Few steps forward, few steps back (good overall)

User Rating: 8 | Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny WII

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny is overall, a good game. How does it compare to the other Rune Factory games? That's where it gets a little tricky.

If you asked me which Rune Factory games I enjoyed the most, I'd probably say the handheld ones. The reason is because the RF series always survived off its charm. It didn't have the best graphics or the best combat, but at the very least, the dialogue was funny, the characters were charming, and leveling/farming was addictive. The towns were basically little vacation islands. That was pretty much, the standard Rune Factory fare.

That is, until Rune Factory Frontier and Tides of Destiny. These were a new type of game that accounted for combat and visuals because it now existed in 3d. There were some trade offs, but to better understand Tides of Destiny, one should look at the pros and cons of both that game and Frontier (its predecessor).

Pros of Frontier: Better story, better characters, farming system is more rewarding

Cons: Runey system..., can be tediously slow, no bulletin board

Pros of Tides of Destiny: Bulletin board, better runey system, FAST!, traveling around oceans is fun, COMBAT!

Cons: worse story overall, characters are not nearly as charming, somewhat grindy (filler)

So long story short, the reason why Tides of Destiny is so fun is because the combat is much better than all its predecessors. The game flows quickly and it doesn't make you feel like you're lagging (remember how it took 1 minute to milk a cow? Now it's like 1 second). This new 'brisk' gameplay was a refreshing touch and I really enjoyed it.

Sadly, however, some things that I loved about Rune Factory were lost in this transition. One thing they chose to do with Tides of Destiny is remove the anime portraits. I thought I'd get used to having only 3d models, and I did, but a combination of that and boring character design took a huge chunk of the RF series charm away. It's also hard to take blocky-playdoh-people seriously sometimes. You could almost say it felt like I was playing a Rune Factory spin off. Farming was also rather superficial, so you didn't feel the 'pride' that usually came with of growing a rare/valuable crop.

However, on the PLUS side, because of this you had tons of time to do bulletin quests, which was sorely lacking in Frontier. Also runeys are no longer a total pain. Money is also no longer an issue if you have common buy low/sell high sense, so you spend more tmie interacting with villagers and less time planning on how to grow fodder for your monsters/make it through the harsh economic winter. Although, some may dislike this and name it a con. I don't think any soul is going to miss the tedious runeys though.

All in all, the Rune Factory games were fun and I really enjoyed them, pumping massive hours into all games. It really was kind of a shame that the characters turned out to be rather bland in this newest installment given how stellar most of everything else was. Hopefully in the future, we can keep the combat and get some of the old goodies back too!