Picked up Rune Factory 4 during the last major steam sale but only now getting around to it. What am I in for? Should I play hard mode?
Picked up Rune Factory 4 during the last major steam sale but only now getting around to it. What am I in for?
Picked up Rune Factory 4 during the last major steam sale but only now getting around to it. What am I in for? Should I play hard mode?
seethe
I highly recommend Hard mode. It's not unreasonably difficult, but it forces you to at least attempt to learn the crafting system and get gud, and it keeps the pacing of the story at a decent clip. I think a lot of people play normal and breeze through every immediate dungeon, and the story beats come off as very rushed when nothing is impeding your progress. On Hard you have to reevaluate your gear about every dungeon which is satisfying IMO.
RF4 is so good - one of those games I wish I could experience again for the first time.
Thanks, I went ahead and picked hardmode a bit after making this topic. Any beginners tips?
So far none of the girls have grabbed my attention yet but the sleepy girl is cuet.
Is this your first RF or HM-adjacent game?
I'd say just follow the request board and always be making those a priority to finish. A portion of them are essentially tutorials that are gating access to stuff you'll need throughout the game.
Save all your weeds into the fertilizer bin. Save all your withered grass in storage - it is critical for healing soil/crops and in recipes.
Upgrade your hoe and/or sickle with a magnifying glass. This gives the tools the ability to view soil/crop stats which is very useful, and you don't need to keep a MG in your inventory.
Tame the chicken/cow monsters ASAP. At least one of each to begin hoarding eggs/milk which will increase in quality over time. These are great for
If you somehow end up with high level seeds, shipping them should unlock the same level in the shops. Unlocking lvl 10 turnip seeds should be a priority.
Level 10 anything can be extremely useful. IIRC once your blacksmith skill is lvl 50+, fully upgrading weapons/armor with lvl 10 items in every slot is an extremely easy, achievable way to get strong gear that will carry you through the game.
Tame a boss when you can. You can give your tamed monsters items every day which will increase their stats. If you're consistent with it you'll end up with a real beast by endgame. Some monsters make extremely good party members in combat.
Xiao Pai is best girl
If you get really stumped by something don't be afraid to look up a guide - there's weird bullshit every once in a while.
It's my first RF and my last HM game played was uhhhh 64 I'm pretty sure.
Thanks for the tips homie, I'll be taking the game pretty slow and steady.
Dont rush to marriage, 4 is a really long game enjoy the events the girls the daily grind. Eventually you'll settle with one.
weird pedo game for developmentally stunted sex pests
this shit has literal children as romance options.
nips need to die
The sooner America decides to kill all pedos the better the world will be
go yank to your e-girls homosexual
i'll kick your ass. pedo homosexuals lyign about how this is similar to stardew valley when all the romance options are stupid children or literal morons because it caters to dumb pedos like you
>pedo homosexuals lyign about how this is similar to stardew valley
Yeah it's better because it's not millennial urbanite slop.
Similar? This was first and better you're deluded if you can't distinguish reality from a drawing not all the girls are e-girls now go make another Jaz thread hypocrite
Americans really are incapable of metacognitive awareness. It's like an infant who has the appearance of possessing a personality, desires, behaviors etc. but is not capable of conceiving itself in relation to its surroundings (which is almost always why our youngest years are a blank in our mind).
stop trying to lord over me with your pedophilic sophistry homosexual. just face the fact that japanese men are wierd sex pests and your taste in media reflects that
Accept the fact I wouldn't mind if you and your shit family had their heads impaled on pikes tomorrow morning.
Actually farm. And unlock the events immediately. They get really moronicly difficult in the later years.
>What am I in for?
A nice comfy game, have fun!
Also remember to throw tomatoes at Xiao Pai to raise her affection!
>Also remember to throw tomatoes at Xiao Pai to raise her affection!
DO NOT
Expect a really autistic farming and crafting system.
The fricking soil actually has multiple stats. The game does not explain any of this at all and those stats aren't even visible normally unless you use the magnifying glass item. So spare yourself the hassle of equipping the thing every time you do some in-depth farming autism and just upgrade your headgear with a magnifying glass. That way, the soil stats automatically pop up everytime you approach a farming field.
Item crafting is even MORE autistic despite how simple it initially appears.
I'll spoil this now, but the story actually has multiple arcs. You'll know when the first arc ends, and I'd advise switching to Hell difficulty for maximum autistic fun. Playing on Hell actually incentivizes you to dabble into the more in-depth mechanics the game has.
In terms of waifu homosexualry Chink and e-girl actually has the more introspective and darker character arcs and quirks.. Also, just talk to everyone everyday, just talking increases affection and there's a surprising amount of context sensitive and unique dialogue in this game, so you'll rarely see repeating dialogue for the first two years or so.
Any news about 6 or Dragon?
Maybe we'll get a release date this year
Nintendo Partner Showcase tomorrow, so maybe then.
If there isn't a teaser or something for either game by tomorrow, then put them solely in vaporware lmao territory.
Weren't both revealed relatively recently? 5 was way more waporware.
Welp, fricking nothing.
See you in the next five years.
I'm glad the series ended respectfully at 4
I mean the good thing with 5 is that they'll have a hard time making 6 or the asian one worse.
Even without the bibawd/literal homosexualry pandering (which was also implemented poorly), 5 was a special kind of mess. Mechanically, and lorewise.
Which is a shame because the character designs were still pretty good.
I take the homosexualry as a cost of operation at this point. I don't care for it in the slightest, but it's at least easy to ignore and (maybe) markets toward more people. The series has already died once with Neverland, so I'd guess Marvelous doesn't want to take a gamble on not appealing to a possibly non-extant market while in the process annoying people who will by the game anyways. The problem I have with it is that it dilutes the character pool with two sets of similar characters, meaning that each character needs to cover more bases and therefore be more generic. What previously was around ten characters now need to be done with two sets of six.
