Rune Factory 3 Review

Today I’m doing a review for Rune Factory 3, the third Rune Factory game for the DS.  It is my absolute favorite in the series so far!  If you aren’t familiar with the Rune Factory games, I suggest taking a look at my Rune Factory review or using Google.

Plot:  The game starts out on a dark, stormy night in Sharance.  All of a sudden, a golden wooly (a sheep of sorts for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Rune Factory) falls from the sky in front of a shop.  A young woman comes out and brings you inside to care for you since you appear to be hurt.  After an argument with her grandfather she puts you in a spare bed and leaves you to rest.  In the morning, there is a flash of light and the wooly is no longer there.  In the place of the wooly is a young man.  He rushes out of the shop and ends up in front of a huge tree.  Another young woman is standing in front of the tree but won’t speak to you.  Luckily, the same young woman from before comes by and starts talking to you.  She asks for your name but you can’t seem to remember.  In fact, you can’t remember a single thing about yourself!  So, just like the 2 protagonists from Rune Factory 1 & 2, you have amnesia.  The young woman has you pick a name for yourself.  The default name is Micah.  After this she has the other young woman who wouldn’t talk to you take you up into the tree while she leaves to go get her grandfather.  The young woman comes back with her grandfather (the mayor) and he lets you live in the Sharance tree which also has farmland right under it.  More stuff happens right after that but I’ll let you see that for yourself if you get the game.  Long story short, you get to play through the caves around town which are set up similarly to Rune Factory 2’s.  The plot revolves around beating the bosses in the caves just like the past games.

Gameplay:  This one has the best gameplay by far in my opinion.  The controls are very similar to those of Rune Factory 2 with some minor differences.  A nice feature was that you could drop stuff on the ground and it wouldn’t disappear unless you moved from that screen or there were too many items.  The best part of all: everything was FAST.  He ran fast (probably only a little faster than the other protagonists but still) and the fighting was fast.  It didn’t take you forever to swing your sword or weapon like it did in Rune Factory 2.  Only thing that could be kind of annoying was that the weather wasn’t set the day before like in the other Rune Factories or like in Harvest Moon.  The day could start off sunny, but could be raining 4 hours later.  The same thing with typhoons (which wreck your fields).  It could be sunny all day, then it would start storming a second later.  This can easily be avoided (but it’s still annoying) by saving frequently.  Also, seeds cover only 1 tilled square, unlike the 9 squares in the past two games and while you have two fields under the tree, you have to rotate which one you use because the soil quality starts declining.  Super annoying, but not too bad.  There is also so much more to the game that it would take ages to write it all down.

Graphic quality:  The graphics in Rune Factory 3 are better than the other two games.  Everything is a little sharper and the colors are much brighter.  It’s a huge difference from the first game.

Art Style: It seemed like almost every shop had some little embellishment on it.  The flower shop and flowers on the building, the eccentric elf who loves rainbows had splashes of paint on her house, the Inn was a little more Eastern, and the settlement had tents in it.  The caves had various things in them that made them interesting, such as the random statues in Privera Forest.  The Sharance tree’s leaves changed with the season which was nice.

Pacing of story:  This very much depends on how much you play and how quickly you finish games in general.  The first file I made, I finished the plot by early Winter of my first year and took me a couple months (real time) I believe to finish.  The second file… I finished the whole plot by mid-Summer of my first year and took me 1 week (real time) to finish. I took my time doing everything in the first file and enjoyed the stuff going on.  The second time around I focused almost solely on the plot and tended to ignore people for the most part. So yeah.

Customization:  There’s a little more customization in this one but not much.  You can buy outfits from Evelyn that are just different colors of the default one or more costume like ones like the wedding tuxedo.  You can also buy furniture from Evelyn and place it anywhere on the main floor of the Sharance tree you want.  You have the option to rename your character and farm throughout the game.

Difficulty of game:  Rune Factory 3 has to be one of the easiest games I have ever played.  It’s so easy it’s almost ridiculous.  But for some reason, that’s what makes it so much fun.  The thing that makes it so easy is that you can level up really fast, unlike the past games, and money is easy to come by.  That combination makes for an easy game.  To say how easy it is, I’m a level 410 and have over 11,000,000 G in the summer of my 2nd (maybe 3rd) game year.

Music soundtrack:  The music was good, especially the music that plays under the Sharance tree where you farm.  None of it was amazingly irritating.

Price of game:  You can buy the game new for $20 at Gamestop.

Lasting Appeal:  I finished this game a second time (and I seldom make second files) over a year ago and I still constantly play it.  There’s just something about it that makes you want to come back for more.

Stars out of 10:  I give it a full 10.  Sure, there were some slightly irritating things like the randomness of storms, but everything else about the game negated it.

Final Consensus:  I loved almost everything about this game and highly recommend it if you’ve already played the last two Rune Factories for the DS.  It is still one of my favorite games after a year.

Disclaimer: We do not own, nor are we affiliated with the makers of Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, Google, nor anything else mentioned here. They all belong to their respective owners and creators. This is strictly a personal review of the product. We were not paid to review this product, nor were we given the product by any company. The Girly and the Geeky blog is not associated with the aforementioned makers in any way, nor is there any profit made for the blog, it’s owner, and other writers.

~Cerulean