Rune Factory 2 (Nintendo DS)

The full title of this game is : Rune factory 2 - A Fantasy Harvest Moon. If you've played a HM game before then this is MUCH better. I recommend it, or RF 3. If you haven't then don't worry just read below!

In this game you play as a boy who arrives in a village with amnesia and is given a farm to run. At first its just a plot of weeds and tree stumps and boulders, but then you earn money by selling the weeds and different coloured grasses and buying seeds to plant. You can get tools by talking to people in the town and theres a bulletin board (b-board)where you get jobs/favours to do from the towns people. When you've completed them and speak to the person you get a reward, sometimes the reward is a tool you need.

Here are the main points of the game and info on the game-

Planting crops - You need to plant packs of seeds that you buy from the store. There are crops for each season. They need watering. Some take 5 days (of being watered) until harvesting, some 7, 12, 20 days etc you can see which season and how long they take to grow when looking at item in menu before planting or buying. You need to be careful not to run out of time in the month or they'll die. You can then sell the crops

Friendships/love - There are a lot of people living in the town. The more you speak and interact with them the more they grow to like you. They begin to open up and tell you what the like and dislike, when birthdays are etc. Theres a friendship and love meter of 1 - 10 for each person. As they are growing to like you they'll give you tasks on the b-board where they ask what you think of them and also ask you on dates where their love meter will go up even more. When someone loves you by 10 then you can ask them to marry you

Times - time goes quite quickly. Each real life second is a game time minute. So each day can go quite quickly. There are 4 seasons in a game year, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter with 30 days in each. There are no weekends but one day a week is a holiday.

Holidays and festivals - Some holidays have festivals/contests. Theres a fishing contest where you have to catch the biggest of a certain type of fish. An eating contest where you need to tap stylus as fast as you can on screen to try and eat something the fastest. A dance festival where you get to dance with a girl and a flower festival where you can look at flowers with a girl and many more. If you win then you get a prize and the love interests meters will also go up. Some holidays nothing happens, no shops are open, no tasks are available from the b-board so you can tend to crops or explore the -

Dungeons - There are 4 dungeons. These aren't underground dingy dungeons as you may think but valleys, forests and islands. Here you can explore and find fruit on trees and mine for minerals when you get a hammer after a b-board task. Also in the dungeons are monsters that attack you. You can get weapons and some armour and accessories to help you in the weapon shop in town. Sometimes the monsters drop items. You can also get a special glove (again after a b-board task) that can help you tame monsters. You need to pay for a shed to keep them in. You can then stroke them and they will help you fight or around the farm by watering crops etc, or some you can shear and milk or some are monster chickens that lay eggs. There is also places to plant crops. Each dungeon has a climate of one season. Some of the seeds take 40 to 120 days to grow fully so you won't have time in a month to grow them.

There is a lot more to the game but I won't fit it all in here! When you have a child you can build a school. Then a few weeks after building the school there is a cut scene, and it cuts to several years later when your character suddenly regains his memory about why he came to the town and has to rush off to do something important, not having time to explain to his wife and child where hes going! You then start to play as the child and he finds the old tools in the cupboard and you start again. It can be a little frustrating here when in the dungeons as the monsters are a LOT tougher and you die easily. Theres new monsters too and some only need hit you once and you die! You start in one dungeon and explore further as you can get to places the father couldn't, and get tougher and can try the next one and so on. You can also now forge new tools/weapons and cook. You can also woo a wife from the offspring of the other villagers......(at 7yrs old...odd!).

This is amazing, its like two games in one. You think the first parts good, but really thats just like a long tutorial for the second part. You can also save the game on both floors of the farmhouse and the entrances and inside dungeons.

There were a few minor disappointments - when you get married the wife just stands in the bedroom of the house. She says the same greeting whether you speak to her at 6am or 12.59pm so if its 'good morning sweetheart', then its silly. She doesn't walk about town or even the house, you can't give jobs on the farm etc at least when shes the mother she leaves the house or appears in different places. Also I thought the fact that you could plant in the dungeons straight away made the seasons seem pointless. I thought that for at least the first year you should only be allowed to plant on the farm. Also the back of the box and the manual mention `ominous' earthquakes and is an evil stirring...? There are earthquakes every few months in the first generation but nothing happens about them! I also found it silly that no-one thinks its odd that a 7yr old boy is working on a farm and paying thousands for extensions to a school and kitchens etc Overall the game is great, these are just minor niggles.

I definately reccommend this, however I've noticed that Rune Factory 3 is available to pre-order from Amazon US site so I'd look into buying that as its the same game practically (this is more or less an improved version of Rune factory 1). I hope this has helped and sorry its so long but it could have been soooo much longer theres so much to do in the game!!

I bought this game as I had completed and loved the first Rune Factory game. It's very similar with the main theme being farming and other aspects include love, frienship, developing skills and, of course, combat which was an element introduced for the first Rune Factory game.

There are more features to this game, the most obvious one being that there are 2 generations and the choice of being a boy or girl in the 2nd. This is enjoyable but can make the game seem a bit too long and not as fast paced as the previous game. It also adds quite a difficult challenge - to some players it may be enjoyable, to others such as myself it can be a little frustrating.

Other features to the game include new places such as a port, a two-story house for you to live in and quests. These quests made the game really exciting and I thought they were a great addition. You can select quests from a bulliten board in the town centre. Tasks include fetching and delivering items, finding lost property, locating villagers and much more. As you carry out quests, you can improve your friendship with the people you are helping out.

This was a great game, however I have to say that it is much harder than the first Rune Factory and players may find it annoying and too challenging - I did. My main critisim is that the plot-line just wasn't as surprising and addictive as the first Rune Factory.

The plot-line and the difficultly level may have let the game down for me but overall, it was a great buy. It's a must buy for any fan of Harvest Moon, Rune Factory or just an awesome DS game. Just don't be expecting the amazing game that was the first Rune Factory.