5 honestly felt unfinished in all aspects. Controls are oddly stiff, models and textures feel like placeholders, story lurches from one thing to another, worldbuilding doesn't exist, characters are more flat and generic than usual, and so on. I honestly thought that we were going out to sea until they started reusing dungeons due to how much of the sea is included in the map. As you said the only thing done competently is the character designs, probably because that's easy to convey in marketing.
>it's at least easy to ignore
It's not when it's shoved in your face all the time in 5. Guys can't talk to you without flirting or outright lusting after you.
That wasn't my experience, but I might well be wrong. 5 is also impressively bad at leaving an impression.
>You trip romance event flags with guys regardless if (You) are a homosexual or not
>You can only have one Bachelor/Bachelorette event going on a time
>One of the Bachelor's romance events (which you definitely didn't intend to trigger if you were playing as a straight dude but still happens anyway because the water in Rigbarth makes everyone gay) has an event chain the only continues at a secluded part of the map at 7p.m.
>Since the map is too large with frickall to do and the clock literally moves half as fast as it did in other Rune Factory games, you probably wouldn't hang out late enough to stumble on the event continuation and thus clear his event without a guide since unlike RF4, npc dialogue doesn't even hint on how to continue the event
>Ongoing romance events blocks off all other characters event triggers, also this was one of the earlier events for this Bachelor's romance arc, so most people will stumble upon it even with low relationship values with him
>Spend weeks or even a season literally being unable to trigger the events of the girls because this dude went homosexual and literally won't let any other events happen until you clear his
The average Rune Factory 5 experience folks.
I don't even completely abhor literal homosexualry. But the way how suddenly everyone is gay and how events work in the game just adds to the miserable experience.
It's so fricking over.
It's interesting that they have two games supposedly in development. At first I thought that it's because RF:Asia was nearing release, but since there's no news I just assume that it's a big departure from other RF games and Marvelous needs to assure people that it isn't the style going forwards if it flops.
Also interesting to see the next Fantasy Life game being pushed back to late 2024 since Level 5 previously said that it'd release some time in 2023. Life-sim adventure games struggling all round.
Marvelous hosted their own little direct last time, so maybe they're waiting for that. But they would be stupid to skip out on Nintendo since that'll obviously have more eyes on it.
i was confused why the first reply had that image attached but after reading the thread now i understand...
anyway i just started the rf4s recently, already got 200hrs in it. i love it so much and i hate myself for not finding it sooner
i don't mean to out myself as a semi newbie but is there any way to read the old /rfhmg/ threads? when i search on the archive nothing comes up besides other anons mentioning it
Bump because I would like to read the old threads too
Arch.b4k is what I usually use for archives going back far. Why you'd want to check out a general is beyond me, but it's there.
Also congratulations on getting in to the series with the best one, any other game will be worse in one way or another. I personally don't think it's the best writing in the series, but that's a minor element on the whole.
I'd say the Bachelorettes in 3 still have the most charming character writing among all the games courtesy of just how batshit insane most of them are. Sharence isn't a town, it's a goddamn looney containment zone and I wouldn't have it any other way.
4 and 5 had the Bachelor(ettes) just essentially hole up together all the time, but everyone in 3 had their own little cliques. And that helped the characters play off each other more efficiently as the specific dynamics each little clique had highlighted their respective strengths in an amusing manner.
>Arch.b4k is what I usually use for archives going back far
When I use arch.b4k it doesn't show anything before 2015, and from what I've read from past RF threads is that /rfhm/ generals were back in 2013
Pic related, found it from discord
>any other game will be worse in one way or another
They're all their own games with individual flaws and quirks. Like you said, the writing isn't too great. But from what I've seen, 4 is also the most fleshed out of the series so it's unfair to compare the others to it.
I keep seeing that most people praise 4 for its gameplay while 3 has better characters. I look forward to playing 3 when I 100% 4, and seeing how I rate it.
I have to admit I regret not starting with Oceans or 3 since everyone says 4 is the best. But I hope to play every RF game at some point anyway. I just played about an hour of Tides of Destiny/Oceans the other day and it is really comfy so far.
>I regret not starting with Oceans or 3 since everyone says 4 is the best
While 4 is the best indeed, I wouldn't say 3 is that much worse, especially if we're talking 3S. And Oceans (or ToD as I know it) is just so wildly different that it doesn't really matter if you started with something else, although imo it has better combat actually.
The models in 3S are actually really nice. Quite a bit of assets in 3S were made from the ground up, so it ends up actually looking much nicer than even 4S, which for the most part is literally just a scaled up 3DS game.
At this point, the only thing keeping 3S from being on par with (or even better than) 4/S is the breadth of content. 4 has the leg up on 3 with the sheer length of the main campaign and maps/dungeons.
Personally, I find Sharence and its townspeople to be more endearing and interesting than Selphia and the folks there. One of the wishes I had for 3S was that they'd actually end up adding stuff involving Aquaticus, simply because of how memed he was during the heyday of Rune Factory threads. Would've been wild if they actually gave him a humanoid bishounen. Imagine the NTR shitposting.
*humanoid bishounen form
I disagree, I've always found the townspeople in RF4 to have more going on. The breadth of content you mention in 4 is precisely what helps flesh these characters out so much. 3 on the other hand gives you a strong impression with its characters right out the gate, but the interesting parts and gimmicks (with some exceptions) are usually only skin deep.
The breadth of content I mentioned in 4 is more on the gameplay side.
The Guardians had a lot going for them as core characters to the setting, but besides them, I would say the townsfolk (and bachelorettes) in Selphia aren't any more compelling than the ones in Sharence. In fact, I would even say they're lesser than their Sharence neighbours.
