A lack of wifi and minor gameplay flaws hinder, but don't totally bury, this superb simulation/role-playing hybrid.
Those familiar with the Harvest Moon series will find a perfect home in Rune Factory Frontier. This charming social simulator combines the tried-and-true aspects of Harvest Moon with traditional dungeon crawling to create a uniquely addicting and engaging experience that's a welcoming addition to the Wii's library. The casual will find a light-hearted 20-30 hour adventure nestled within the game's fairly linear story, while the hardcore will stick around for many in-game years, exploring and playing around with all this massive title has to offer.
The presentation of the story begins very ambiguously; the main character (whom you have the freedom to name, but for this review we will stick with his default), Raguna, sets out on a journey to find a girl from his past. He has little-to-no recollection of anything else - a case of amnesia, if you will. Shortly thereafter, Raguna stumbles upon the village of Trampoli, wherein he almost immediately encounters Mist, the mysterious girl from his past. Rune Factory veterans will be familiar with these characters, but newcomers need not fret - there is no connection to the prior games in the series aside from the characters. The story in Frontier stands on its own without necessary knowledge of the previous titles.
After this chance encounter, Mist convinces Raguna to stay in the village and make a new life there. And, as quickly as that, you're given residence in the town's vacant farmland, "Homestead." Your new life of Raguna the Farmer has begun. But there is something peculiar in the town of Trampoli, a strange disturbance that looms overhead. The floating landmass known as "Whale Island," for obvious reasons, sleeps above the town, harboring an imprisoned spirit. Raguna is tasked by the lamenting prisoner to set it free, and the judgment waits atop Whale Island's summit.
Simplified Combat For The Whole Family…
Rune Factory Frontier is split into two distinct halves: farming/simulation and dungeon crawling. While the management of crops and relationships may consume the large majority of your time, the story can only be progressed through exploration on Whale Island. Combat is simple and fluid, concerning only the A and B buttons to attack. There is no dodge or block, so slower weapons often leave you the most vulnerable to the enemy's onslaught. Repeatedly pressing the A button with certain weapons will unleash a variety of 2-to-3 hit combos, while holding down the B button and pressing A will usually trigger a special, much more lethal, attack.
Enemies spawn from hovering vortexes within dungeons; destroying these portals seals it shut, preventing any more enemies from being created out of that particular one. However, any given area can have upwards of 10 vortexes scattered around. Enemies will not spawn unless you enter into close proximity, so maintaining a safe distance can sometimes avoid combat. The variety of weapons is small, but within each category are a plethora of powerful armaments: one-handed and two-handed swords, axes, hammers, spears, and wands. Each weapon type varies in usability, allowing the player to pick whichever he or she feels most comfortable with. One-handed swords are fast and relatively weak, while two-handed swords are extremely powerful, but very slow. Axes are fast and strong, while hammers are the slowest weapon, but are immensely powerful. Spears are a nice blend of speed and power, and wands can exert immense devastation at the cost of many rune points, which I'll explain later.
Trampoli's A Nice Place To Live…
The soft and vibrant presentation of Rune Factory Frontier is pleasing to look at from beginning to end. Character sprites are shown in fully-3D models while cell shaded portraits appear during dialogue. The environments are both lush and flourishing where they need be, as well as bleak and morose in some of the underground dungeons. The contrast between colors across the board is wonderfully done, and the subtle changes in atmosphere as the in-game season's change only adds to the game's bustling and active world.
7AM Farming, 5PM Fighting, 10PM Crafting, Asleep By Midnight…
Let me reiterate a point I said earlier - this game is massive. No, I don't think you're understanding me. This. Game. Is. Massive. Are we clear now?
To put this into context, the game is split up into four months, each month designated a particular season: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Each month contains 30 days, with six days in the week, Monday through Friday, and Holiday. The game starts in Spring. Those looking for a quick experience can possibly finish the story by Mid-Summer, clocked in at about 20-30 hours. For those who wish to play the game as it was intended, and use every second of every day to maximize relationships, crops, and combat experience, these 20 or 30 hours can easily triple. At 40 hours in my file, I had just reached the beginning of Autumn, and had barely scratched the surface of the game's story.
