Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
- Multigenerational storyline lets you play as your child!
- Befriend monsters to help on your farm!
- Exciting new gameplay modes via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection!
- Upgrade your skills and forge your own powerful weapons and tools!
Rune Factory 2 is set several years after the first game. The evil Sechs Empire has been defeated, and the Kingdom of Norad is once again at peace. Things may not stay that way for long, however, as dark premonitions foretell of dangers to come. It’s up to the player to uncover the source of these premonitions and bring peace to the kingdom once more. Over the course of the story, players will build and develop a farm, befriend townspeople, raise monsters, take on quests, and find a wife. Rune Factory 2 offers innovative Touch Screen controls, easy-to-use menus, and an all-new compelling storyline.
Rating: 
(out of 29 reviews)
List Price: $ 19.99
Price:
Review by Se for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Rating:
Rune Factory 2
I’m writing to review to compare this second Rune Factory to the first one.
Great:
The AI is much better than it was in RF1
The Bachlorettes have a much wider range of personalities, and better thought out events.
The bulletin board system is a great way to raise friendship points and make money.
You can play as a boy or a girl in generation two.
New weapons such as a wand for spellcasting.
No major glitches; I haven’t noticed any weird bugs in the AI such as I did in RF1
The scenery is really well done; I love the island.
No easy money like in RF1; you actually have to do a little work at first.
The backpack and equipment system has been made far easier to use.
Good:
The graphics have improved somewhat.
Your attacks look far more realistic.
You can see your shield when fighting!
Less glitchy than R1
Did I mention how the characters are far better done? They are all so neat!
The controls are done very well; I found them much easier than the first game’s.
You can steal brides away from their rival wedding if they love you!
The music is gorgeous and fits the dungeons well.
The odd monster generators are replaced with more realistic energy points, hinting at a connection to the First Forest and a natural appearance of the monsters.
The monster spawn points change when you reenter a room; e.g. you will see woolies one time and reenos another.
In the first game, if you married, your wife would never, ever move. In RF2 in generation one she will move around your house, and when you are a kid she will be walking around town again.
Graphics wise I have notices less clipping than in RF1, and also lots of nice little add ons: such as the falling cherry blossoms in spring, how when you hammer a rock little chips fly off…
Bad:
The rain sounds better, but still will get quieter one one side of your speakers/headphones (in RF1, it would cut out entirely).
There is also a spot or two where they used the wrong voice actor(esse)s.
I was one of the few who liked the English voices in RF1, but even I can’t stand any of the voices in this version save for a few. But you do get used to them, thankfully.
There is lag when several sprites are on screen; such as if you have around 3-6 people on a screen, or in a barn full of buffamoos.
Terrible:
The typos. There are far more than there should be. I’m less than an hour into the game, running errands for people, and I’ve found three all ready. There are problems such as one character saying another’s lines, or sometimes if you receive a potion you get a random dialogue. Many other typos were reported, but I haven’t heard if these are in the Japanese or just the English.
Good or Bad:
When playing as Aria or Ars, you can “date” the twins (Serena & Sera/Suu & Muu, both girls) and have a fake marriage ceremony. You can do this with all of the children of opposite gender (save for the twins are avaliable for both), which is a little odd since everyone is around 7, but also just a lot like playing house and very comical.
You have rivals for all of the bachlorettes, save for three in generation one, so it makes the dating a bit more fun, and more realistic in that you don’t have half a dozen single women like you did in RF1, but it also gives you a timeline that you have to marry them by.
Overall I think this game is a fine sequel! I think I won’t be playing RF1 as much, since this one has so many improvements.
Review by Konidias for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
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I’ll start off by saying that I’ve never played the original Rune Factory so I’m new to this series, but I’m a long time fan of Harvest Moon. With that being said, this game definitely has a lot of the things that made Harvest Moon great.