I actually played 4S recently (coming from only playing vanilla 4 back in the day) after playing through 3S and I was surprised to find in retrospect that the 3 cast had a lot more going for them than how people kept saying that they were one note caricatures.
One massive thing I noticed in 3 compared to 4 was that Selphia practically has zero complete families. It says a lot when Xiao and her mom are the most complete conventional family in in Selphia and that not considering the clusterfrick that is household. Meanwhile, most families in 3 follow the conventional framework of head figure related by blood and children. Selphia is almost exclusively inhabited by found/adopted families whilst Sharence is the inverse with Raven and Pia only being like that.
Some highlights from 3 I liked were:
- Karina and Hazel being tsundere for each other and Karina deciding that she'll never be like her mom only for you to realize that the two are way more alike than they'd like to admit.
- Pia having a completely alien understanding of what family and relationships are courtesy of being a sea creature
- Marian being gaslit by her grandma to prevent another incident like in her childhood
- Sakuya and Shino actually being monster haters
- Despite their good relationship, Colette lives in the shadow of her father as a cook and his approval in that field being the one thing he doesn't lightly give
- Most of the older folk in Sharence actually being low key racists
And a lot more, but I'd be writing more of a wall of text at this point.
Going into 4 coming from 3, I was surprised to find that I was yearning back for the cast of 3, and not just the marriage candidates.
A lot of how the cast in 3 works is only possible because they're relatively complete blood families rooted in the community already. Compare that to Selphia where it's an absent parents, no children and adopt a random homie extravaganza. And not to downplay the Guardians (and even Doug and Margaret to an extent), but were just the same fish out of water/found family stories told with a slightly different spin each time. Even 3 had the sense to only pull that twice with Pia and Raven. Sharence seems like a proper community of a town. Selphia is more like a glorified tourist spot populated by a bunch of caretakers and guests (which in all honesty, probably isn't that far from the truth either).
4 certainly has the edge in sheer amount of variable day to day dialouge, and they have the benefit in having the cast actually involved in the plot this time. But I feel like the people there existed to move the plot rather than being an established community that suddenly has plot thurst upon them. The cast in 4 had better mileage courtesy of 4 being a longer game and having a larger script. But on a foundational backbone of them as invidivual characters in their setting, I would attest that the cast in 3 has a far stronger base and setup and they were able to leave a stronger impression despite having less game to work with.
That said, one thing I liked 4 doing is having certain members react to boss battles or story events if you had them on you when it happened. Barret has an amusing reaction if you brought him to the fight against the Fiersome clone. But interestingly enough, Raven doesn't even have much to say to the Aquaticus clone if you brought her to that fight. So did she canonically lose the Micahbowl. You'd think she'd have some reaction to seeing a clone of the guy that almost ruined her engagement.
>One massive thing I noticed in 3 compared to 4 was that Selphia practically has zero complete families.
Because it's practically the theme of the RF4. It's not something to notice when it's clearly the through line of the game. Porco with Meg, Dylas and Arthur. Doug with Blossom. Bado with Forte and Kiel. Dolce with Nancy and Jones. Pico herself was adopted by Dolce and her family originally. It's not an accident when multiple town events cover the same subject of deracinated orphans, and it's all caught up with the plot of the Guardians. It's similar to how RF3's theme was race. I'll argue this brings Lest closer to the villagers, because he's in a similar position. While I agree it would've been nice to see more complete families, I don't see how this makes 4's cast 'not work' in comparison to 3's. Selphia might not be the rooted community of Sharance, but it's still a community. Calling it a bunch of caretakers and guests is really downplaying it.
Mind you, I don't mean that as an insult. But Selphia as a whole feels much less organic than any other prior RF settings. Children and complete families sell the idea that you're in a proper thriving town. And that's something Selphia clearly lacked. It gives the impression that it's a more transient place. Like a tourist attraction populated by people who are only there to keep it running. Which then seems paradoxical since effectively, Selphia should be one of the oldest places in the setting since it's been the abode one of the great Elder Dragons. For a place that literally revolves around a centuries old being, you'd think that if anything, it'd be the place that has multiple rooted families and communities.
>I'll argue this brings Lest closer to the villagers, because he's in a similar position.
I'd have to a disagree on this one since Lest/Frey entered the down as a delegate/representative of the capital even if it was a farce. It's one of the things vaguely forgotten in the story, but he/she officially entered the town as pretty much a middle manager sent from the capital. So their story is preemptively set up as one of being acknowledged if they're fit to the role or not rather than being a found family dynamic.
Raguna/Kyle/Micah fits that argument better since they literally squeezed themselves into the property/household of already existing townspeople i.e. the respective "canon" heroines of 1 to 3 simply on their whims and good graces. Whilst Lest and Frey were technically put into their positions in an official capacity as the overseer everyone was already expecting to come.
>For a place that literally revolves around a centuries old being, you'd think that if anything, it'd be the place that has multiple rooted families and communities.
I get that. This seems like a developer thing. It feels like they thought up the prince and tourist mechanic first, which informed everything else about how the town and its people were designed. The discrepancy between what Selphia is, and what it ought to be given Ventuswill and its history is definitely a flaw. Had they more time and resources, they might've been able to make the town a more realized setting. But remember that every game world is an approximation of a real one. The Selphia and Sharance you see in their respective games are scaled down in realization. None of the houses have bathrooms or closets even though they should and probably do. Lin Fa's Hotel only has three rooms. There's way more houses, businesses and residents than just the ones we see in-game, and it makes no sense for a castle to be one big empty room with two small wings, and for that castle to be staffed by exactly three people. It's something where your imagination comes into play, but that doesn't excuse more complete families being shown on screen.
