the series as of now, with no word on if anymore will be released in the future, but the ones available now are absolutely fantastic. Three are available on the Nintendo DS (Rune Factory 1, 2, and 3), two are available on Wii (Rune Factory: Frontier and Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny), one on the PlayStation 3 (Tides of Destiny again) and the final and most recent is on Nintendo 3DS. Personally, my least favorite has to be Tides of Destiny, but it's still definitely worth a play if you're more of a console person.
Some popular monsters include:
The Buffamoo!The Cluckadoo!And even stylish Goblins!There are many, many different monsters to find and tame. All monsters, after tamed, can help your character in different ways, such as ones that do still produce products like milk and eggs, and others that are more suited for joining you on adventures. As this implies, the biggest aspect of the Rune Factory series included combat, which is the main reason it reached new audiences. You could still farm and enjoy the social aspect of the game, but now you also had to go exploring the wilds and fight monsters, and improve your characters skills to finish the games story line.
Personally, I've only fully completed Rune Factory 4, which was the first game that gave you the option of playing as either a boy or girl. The rest of the series only had a male player available, with the hesitant exception of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, but that one is kind of a special, and very confusing, case.
As I mentioned previously, there are 6 games in the series as of now, with no word on if anymore will be released in the future, but the ones available now are absolutely fantastic. Three are available on the Nintendo DS (Rune Factory 1, 2, and 3), two are available on Wii (Rune Factory: Frontier and Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny), one on the PlayStation 3 (Tides of Destiny again) and the final and most recent is on Nintendo 3DS. Personally, my least favorite has to be Tides of Destiny, but it's still definitely worth a play if you're more of a console person.
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