The farming is pretty much top notch. You have a wide array of stuff you can plant, and you can plant pretty much anything during any season. (though this sort of takes away from the whole planting certain things during certain times of the year aspect) I haven’t married anyone yet and I’ve only gotten into the middle of the second season so I’m not aware of a lot of the remaining stuff I have yet to see. I’m assuming there is cooking since there is a skill for it and a ton of ingredients but I haven’t been able to find a way to do it yet.
Anyway, farming is great as you can now walk over your crops which means no more wasting one square and surrounding squares of farmland just to be able to water the crops you plant. You can now maximize the entire field and use every square for crops… which is a feature that has been a long time coming.
One thing I’m not liking too much is that I’ve already been through several earthquakes and storms within the first 2 seasons of the game so it’s destroyed quite a lot of crops and I’m the kind of person who likes things neat and organized on my farm.
The combat aspect of the game is fun and there are several areas to go if you want to fight monsters. However after doing this for a few days (actual days) of playing, I’m getting kind of tired of fighting them, it seems more like a chore and I usually just avoid them to mine and farm in monster areas. (or just take damage because I don’t feel like killing everything every time I enter a level)
The thing I’m enjoying most is how fast the npc characters progress. You get to learn a lot about the characters in a short time and they almost have something new to say every other day so you won’t get bored hearing them say the same thing day after day. The requests board is basically a “quests” board, which is pretty fun however I get kind of bummed when there aren’t any new requests up and I find myself having nothing to do with my remaining time for the day.
As far as graphics, they are fantastic, the music gets a tad repetitive yet it’s catchy enough to have me whistling some tunes when I’m not playing. There is the problem with the game lagging down badly when there is more than a few NPC characters in a level with you. Which is pretty irritating when you’re running through levels of your barn to take care of animals since you’ll normally have 4 to a level. They really should have addressed this issue before releasing the game.
My one big gripe is that I’m already finding myself running out of things to do during any given day, so I’m going to bed early just to get the next day going. I wish there was more of a challenge with monsters, seeing as how within a day of playing you can pretty much take on all the monsters with ease. I’m hoping there are more monsters to come, as there appear to be a lot of locked off areas (which I guess open up in generation 2?) Either way, it’s boring fighting monsters now as it’s the same dozen or so monsters with no challenge.
Overall the game is shaping up to be quite fun and I hope it only gets better. I would say it’s one of the top Harvest Moon games out there except one major bummer is that you get this gigantic house with a kitchen and two beds right when you start, which kind of makes it less fun to actually build up your own house and watch your wealth grow.
This game is definitely worth purchasing if you are a fan of the series or if you’re totally new to the series, as it’s definitely a lot of fun and satisfies your Harvest Moon addiction.
Review by Shannen Fisher for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
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Okay, first off, if you don’t already know, this game was originally coming out October 21, but was moved to Nov. 18. Also, since I’ve never played Rune Factory 1, I can’t compare this to it. Sorry.
Now, Rune Factory 2… A great mix of farming and dungeon crawling. Sounds weird? It is. But… it’s a good weird. But was it worth the wait?
Your character, Kyle (Well, that’s the default name,) wanders into the town of Alvarna with no memory. A girl named Mana finds him and gives him a farm to work on. You work on the farm, then grab a sword, spear or staff, and go kill things.
Graphics: Great. The 3-D characters really work well with the 2-D backgrounds. Some people might not like how the characters look, but personally, I love it. The swordfighting looks great, and so do the spells. 9!
Sound: Just beautiful. Great tracks, voice acting (which I LOVE!) and the music really suits the mood of the dungeons. Anyone besides me compare the sound in the spring dungeon to another track? *cough*Hyrule Field Theme*cough*. 9.5!
Gameplay: Pretty good. You decide witch button (Y or X) to use spells with, two control shemes, all-in-all pretty good. Unfortunantly, there’s also a glitch for me where Kyle goes very slow in my barn (Basement level 2) and on the pier in Alvarna-Dock. 8.5!
Lasting appeal: There’s so much to do! Fish, mine, smash monsters, blow up monsters, slice monsters, farm, help people by doing requests, SO MUCH!!! 9.5!