Apart from that discrepancy, while Selphia may not feel like a rooted community, it still feels like a strong community, and I altogether prefer its townspeople to 3. One reason I prefer Selphia is because it feels more alive, and this is accomplished through the rng town events. I know a lot of people hate these, but I love them. They make it feel like the town doesn't revolve around you, like the people have lives outside what you're doing. This is helped along with a variation of events where you join in and participate, and events where you merely observe the interactions of other characters.
>But remember that every game world is an approximation of a real one.
I think that already goes without saying. But still, the other games did a good job of showing what needs to be shown to sell the illusion.
Kardia and Trampoli were supposed to be bumfrick frontier towns on the border with the Sechs Empire. And we fittingly saw modest towns with a couple of Sech immigrants/refugees.
Alvarna was supposed to be an emerging coastal town. You see lots of ports to see the focus on maritime trade and there were quite a few empty spots and lots in town to show that it was still very much a developing town.
Sharance is an old town with storied history with an emphasis on living with nature. There are lots of old established families there. And noticeably, compared to other towns in the numbered series, there's a lot less stone or developed roads in Sharance. And that makes sense since they would probably keep urban development low to maintain the health Sharance Tree.
Meanwhile, Selphia was supposed to be the a major town. It's about as old as Ventuswill herself, developed enough to have even airship ports, and relevant enough to have royalty from the capital establish an overseer role in it. And yet somehow, it misses most of the marks that would be indicative of it being an old and already well-rooted community. Hell, the only actual full family there is Xiao's and they only moved there this generation.
It's a problem that could've easily been resolved by just adding a few more townspeople.
- They should've shown Clorica/Vishnal and Forte/Kiel's parent(s). Their clans were stewards of the town and it's weird that we didn't see any of them since they could've given proper context to the town's history.
- Add someone from the capital not named Arthur to show the close ties between the town and capital
- Add a dedicated Airship pilot/mechanic character to emphasize the town being advanced and having active trade
- Actually just show children from any family
>starting with Oceans
I love Oceans, playing through it again right now. It isn't really a traditional RF game though, so you aren't getting spoiled on it and you shouldn't start with it if you want to get the vanilla Rune Factory experience.
The big problem is pacing. Even on my first playthrough of Oceans it felt like I was sequence-breaking with what materials and house upgrades I should have. The thread of progression is way less obvious and you never really get in to a similar farming and talking to neighbor loop like you do in the other games. It succeeds well at some things and I'm happy that they tried something new, but most of it didn't really pan out as well as it could have. Still my second favorite game in the series.
Also: Violet > Maerwen > Pandora = Elena > Mikoto > Lily = Odette > Electra (Never marry into Sainte-Coquille, else probably same as Mikoto) > > > > > > > > > > Sierra
>Violet best girl
Isn't it a bit weird that the idea of the romantic interest being more interested in the MC than the MC is in them hasn't been used more often? As I recall it there is only Violet for Aden and Bismark for Sonja in Tides, and Ludmilla being MC-sexual in 5.
I could have missed something through a combination of bad memory and light 'tism, but even then it's not many. S'pose it's not the easiest to portray subtly.
I want to read the old threads just to see more of these. Does anyone have more?
And funnily enough, the last panel was actually addressed in 3S with newlywed mode.
Hey, it at least gave us some more closure on the Bachelorettes stories and some stuff to do after marriage aside from excavating the Sharence dungeon.
It's interesting to see how your tastes change after going back into a game more than a decade later. When I was still a horny middleschooler when I played 3 back then, like a lot of other folk, I went for Raven because she was the fantasy equivalent of the brooding emo girl.
Back for my 3D playthrough, I found myself going for Colette. With a few more years of life under my belt, I found her struggles to gain the approval of her dad and the fact that she remained a steadfast friend to a psycho b***h that commits war crimes on a daily basis really endearing and charming.
Also, it's hilarious how Blaise suddenly lowers his voice and threatens to fricking murder Micah if you do end up going for Collete. Mind you, he was the nicest and most jovial adult in the town.
I honestly think this is the major failing with 4 (and is one of many flaws with 5). There usually ends up being one or two that have wide appeal that everyone gravitates towards, and the remaining being there just to cover niches. In the older games I can see the appeal of everyone and was more so happy to get to know everyone before making a choice, but in both 4 and 5 I knew instantly that most of them didn't interest me. Hell in 5 no-one was interesting so I just ended up not caring about getting to know the villagers better.
>psycho b***h that commits war crimes on a daily basis
Marian wasn't THAT bad.
She fricking had a drug that makes the recipient happily obey her every command and commit atrocities at her whim.
She had that magic bullshit happy mind control drug straight from a doujin/eromanga and nobody in Sharance seemed to find that concerning.
But her character lore was also amusing.
Be a once in a thousand years born magical genius. Cause a tiny oopsie when you were a kid. Grandma Gaslights you into thinking that you're magically moronic so that you don't use your magic to harm yourself or others. Decide to pursue the path of MAD SCIENCE instead.
Hey, can't be a war crime if she ain't participating in a war.
The combat is pretty meh, hard mode only affects combat so don't bother with it unless you like item crafting for combat purposes like Atelier.
Has anyone released a mod that fixes the ridiculously low chance of events happening? That was the biggest gripe I had with 4
I'd argue that the entire game is preparing for rather than executing combat. Yes that mainly means that Hard Mode only makes an already quite long game longer, but it also means that you have to learn all the systems. It's therefore mainly good for returning players, but it's a worthy addition.
>the ridiculously low chance of events happening
Wasn't 4S supposed to fix that?
Triggering "Memories"/Act 3 is now much less cancerous. Finishing Act 2 and triggering the right condition immediately fasttracks "Memories" into priority spot in the Town Event queue so that you can start Act 3 immediately.
But pretty much any other Town Events are still left to the whims of RNG.
It's still low, Rune Factory is as big an offender as Crusader Kings in the "Progression is based on dice roll" category.
Depends entirely on game. Some of them have no RNG for progression, either for villagers or story.