In that time, however, I had managed to accumulate upwards of 150,000 gold, through various means; I had reached level 34 with Raguna, and had acquired all possible and affordable upgrades to my house including the highest-quality Forge, Kitchen, and Laboratory (as well as all available components to go with them). All of this in 40 hours, and still, barely half-way through the story. This game is massive…have I said that already? Well, let me explain why.
At the onset you are given your own farmland to maintain and make prosper. You are given the most basic of tools - a hoe and a bucket - to till and water the land, and through a process of various encounters early on, will receive other tools to aid in your farming: an axe to chop wood, a hammer to break rocks, a sickle to cut grass, and a fishing pole to…well, fish. You will also acquire two particular tools that are not used for farming: the harvester and the brush. I'll explain these in a little bit.
The tools you gain are of the most basic quality. Through forging, using your own personal blacksmithing setup purchased from and built by resident angst-ridden farmer Kross, you can upgrade your tools - and subsequently, your weapons for combat - with the appropriate materials, gained primarily from dungeons. The game quite literally requires you to maintain a balance between farming and fighting, allowing you to progress your farming tools beyond their standard capabilities for a much grander performance. Most weapons and tools will require some sort of metal, and usually a lesser-quality weapon or tool to be crafted. In addition, however, some of the more powerful recipes will also need various ingredients dropped from enemies, and even rarer still, specific flowers that can only be grown and sometimes take upwards of 100 in-game days to fully bloom.
Crafting, which is leveled separately from forging but is included in the purchase of the set, uses similar metals and ingredients. Cooking requires various home-grown crops and subsequent ingredients found from treasure chests in dungeons, and sometimes even from enemies. There are a multitude of formats to cook with; from an oven, to a pan, to a pot, to a blender, to a steamer, and finally a plain cutting board. Each method levels Cooking equally, but offers different recipes. Laboratory primarily works with the edible-grass products found on untilled farmland anywhere in the game, with certain types of grass only being able to grow in specific seasons on the farm (while the dungeons, themselves, are immune to the conditions of the seasons). Each season has its own set of five crops that can safely be grown on your Homestead, with the exception of winter, during which no crops will grow outside. As just mentioned, all dungeons are immune to the conditions of the seasons, meaning you can grow summer products in a dungeon in the middle of winter. This is key, even during the other seasons, because it allows you to have a nice variety of crops for harvest that can be either sold or used in Cooking.
When not farming, you're free to roam around the town and interact with the many residents of Trampoli Village. A select 12 female villagers are also eligible for marriage, though you'll not reach this point until at least the end of the first year. Gaining their friendship, and ultimately their love, is achieved by giving them gifts and frequently talking with them. Certain characters appreciate one gift over another, and no two characters like the same gifts. Only when you have met the level-10 Love requirement can you marry the character, and even still, a Wedding Bouquet and a Double-Bed in your home is necessary.
In addition to the social aspect of the game, some of these townsfolk will provide basic essentials to aid in your travels. You'll buy a majority of your seasonal crop seeds from Erik, purchase house extensions from Kross, receive low-quality weapons from Ganesha, flower seeds from Rosetta, who is also the one responsible for picking up product you wish to sell, and various utility upgrades from the weekly-vendor Lute, who appears only on Holiday, the sixth day of the week. In addition to purchasing materials, once you encounter Melody on Whale Island, she will open up a hot spring spa in the town, allowing you access to the baths once a day for the price of 10g. The benefit is that your health and rune points are fully restored.
Health is measured in traditional HP, while rune points serve as a mix of action points/magic points. A combination of both, if you will. Every action in the game, save movement and communication, will exhaust some RP. Using a weapon, or a farming tool, will deplete your RP bar by an amount designated by the specific action. The more you use a weapon or tool, the greater your skill with it becomes, and the less RP it will consume with each use. Likewise, when forging, combining materials of a higher quality will often provide a superior result that uses less RP.
