A fantastic simulation/real-time RPG hybrid!
And remember to Comment, Rate, and SUBSCRIBE!!! :)
It's time for the Rune Factory Frontier review! For the Wii!
This game is about how a guy named Raguna, which, uhh, sounds more like a girl's name, and if you want, you can change his name in the beginning, comes to a little village in search of a his friend, Mist. He finds her almost immediately, and learns that she's moved to the village, and so he wants to stay as well. So Mist show's you your new house, which also has a very large garden full of debris, and so the real game begins.
If you've ever played a Harvest Moon game, then you'll be familiar with some of the objectives in this game. However, this is not only a simulation game, it's also a real-time RPG. One of the main objectives in this game is to grow crops in your garden, socialize with the townsfolk, and just live a simple life. But the other objective is to go fight monsters in ruins and wild areas, and level yourself up with melee weapons and magic! This is a unique concept for a game, but guess what! It works! It's very fun and very addictive!
This game has a lot of depth in it. Here's an example: Like I said before, when you first start out, your garden is full of debris which restricts you from planting many crops. Now you can easily just pick up the weeds and throw them out, but you can't do that with the rocks and wood. You have to acquire tools such has a hammer and an axe. But it's actually more complex than it might sound, because you can't just buy them, you have to do certain things to get them. When you do obtain the tools, you can only do so much, like for example, the hammer you get can only break minor rocks, as it isn't strong enough to break big ones. So to upgrade your hammer, you have to…well, like I said, there's a lot of depth to this game, so it can be quite complicated! And that's what I like about this game! It's actually kind of hard to give a review of it, because there is just so much you can do! When I first got it, I pulled an all-nighter with it because it was just so much fun!
Every time you perform an action, you'll gain experience for that action, whether it be fighting with your hammer, planting seeds in your garden, or even preparing food in your kitchen. Performing actions takes up RP, or Rune Points. When you run out of RP, your health will start to decrease every time you perform another action. In the beginning of the game, you're RP depletes really fast. One way you can regenerate it is by eating certain foods. The more you level up in a skill, the less RP it will take to perform that skill.
The monsters you fight are, well, fun to fight, but they also have a chance to be tamed. It's a really good idea to do this, because then they can fight alongside you which is very helpful. Now some monsters have a special skill like watering the field, or harvesting crops which is REALLY helpful, as you have a big field!
The game is split up into 120 days a year, which are equally split up into the four seasons, so there are 30 days for each season. Hooray for math! Your field can yield different types of crops in each season, and then you can sell these crops for money, which can help you buy things, but you'll mainly want to save up so you can upgrade your house. Upgrades can include a bigger kitchen so you can cook in more ways, or a larger forge to create and upgrade tools and weapons. Nothing can grow in winter, so it's a good time to flirt with the ladies!
The graphics are great! This game is very colorful and detailed which makes playing it even more enjoyable!
The controls are virtually perfect! You can either use the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo, or the classic controller, but I just stuck with the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo. You can use the buttons to perform an action like watering your garden or swinging your sword, but you can also use the Wiimote's motion sensors to perform them as well. A little flick will get the job done, and I find it to be more fun than just pressing buttons.
Some of the negative points about this game, is that it can take a long time to harvest your crops. Every time you go to pluck something from your garden, your character takes just a little too long to pick it up, and then you have to press a button to put it in your inventory. Now I KNOW this sounds like I'm being really picky, but when you have a huge field, filled with hundreds of individual plots of vegetation that need to be harvested, it becomes really annoying and frustrating!
Another thing is, you can't defend yourself while in battle. Instead, you can acquire different accessories and clothing that will boost your defense, but even so, not being able to defend yourself can become a huge pain, literally!
And the other negative thing about this game is the loading screens. Now they don't take too long, they're usually around 2-5 seconds depending on the situation, but there's just too many of them, which can get pretty annoying!
Throughout the game, there'll be anime cut scenes which only happen when certain events are triggered which, although are really short, meaning that they're usually about 5 seconds long, are still entertaining to watch!
Rune Factory Frontier is a fantastic game! Great graphics, virtually perfect controls, the unique hybrid style of simulation and RPG works really well, it's very addicting, and there's just so much to do!
The only downsides were one, harvesting crops just takes too long, two, you can't defend yourself in battle, and three, I just felt that there were too many loading screens. Remember, they didn't last very long, it's just that there were too many of them.
But overall, this is still a really great game! This hybrid of a game just works! I definitely recommend it. It's a very fun, addicting, and satisfying game to play!
This game gets a 4.5/5 with the title of EPIC!!!
Ratings:
0=COMPLETE AND ULTIMATE FAIL!!!!!
.25-.75=Total Crap!
1-1.5 = Horrible!
1.75-2.5=Bad
2.75-3.5=Good
3.75-4.25=Awesome!
4.5-4.75=EPIC!!!
5=MONUMENTALLY AND SUPREMELLY PERFECT!!!!!