How are people feeling about Dragon and 6? I'm cautiously optimistic even with how poor 5 was. It's mostly coming from 4S and 3S not adding stupid shit and being successful enough for re-releases of an honestly rather small series, and Marvelous hopefully seeing the better reception to them than to 5 and learning the right lessons.
I just learned about it now.
I am optimistic that they learned what worked in RF4/3 and what didn't in 5
If Ventiswill returns, we better get to marry her.
>Spoiler
Oh you sweet summer child. Guest characters barely get any room to explain themselves in the first place.
Actually thinking about it, a 3D sequel to 4, ala Frontier, might actually be rather neat. Although that's assuming that they actually expand upon what 4 did rather than continuing on where 5 left off, scope and gameplay wise.
Dragon will be shit and 6 is entirely up in the air. They wouldn't promise two titles if both are expected to be good.
The non-numbered spinoffs had a track record of being pretty good. Frontier and Oceans stood on par or even surpassed the numbered game that came out near their timeframe. And both are far superior to 5.
Wasn't Frontier just 1 in 3D, and Oceans gutted farming and introduced stupid minigames to everything?
Dragon will be Skies of Destiny.
Dragon looks bad and I have no expectations for 6. Maybe it'll be good, but after 5 being utter garbage, they have to win me back over hard for a sale.
Xiao Pai a cute
I wanna cosplay her
I agree
Dolce would be fun to cosplay too
Please be willing to make male friends
I got an itch to do a new run in RF4. Got any fun challenges I could try? Stuff like staying lv1 the whole time, only using magic, etc
Wanna try something new
Hard mode without forging or crafting. Carry yourself through only on raw stats and existing weapons and armor
NTA but was also thinking about this too. Thanks.
What about some challenge ideas for doing NG+? Since I already have all the endgame gear I feel like my only option would be to do Hell mode, huh
If you want a challenge that doesn't involve you restricting or actively cucking yourself out of any of the game's features, then a Hell Mode run would suit you just fine.
Hell Mode's battle "balance" revolves around you actually taking advantage of the game's crafting systems. And early to mid game is a unique kind of fun since you're pretty much required to have a party with you at all times as either healers or decoys since average enemies kill you in a 2-3 hits and bosses kill you in 1 nevermind their unique/desperation attacks.
Just remember Amber and Xiao Pai are the best girls and you should marry one of them.
>Schizo and secretly depressed
>Self-esteem of a wet wooly and openly depressed
I'm beginning to see a pattern with your tastes anon.
Can't speak for Oceans but
>Wasn't Frontier just 1 in 3D
Fundamentally I suppose, but with extra Runey cancer. But in terms of comfy and SOVL, it's probably the best the series has ever looked in 3D and had lots of neat little tricks the series never bothered to bring back like:
>Unique dialogue for eavesdropping or walking in on the baths while someone as there
>Heroines react if you enter the swimsuit changing room while they're in it
>Actually being able to take out other Heroines on romantic dates.... while already being married
>Spouse catching you in the middle of said date, publicly flogging you and waking up the next day to find her serving you weeds for breakfast and her LP reset to 0
And all these silly things aside, there's just something about RF1 (+Frontier) and their heroines that the later games never quite managed to capture.
They're the only girls that actually need you. Moreso Amber since she's going to mentally die soon otherwise, on top of being the cutest.
Makes you wonder how the rest of Selphia will deal with Amber suddenly turning into a gigantic turbo b***h overnight if Lest wasn't around.
Advice: ignore the haters and just play RF5, instead. Yeah, 4 is good, sure, and I did play it before I ever played 5, but once 5 came out I jumped on it and fell in love. It has its flaws, but it's just genuinely better than 4 in most ways. First of all, it's actually fricking nice to look at. Get reshade and it's even better. Secondly, the town isn't 5 meters wide and the world is actually fun to move around in. The combat is more enjoyable and fair, magic is fun and not gay and shitty because of handheld limitations (my personal favorite is the Meteo-esque spell, can't remember what it's called. Maybe Comet or something idk, but it fricking rapes and it's not even in RF4). Hot take, but I think it has better waifus, too. I just really fricking love RF5, I was bummed when I basically completed everything.
Speaking of, that's really its only flaw: it was noticeably rushed. It's unfinished, but eh, just pirate it anyway who cares. It's free! May as well play it.
No, the REAL flaw of RF5 is unique only to the western version with its forced homosexual bullshit. I hope all the blue hairs involved with that decision die horribly. That being said, it's pretty easy to ignore and not notice. It's still annoying, but I mean, eh, could be worse. Mostly I'm just pissed because I'm a bigot and I hate homosexuals and I don't care.
But, anyway, skip RF4 and go download 5. It's 10/10.
OH AND I JUST REMEMBERED ANOTHER THING I LOVE ABOUT RF5
My __SECOND__ favorite spell is the literal fricking Kamehame wave giant water laser. Hell, even the regular water laser is basically a ki wave blast. And like the Meteo spell, it fricking rapes.
But, you know what's even fricking cooler? You can literally be Goku and fire off kamehame waves into the ocean and ACTUALLY GET STRONGER WHILE YOU DO IT. Unlike homosexual ass RF4, you can grind spells just by casting them. Don't need to hit anything. Genuinely a fun and immersive way to grind when you're bored or done for the day and about to sleep to the next one. Just go pyew pyew into the ocean or a wall or wherever, really, and over time your water stat will increase, which will in turn increase some of your other attributes.
Gosh dammit, I love RF5.
>"ONE MORE THING!" --Uncle from that jackie chan cartoon
okay last one i swear, but ANOTHER thing that rocks breasts off is that, AGAIN...UNLIKE homosexual ASS RF4...there's yet ANOTHER cool ass, immersive RPG-esque way you can grind in a realistic way that is unique to RF5.