Fishing serves as a double-benefit: in addition to farming, it provides a hefty sum of cash if you fish at specific areas inside dungeons; it is also one of the easier ways to level up Cooking. The cutting board in the Kitchen setup features recipes that, for the most part, only consist of one particular fish per recipe. The edible, cooked version of these fish usually sells for a larger profit than the fish itself. As well, the food provides a substantial HP and RP recovery secondary to potions made through the Laboratory. All items can be placed into a shipping box sitting just in front of your house, and all products within will be picked up at 5PM everyday to be sold.
In addition to fighting monsters, you can also tame them using the Brush item. Once the monster has been tamed, they will appear in the Barn located next to your home - provided you have already purchased one from Kross. The Barn can later be upgrade with more floors, but initially only contains one, and holds 10 monsters per floor. Like farm animals in Harvest Moon games passed, these monsters can help tend and maintain your farm. Certain domestic animals will harvest the crop once it is fully in bloom, others will cut the overgrown weeds and grass on your farm, and likewise some will chop wood or break rocks. Others, however, may not do anything remotely farm-related. These monsters, however, can be "harvested:" a chicken, for example, will not aid in the farm work, but will provide you with eggs once every three days. Likewise, a sheep will provide you with wool, and a cow with milk. The Harvester item is used to receive these products, but is also used to maintain the game's frustrating and over-bearing Runeys.
If there is one major flaw with Rune Factory Frontier - of which there are mostly minor - it's the Runey system. Derived from the game's namesake, the Runey system features four spirits, conveniently named Runeys, that hover about the areas in Trampoli village. They have no immediately obvious effect on your Homestead, but management of these Runeys can make the difference between a completely desolate, barren farmland, and a prosperous, flourishing harvest. The Runeys operate on a food chain mechanic: Tree Runeys will eat Grass Runeys, and get eaten by Rock Runeys. Water Runeys eat Rock Runeys, but don't get eaten by anything. Rock Runeys eat Tree Runeys and get eaten by Water Runeys. Grass Runeys get eaten by Tree Runeys and don't eat anything.
It sounds like a vicious cycle, but the Runeys are depicted quite humorously - their only redeeming quality. Maintaining a balance of these Runeys in each area is not recommended, but rather, adjusting the level of Runeys according to that cycle, theoretically, should provide the best results. This would sound simple if the entire mechanic weren't so luck-dependent. Even with the most optimal setup, there is no guaranteed success. What makes this such a major problem is that if your town suffers a Runey extinction, crops will take up to three times as long to grow, making the primary focus of the game a hassle more than an enjoyment. The offset of this is that should your patience run thin with the Runeys, a reliance solely on fishing for a profit can still reel in a large sum of gold. However, when the game's main attraction is compromised in spite of a silly, nonsensical mechanic, it begs the question whether or not the developers even tested this out before launching the game.
Music Helps Plants Grow Faster…
Rune Factory Frontier boasts a very catchy soundtrack of mostly orchestral, instrumental themes. The songs appropriately emphasize the mood and atmosphere of the dungeons, while Holidays feature an upbeat and dance-like tune that's sure to have you humming along. Dialogue is mostly-fully voiced with only few conversations being read-only. Certain sound effects will bellow out from the Wii Remote's speaker, although sometimes they are cut short or crackle in a static muffle. Any shortcomings that come of this are easily offset by the game's warming soundtrack, however.
And The Verdict Is…
Rune Factory Frontier does almost everything right as a transition from the DS to the Wii. It manages to bring over the familiar social aspect that fans of the series have come to expect, blending it with traditional dungeon crawling and combat to create a uniquely addicting experience. Not all of the soil is fresh, however. A lack of wifi and minor gameplay flaws hinder, but don't totally bury, this otherwise superb and endearing simulation/role-playing hybrid.
Pros: Immersive and expansive environments; near-limitless amount of gameplay can be had; vibrant character designs and exceptional sound mixing; addicting simulation mechanics
Cons: Terrible Runey system may cause hair-pulling; quite possibly too time consuming for the casual fan; no wifi
The Final Verdict: 8.5/10
Should the next installment of the Rune Factory series on the Wii include wifi support and improves upon the current formula, say "goodbye" to Animal Crossing and "hello" to your new social simulation overlord.