Rune Factory 3 takes what you already liked and refines it with a keen focus on details.
You begin each day by waking up and exploring the town. You tend to your garden before the people of the town wake. This game starts slowly but it can easily draw just about anyone in because of the sheer depth in activities. Nearly everything you do is leveling while you do it. You will never run out of goals to accomplish and consistently be overwhelmed with choices of what you want to do that day. Each day you can accept 3 requests that further build on the already deep layer of activities. There's really no distinct goal in the game other than clearing a dungeon and advancing the story but you are so distracted by farming,fishing,crafting,leveling,building friendships,etc. that it really doesn't matter.
This is basically a sandbox rpg game where you decide what to do and that hasn't changed since the previous Rune Factory games. However, it has shown some significant evolution. The battles feel very comfortable and the animations are significantly better so that the flow of combat is much more enjoyable. In fact, the only flaw with the battle system is that it can get too easy but you are actually allowed to change the difficulty which further demonstrates their focus on removing any glaring flaws in the formula. Another change is that NPCs actually have very realistic lives and aren't simply walking around randomly like you'd find in most old school rpg games. They are actually enjoying the world the same as you are by exploring,conversing,fishing,etc.
It's not without it's flaws but it is about as good of a game as you will find in the Harvest Moon formula. Like all Harvest Moon games, it can get repetitive but at the same time you can always find something new to preoccupy your time in the game. There isn't a whole lot of strategy to the fighting and it's basically just a battle of brawn and evasion which was a slight annoyance. The characters while unique aren't particularly realistic for the most part as half of them tend to be neurotic and you won't find a very interesting story here either.
These flaws are not that big of a deal though. Every Harvest Moon game has these same flaws. There's no glaring holes in the engine that would break the experience for you if you already enjoy these type of games. If you're the type of person who gets sucked into games then this is the game you would want because you'll definitely get your moneys worth in terms of time investment. It's basically what you would expect but more fleshed out and very addicting so try to keep an optimistic outlook and give this game a chance the next time you come across it.