So, every time you get hit, your defense stat will increase. Makes sense, eh? Well, the morons that made 4 and likely all the other games made it so you only accrue experience if you take damage.
This isn't the case in based-ass RF5. When I wasn't spamming ki waves into the ocean for fun grinding, I would go to the first dungeon and stand in the swinging axe trap thing. It doesn't push you out of the way and will hit you about two times per second. It's very weak, so in no time at all you should be getting hit for 0. And you will gain defense xp as you do so, which will raise some of your stats each time it goes up (and, of course, reduce all incoming damage).
Frickin' a. I'd spend so much time just afk-ing that grind that before I was even 1/4 of the way through the game, I had nearly 100 defense.
GO PLAY RUNE FACTORY 5
> but it's just genuinely better than 4 in most ways
No it fricking isn't.
> it's actually fricking nice to look at.
No it's fricking not. Well, I mean compared to upscaled 3DS graphics, sure I guess. But then compare the environments to Frontier or Oceans and you realize that it's shit even by 10 year old anime 3D game standards
>Secondly, the town isn't 5 meters wide and the world is actually fun to move around in.
No, it's shit. The smaller sized towns in 3/4 makes things more compact and lively in the way that the NPCs interact with each other more often. Rigbarth is pretty much an empty pile of nothing that is far bigger than it needs to be and the NPCs don't even have atmospheric/context sensitive actions or dialogue. It's a fricking empty town of wandering people that barely acknowledges each other.
Hell you notice that the clock actually moves much slower to compensate for the bigger swath of nothing you'll have to traverse to.
I'll give 5 praise for the better "world map" and dungeons, but it the cost a far more lifeless town.
>The combat is more enjoyable and fair,
No, it's still clunky. Which is standard for RF, but now you do it in clunky 3D. Also, you now get these super moves with cutscenes and shit. So you get to take massive chunks of enemy/boss HP with no risks at all. Totally "fair" amirite?
tl;dr
>WOW YOU GROW STRONG BY LITERALLY DOING NOTHING AND BEAT THE GAME BY NOT ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME
This is supposed to sell the game as better how?
I'm beginning to think that this is some kind of shitpost/pasta I'm not aware of.
cope, seethe, dilate. Not a single actual argument or true rebuttal for any of my points, except maybe the NPCs interacting with each other thing. *shrug* It's still better.
>This is supposed to sell the game as better how?
moron, it's an RPG. I should be able to do mundane things to steadily improve shit if I want to, as it is the case irl. Did you know you can also get the punching bag item and grind weapon skills on it, too? It's rad.
>cope, seethe, dilate.
lmao. Excellent empty buzzwords for a moron that actually has no argument.
But don't worry. Everyone universally hates RF5 and it's only loved by the very homosexuals you also hate. So enjoy being a living contradiction and presumably also being a homosexual in denial.
ACKSHUALLY, chud, you're the dipshit with no argument. That's twice now you've pulled this crap. None of you actually dispute any of the selling points I've listed; you just want to be c**ts for the sake of it. Not my problem.
Then, don't play it homosexual. I give a frick. Why don't you go pop some more adderall and goon to trannies, Black person.
>I give a frick.
>Then, don't play it homosexual.
That's the plan. I'm glad that you're capable of understanding that much. And your entire spiel is to blame for that for my case. Not that your attempt to sell the game will do much since 5 is pretty much set in stone as the black sheep for long time fans of the series.
Hope you enjoy the game that only literal homosexuals (yes, you're part of them) loved.
weak bait
You write like a homosexual
You're really not selling RF5 with the way you type. If this is your typical RF5 lover or what RF5 does to your brain, then god damn am I glad that this is the title I skipped. Thanks for the cautionary tale anon.
>First of all, it's actually fricking nice to look at
huh?
I sometimes forget how ugly the game actually was, jesus christ. It's impressive that it's way worse looking than the wii games in all aspects. Lots of aliasing around the character model. A very empty landscape that's just a raised and lowered plain painted with textures. The textures in question are extremely low quality and the only blending attempted being gradual transparency. UI is not minimalist enough to blend into the background, but not maximalist or themed well enough to feel like a coherent part of the world. Models and scale is all over the place ect.
It's not that one thing is letting the visuals down, be that the technical side, the concept or the execution. It's a failing of every part of the whole.
Op here after like 2 weeks of playing it on and off I've been having a lot of fun with it. Dolce best girl. Glad I picked it up and thanks for the advice people.
Redpill me on the tomboy
(aside from the fact she wants to frick her own brother)
The fact that she's a brocon is there to indicate that she's just an extremely horny girl in general. She's the only girl to directly confess her love at an earlier affection level. The rest of the girls only get to a confession in like their final events (and even then it's either indirect or Micah is the one that initiates), but she just drops the bomb like two events before her actual final event.
Props for her being a go-getter at least.
>Redpill me on the tomboy
She actually has long hair
It's not THAT long, but nice digits
Somehow I only just noticed she's wearing stockings
Or I guess they might be gaiters for wading since muh fishing
How would people feel if they revisited the generation idea from RF2? It's the only one in the series I haven't played, but from some reading it seems like a pretty neat concept. Not only does it mean that marriage isn't an end-game goal, but it'd also mean that characters more easily could be shown actually growing from their experiences. Every game that has friendship and romance mechanics it feels like the writing ends prematurely, you have built up this relation over the course of many hours, but once you've reached the point of being a true friend or significant other you can just ignore them since that story is done and there is little to no writing after that to reflect your relations anyways.
Also other people stealing your girl makes the world feel way less static and not like you are simply shopping for a waifu at your own leisure in a town overcrowded with them
>How would people feel if they revisited the generation idea from RF2?
I like it. The main problem with 2 was locking pretty much everything that made the game interesting (crafting, cooking, dungeons, etc) on the second generation, which meant you pretty much had to rush the game until the second half for it to start feeling like a RF game.