Overall: What can I say? It’s an awsome game. So much to do, great graphics and sound, the request board is really cool, the farming and dungeon crawling mixes really well. 9.1!
So, was it worth the wait… YES!!!
Review by Pamela T. for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
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I second what others have said about the typoes. They are legion! Seriously, if you can play for even 1 hour without running into a typo, grammatical error, or text glitch, you are very lucky. Here’s a few samples of the typoes that I can recall off the top of my head… When you buy a Recovery Potion from the Hospital (for 3 Herbs and 300g), after the potion is mixed up, the game tells you that you got an Insect Skin (instead of a Recovery Potion). When you give a Sweet Potato to Rosalind, she calls you Aaron (even though your name is Kyle). Apparently the translation team had trouble agreeing on what to call some of the items. Several items are referred to by multiple names (Ex: Sweet Potatoes and Yams).
The “my game slows down when I’m in my barn or on the docks” glitch is graphical lag. If 4 or more characters/monsters are on the screen at one time, the game slows to a crawl. It’s like super slow-motion! The whole game lags noticably compared to Rune Factory 1 (which runs very fast), but when you get multiple characters in the same screen, the game grinds nearly to a halt. Mayhap the graphics engine could have done with a bit more debugging.
That being said, there are good parts, too. There is more story and text, the ability to choose your gender in the 2nd part of the game, the monster AI has been seriously upgraded, the game is more challenging (which is nice for those of us who beat RF1 in less than a year of game time), the scene backdrops are amazing, and the opening song is very nicely sung and animated.
In short, if the lag doesn’t bother you too badly, it’s a nice game. It could have used more polishing and debugging before being released, though.
Signed, Pamela T.
Review by Freyashawk for Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
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Typically, where novels or films are concerned, a sequel seldom attains the quality of the original. Where games produced by Natsume are concerned, the reverse often is true. This certainly is the case with respect to Rune Factory 2, one of the greatest games of all time, in my view.
Rune Factory 2 spans two Generations. In the first, your character is male but in the second Generation, you play as your first character’s child, giving you the option to play either as a girl or as a boy.
The plot in the 1st Generation is devoted mainly to basic survival and a wealth of courtship opportunities. In fact, the main purpose of your character in the 1st Generation is to choose a wife and have a child. Most Events occur in the course of performing ‘Requests’ for characters. These are ‘Quests’ of various kinds that appear on the community bulletin board and offer romance, humour, danger as well as chances to discover more about the other characters in Alvarna.
Although you can defeat or tame Monsters in the 1st Generation, it is only in the 2nd Generation that the real ‘action plot’ unfolds and every area on the map is unlocked. Cooking, forging weapons and accessories and creating other items becomes possible only in the 2nd Generation when your child attends the School built by the father.
Do not underestimate the enjoyment of the 1st Generation of the game by mistakenly perceiving it as nothing more than a conduit through which the 2nd Generation game becomes available. The 1st Generation game resembles a traditional Harvest Moon game in many ways, offering opportunities to farm, ranch, fish, mine and court an eligible girl. If there were no 2nd Generation component, Rune Factory 2 in the 1st Generation would be a wonderful game. The fact that it offers two games in one makes it utterly incredible.
Characterisations in Rune Factory 2 are even more detailed than those in the original game and the combination of humour, romance and adventure is irresistable.
The graphics and music in both Rune Factory and its successor are breathtakingly exquisite. Added touches in the form of showers of cherry blossoms in Spring, the twinkle of fireflies in Summer and colourful falling leaves in Autumn make the landscape truly magical. A player could be content to live in this world for many years!
Finally, Rune Factory 2, like its predecessor, stands as an eloquent testament to the fundamental philosophy of Harvest Moon. The message of these games is to learn to appreciate all forms of life, to work with society and the land in creating a partnership that is beneficial to all. Selfishness and greed result in missed opportunities. It is only when your character interacts with every individual in a positive fashion, exercising patience, understanding and compassion, that you will gain the ultimate rewards and in doing so, create a better world for every one.