Relationships that players foster with townsfolk provide additional depth to combat with brand-new link attacks, or at home with the newly introduced co-op cooking feature. Whether spending time growing crops on a dragon’s back, embarking on fishing expeditions, prospecting the mountains for ore, or participating in local festivals, there are countless ways for Earthmates to relax after a hard day of adventuring. In addition to their normal duties of helping villagers, investigating rune-related mysteries, and rounding up rowdy monsters, leisure activities bring an equal amount of excitement. There, they are recruited into an organization of peacekeeping rangers known as SEED, and their new life begins. After losing their memory, the hero lands in a small town blessed by nature. I would have loved to have seen some sort of online co-op system incorporated here.Set off on a grand adventure in a fantasy world with the latest entry in the Rune Factory simulation RPG series. Although this is an interesting component to the game, trading items is not exactly the most exciting of features. In addition to the single-player story mode, there is a multiplayer component to Rune Factory 2 which allows you to trade items with distant friends whose friend codes you have obtained. Still, if you only want a brief jaunt into Rune Factory and keep to the story, the experience is still quite hefty, and you can expect to pour at least twenty hours into this title. The game's progression is also largely determined by your actions, and it is fairly easy to squeeze more than forty hours out of this title.
The game is not set up in a linear fashion, which allows you to take on farming projects as well as battle quests at your own pace. Although there isn't much that separates the agricultural component of this game from previous Harvest Moon titles, this aspect is what keeps fans clamoring for more, so it best left unchanged. For example, when you increase your watering can abilities, you can water more crops at the same time. Different farming activities can be "leveled up" to make them more efficient. The agriculture in this title is very similar to the regular Harvest Moon titles, but with an RPG twist. The various dungeons you can visit all have a fair amount of depth, and your character can even camp out in the dungeons during long expeditions. There is also a battle magic component that allows you to learn and level up different spells. The battle aspect of the game allows you to go into various dungeon-like areas where you can find monsters, rare plants, and special items, and then fight them with equipped weapons like swords and battle axes. The gameplay is almost identical to last year's Rune Factory and has an optimum mix of RPG-style battles and tried and true farming. Although this title does not carry the signature "farm to save the world" storyline that has been the hallmark of many Harvest Moon titles. Although some aspects of the story, such as your love interest and children, will be determined by your actions in-game, many of the story elements are quite rigid. Even though it's a slow start, the story spans two generations, and there are plenty of memorable moments along the way. The story is very sparse at first, and you'll have to wait five or six hours before the action really begins. He wakes up in a cherry blossom garden where a young girl explains his location to him and offers him some basic tools and a farm to live on. The story in Rune Factory 2 follows a young man who seems to have lost his memory. However, Rune: Facrtory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon adds some much-needed new elements to the Harvest Moon formula, despite being eerily similar to last year's Rune Factory. For all their storyline and character differences, at their heart, all these games were painfully similar and didn't seem to deliver on the innovation so many were expecting. However, even though the release list was rather large, one lingering issue all these different releases shared was a lack of innovation.
#Rune factory 2 op series#
From the cute, female-centric Harvest Moon DS remake to the Harvest Moon Island of Happiness and Tree of Tranquility double shot, fans of the series have definitely had a lot to chew on this year.
This year has definitely seen its share of Harvest Moon titles.