Also, it was almost impossible to get your favorite stolen in RF unless you actually played like shit. The earliest one was Cecilia's during Summer of the second year, if you talked with everyone every day you could reach lv10 with every single villager before that point.
Okay I can see why it didn't return in later entries in that case since I can't imagine the fan feedback on not being able to do the things that make RF RF in the first generation was great, but it sounds like it mostly was a problem of execution and design rather than being problem of concept. I also suppose that generational stories limit you a bit, but it isn't like RF is known for story anyway so it might force the writer to do something more.
Ultimately they took out rivals because most people don't actually like it, it's almost wholly only "supported" by some western players.
>How would people feel if they revisited the generation idea from RF2?
They wouldn't be able to pull it off. That would be 2 games glued together (for the price of one) when done properly. RF2 was made up of an extremely restricted demo version of the game and mostly unrelated game glued together, and a theoretical bi-generational RF7 would be 4 quarters of 4 games stiched together (2 gens x 2 genders because no way they'd ditch the feMC nowadays - or even worse, 2 gens x nogender because let's just ignore genders and make everyone frick everyone, it's cheaper this way).
If you're going to play RF2, get a savedata off of GameFAQs with everyone ready to marry, since the 1st gen is absolutely meaningless and barely connected to the 2nd gen at all.
Always felt like Mana had the most wasted potential of the RF "canon" heroines. Hell, RF2's OP was essentially non-stop fellation of her.
>Actually had a solid goal of becoming a teacher/researcher
>The Memoirs book stated that she had no interest in romance, at least unti Kyle reawakened her barren womb
They had the right materials for a nice Career vs. Romance arc for her. Could've introduced her as some kind of pragmatic keikaku b***h that was really only using Kyle to get capital and build her academy but then eventually make her swoon for real.
Hell, I feel like most of RF2 gen 1 heroines were underutilized in general. They essentially were womb machines that you can pick at your leisure to mash through the really fricking long tutorial and actually get to the rest of the (underwhelming) game.
Which 3 girl has the biggest bahonkers?
I mean the only time I recall someone being stacked in this series it has been a defining trait.
Am I alone in liking Hazel? She's really cute.
I want to make her my wife and Karin my daughter.
Tsundere moms are a surprisingly rarely appreciated or even done thing. She awakened me to that fetish.
I think the the Rune Factory setting (Norad?) is actually one of my favourite jrpg worlds. It's not the most unique and a lot of it is boilerplate fantasy but because the nature of the games means it fleshes out very very small areas and their inhabitants much more than a more adventurous RPG it makes the wider world feel like it could be just as real.
Also the first game being set on the border town of a nation at war with another but being a farming RPG is just really cool.
I'm pretty sure that Trampoli and Kardia are in relative proximity to each other.
But yeah, RF does have one of the more interesting (if not rather confusing if you actually start asking questions) worlds I've seen in Japanese fantasy solely on the distinction between their world running parallel to the Forest of Beginnings. So I'll actually start asking questions.
All the monsters in their world apparently come from the FoB, some kind of alternate or parallel dimension. When you beat the shit out of monsters, you don't actually kill them. You just banish them back. But a lot of Norad economy seems to rely on said dimensional invaders. Eggs, Milk, Silk and a lot of other commodities come from monsters. If livestock is at the end of their lifespan, do they ritually "banish" them back to the FoB? A whole nation relying on fricking warp monsters for a good chunk of their economy is a wild idea for me. Also, is reverence for monsters just a Norad thing? If you kill a monster without Tamitaya, the banishing spell, is that a crime? Or like does someone from Sech bother casting Tamitaya on their equipment? If a Sech tank mortars the frick out of a monster, do they just literally kill them? Hell, is Norad the only weird bunch of monster loving hippies in their world? In the first place, I imagine that most natives in a world would be apprehensive towards goddamn warp beasts teleporting into their world.
It's an interesting fantasy world that has a lot of potential. I've wondered whether or not meat exists. In addition to using them as livestock, maybe they send out teams to gather materials from monsters by banishing them to the forest. I could definitely see there being a law against attacking monsters with weapons that aren't enchanted with tamitaya, with it being illegal to even own weapons without it. An interesting thing to note, in RF1 it's stated that tamitaya doesn't work on people, so it can still hurt and kill them.
They need to do another official memoirs.
https://therunefactory.fandom.com/wiki/Rune_Factory_Official_Memoirs
>I've wondered whether or not meat exists.
Normalass birds and fish exists. And I imagine those are the native animals to their world. Hell, there are festivals dedicated to fish genocide every season.
>Mei
I actually forgot the whole deal about Mei.
I hope that project Dragon sheds some light on what the frick her deal was.
>Kyle's powers as an earthmate are weak. His children are the ones with strong powers.
Kylebros.... not like this...
I would like to laugh at Kyle for having the gayest outfit among the RF protags, but then again, he's also the only one that canonically had sex in his starring game.
>Makes men and women wet with his Chad exposed man midriff
>Able to cuck other bachelors and steal their brides from the altar
>The main heroine of RF2, Mana, was all but said to be asexual and uninterested in romance... until she met Kyle and bis big dick energy
>Able to seal a goddamn dragon god despite having shit tier Earthmate powers
Other protags wish they have as much game as Kyle.
There's also
>Deadbeat Husband
>Deadbeat Dad
LOL what the frick
The elf deserves it.
Still frustrates me that Ceci's canon love ended up being some butthole elf. That little elf halfling from RF1 grew up to have absolute shit taste in men.
Gordon's line would have been the straw that set me into deadly violence.
What the frick
Xiao is such a fricking downer that I legitimately don't know if that's a real line or if it's an edit.
Xiao Pai is the opposite of a downer. She keeps chugging along with a can do attitude in the face of all her misfortune.
My hungry wife Collette!
>What am I in for? Should I play hard mode?
Just have fun but i would say the game is better playing on hard.
I wonder if they will make remasters for RF1 an RF2, but i can already see people hating RF2S a lot.
RF3 has the most questionable name changes when localized.
Sia -> Shara
Toona -> Raven
Karin -> Karina
Sakuya
Persia - > Pia
Chocolat -> Collette
Ion -> Carmen
Sofia -> Sophia
Marion -> Marian
Dahlia -> Daria
Cururufa -> Kuruna
Like fine, I can understand not wanting a girl named fricking Tuna to an English audience, and Sophia and Daria probably just came down to how you interpreted Katakana but what the hell was wrong with the other names? Even moreso for Collette since her entire family was named after food.
Honorable mention to RF4 for:
Marguerite -> Margaret
The name change misses the further implication that she and Daria from RF3 are sisters as Marguerite and Dahlia are types of flowers.
>Sia -> Shara
That's because the town's name was changed too.
Sharance was "シアレンス" and that can be rendered as Shialens/Sialens/Siarens/etc depending on who you ask. And she was named after the town.
Personally, I liked the sound of "Sialens" better. Sounds more mystical and shit. "Sharance" just sounds like the name of some sweet old grumpy lady at the grocery store bless her soul.
Also, Shino was Shinonome in JP. I suppose Marvelous thought that two additional syllables were too horrifying for burgers.
I can't blame them, some of their names are just bizarre. Toona? Ion? Gluten? Chocolat? Also there was much less cross-pollination between languages on the internet those days, so the translations were pretty liberal and most people didn't know or care. Heck, many have fond memories of the old localization which was not very faithful.
Also, sauce?
>シアレンス
It's probably the EN translation that has rubbed off on me, but I keep misreading this as "シァレンス"
Noting wrong with Chocolat. Characters named after confectionery ingredients/dishes are not uncommon at all. I mean they kept Rusk after all. And shit, we literally had a character named Candy and Cinnamon (who was named "Drop" in JP, at least they kept the confectionery theming even if they changed the name in the localization) in a previous game.
They also changed Kohaku to Amber, which is literally just her name translated, but I feel like that might've killed the impression that Amber could've possibly came from the totallynotasia of the RF world since most characters with explicitly Japanese/Chinese names are said to have originally come from that region. Imagine if they changed Sakuya's name to "Bloom" or "Blossom" or something.
Also
https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/109738879
News fricking when?
We're almost an entire year away from the last Marvelous Direct and still completely in the dark about the new projects
I'm half-way through fall and don't even know what to do anymore.
What game, what story progress, what waifu?
four special, the volcano place, forte.
>like everything about RF except farming
frick me i guess
In mostly unrelated news, rest in piss, Harvestella. You won't be missed.
https://www.gematsu.com/2024/03/harvestella-producer-daisuke-taka-to-leave-square-enix
Really wasted potential.
Even Squeenix's C-list team probably has more talent and budget to work with than Hakama's main dev team.
All they had to do was make Rune Factory with a tad bit more budget. How the hell did they frick that up.
What was so bad about Harvestella? Didn't know it existed before now.
It's a great game if you give it a fair chance.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1816300/negativereviews/?p=1&browsefilter=toprated
Shortly put, it's an indie game with an AAA price tag.
Presumably, with former RF devs in the staff. I find it hard to believe (unless it's the incompetent hacks who got kicked out even by Marvelous for shitting out RF5. Either that, or they deliberately sabotaged a very dangerous rival before it turned into a competing series)
It's absolutely atrocious as a game, let alone a farming game like it was advertised. Playing it is a mundane job in itself, except you're the one who pays money for the "privilege".
The combat is especially garbage, it's an abortion resulting from the disagreement between the higher-ups who wanted it to be turn-based or realtime action. The highly advertised farming is there specifically to waste your time, it's a chore with near zero rewards (basically just the only way to get healing potions, and the combat is specifically designed to waste your healing items).
It would be the disappointment of the century in the farming sim genre if RF5 didn't exist.
It looks better than RF5 as game. I can give it that much. Though not that it was a particularly high bar to overcome in the first place.
It looks, sounds and runs better than RF5. It has good assets and its devs could handle Unreal better than Hyde could handle Unity. That's it.
Both are soulless cashgrabs capitalizing on the fame of their predecessors, and both fail spectacularly to live up to the expectations. However, the core gameplay of RF is at least comfy, engaging and rewarding. Harvestella's is the opposite: it's stressful, tedious and disappointing. I wanted to end the post with "pirate it" because it looked like it would be okay at $30 price point, thus even better if free, but I can't say it's even worth pirating, since all that's good about it can be experienced on YouTube.
If one must play it first hand no matter what, please at least use a trainer and/or a cheat table to alleviate the pain of playing it on a PC. God help you if you're on a Switch/Deck.
>Monica calls you "onii-chan" after you go on a date with her
HNNNNNNNNNNNNG
It's actually kind of wild how hard Monica mogs not only all the actual bachelorettes, but also almost the entire game if you wear a sun pendant.
It's sad that usually people ignore Monica's quests and don't see her development. Her character is better than her sister for me.
For a series with prominent dating mechanics, every single person you can actually date is a personalityless worthless character. Why is this?
>Why is this?
Because you have actual brain damage.
You can just say that you don't like the characters, and that's perfectly fine, but to say that they have no personality is more an indicator of your own moronation than anything else.
***** ** ******!
How the frick is there no way to reload a save from ingame? BEST remaster design choice ever.
RF Frontier is somehow way more exhausting to play than the other games. I love my chubby waifu Eunice, but good god. That ice dungeon man...
I specifically went after Eunice just enough to make her start losing weight. :}
Noooo! You damn fool!