Nintendo DS Video Games

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.

User Reviews about Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

Ok so i bought this game a few days ago because i'm a big fan of the Harvest moon games and a big fan of rpg's. I started out a little slow but it only takes me about half an hour to get the hang of the game, after that it's smooth sailing. Anyway as far as the game goes: the graphics are beautiful, the fighting is awesome (which is one thing the original HM games don't have) and it has some of the same elements of the original harvest moon games: you still have to get woo one of seven potential brides, get married and have a child. Now there are some things that i didnt like about about this game such as the fact that your "farm animals" aren't domesticated for example the cow isn't a cow, it's actually a monster (like the other reviews said lol) now i did like the idea of riding a wolf lol. There are also some moments when you ask a villager something when you talk to them but it comes out as though they were the one's asking the question and they answer it themselves. The screen does lag a little bit when you pass by a place with more than 3 ppl on it, but you can manage it. One thing i like is the fact that there are dungeons that are one season all year long and therefore allow you to plant crops you wouldn't at your house because of the season. Another good thing is that you can either use the stylus or the control pad. I must say i prefer the control pad for the simple fact that i been playing home systems for...a long time. I have no life so therefore i have managed to get married in two days of playing. This game is definately wortth it if you've played previous installments of the HM games, but this one is a little different giving you a little more freedom. If you've never played the original Harvest moon then this game would be a good platform. So i say get this game, i think it's a good game for the older generation of gamers and the new alike. I'm sorry if this review isn't more helpful since this is my first one -- Better than its predecessors

If you like the Harvest Moon series then you know what you're getting. Rune Factory 2 is a great new twist to the series, but there's only one problem, and a huge problem at that, it freezes up.

I've previously owned Friends of Mineral Town for the Game Boy Advance, and freezing was never a problem for me even though both my brother and I have separate files on the cartridge. So I'm not sure why, even with a new and technically more advanced system (the DS lite) that Rune Factory 2 freezes on me frequently. It didn't start happening until my brother started a new game. I would be happily fishing or farming and the game would suddenly freeze up on me. I'm paranoid about the next freeze, and I constantly save just in case, nothing's more heartbreaking than to lose an entire days worth of work and having to do it all over again. And let's not talk about the slow motion lag times whenever there are more than 3 characters or animals on a screen.

The game is fun, but the lag times and freezes seriously puts a damper on the fun. Sadly, it's step down from Friends of Mineral Town in that aspect. I hope they can fix these issues by the release of Rune Factory 3. -- It's Great but...

In all honesty I almost gave up on this game. It has a really slow start but once you get going it turns out to be a lot of fun. I still wish I could speed up the story line a little seeing how I finish all the quests on the billboard so quickly and then I am left with nothing to do except slaughter mobs and gather resources which is still fun to me. When I get tired of doing that I do some fishing to pass the time though I am tired of catching boots and cans. Where are all the fish? I can not wait till I get to play as my son. By then I know I will have more options avaliable. Mainly crafting. I really can not wait to do some crafting. It is the main reason I bought the game. I will update once I get to that point. I am sure I will have some additional good things to say. -- Slow to start but lots of fun!

This is game is an absolute delight.
You play a young man who has lost his memory. He arrives in a small town and is given a house and a field. He must till the soil, sow it and harvest the crops to raise money. There are fish and ores to collect, and errands to run for the villagers.

There are some young women he can flirt with and eventually marry. But watch out- if he doesn't show interest the girl might be snatched by a competitor. There are dates on which each girl will marry another guy.
Unlike the first Rune Factory game, there are only 4 cave areas. These are limited and there is no bosses in the first part of the game. But there are plenty of regular monsters for him to fight and capture. Some monsters give produce, others help out. There is no leveling upp weapons or tools in the first part. There are fields in the caves that can be sowed.
As in similar games there are a few events that takes place in town on certain dates.

Once he gets married, has a child and builds the school, the second part of the game begins. Years later he remembers who he is and runs away in the middle of the night, leaving his wife and child behind. In the second part you play the child as he/she takes over the field and receives lessons in school on cooking, medicine, upgrading weaponry and tools, and magic books. The child can sneak into areas of the caves that was inaccessible for the father. Beware - the monsters are now way tougher. It is up to the child to discover the fate of his/her father.

This is among my favourite games along with Rune Factory 1. It's part Harvest Moon, part Animal Crossing, part Pokemon, part Monster Rancher. If you like any of these games, you'll love Rune Factory.
-- Harvest Moon plus monsters

The bright box caught me, and I ended up buying the game right when it came out. Right now, late June 2009, is a few months since then. Now that I am almost towards the end of the storyline part of the game, I feel I can make a good heads up for everyone else.

From playing the SNES Harvest Moon, and PS2 Save the Homeland(and by the way I didn't like either of them) - and this is my first RF game, I thought I kind of had an idea of what to come for Rune Factory 2. I wasn't too far off, the game is basically about farming, raising money and raising family, like most Harvest Moon related games. The game plays in a simple manner. Unlike the Harvest Moon games, though, this game, Rune Factory 2, is structured fairly well, easy to control, and there are a lot of things to do with plenty of free time. All those factors made me feel that it's a better game than HM games that I played, despite that RF2 requires patience and a seperate piece of memo paper, and I just wish that the developers didn't make the game so obvious and rough around the edges. I'm going to explain why I felt that later on.

Starting from the stuff I liked - the game is well structured. By that, I mean that it's very neatly organized. Graphics are very clear - it's very clear which patch of land is meant for farming and not. It's clear which patch of water can be used for fishing. The map on top DS screen puts your character exactly where your character is, on scale. It's so spot on that if I need to rush through dungeons, I can navigate just by looking at the map and not the actual screen. I can look at the character's Health or stamina, which is represented by two bars, and know how close I am pushing it before my character faints. I really do appreciate the graphics of the game in that sense.
Another thing is that the devs put some thought behind controls. It's easy to sell and buy stuff; all you have to sell is to move items from your character's inventories to the merchant's inventory, and to buy, you take the merchant's items from her/his inventory and move it to your inventory. As far as basic controls go, all of four face buttons are assigned to an action of a kind; X is for controlling your pet monster, Y is for magic attack, B is the item, and A is for whatever tool or weapon you have equipped. To switch to another magic/item/tool in inventoryhold L and the corresponding face button. This interface is very handy when fighting monsters, because it's fast and easy to change equipment as needed on the fly. The only oddball control in the game is that to run, you press R shoulder button once and your character stays in "run mode" where s/he will run all the time until R button is pressed again(then, s/he would just walk all the time). The otherwise excellent controls help, because there are a lot to do in the game.
The game has a lot of chores that your character can do for reward. The reward is either small money, an item, or simply friendship boost. This is good way to spend time when your typical mining/fishing/farming routine is done, and helps the game become less boring, which IMO is one of the biggest flaws of other HM games. In RF2 this is also a primary way of moving forward in the story. The quests are more rewarding than what you can do with townsfolks from HM games, I think this was why the game was more addictive. After quests are done, it's easy to permanently save progress, as a portable games should be. There is a save spot every 5 or 6 games, so if really urgent, I have been able to save a game progress in less than a minute. Those traits all make a great basis of a good game - good interface, good controls and addictive play. So much in fact that they make the shortcoming of RF2 more obvious. IMO the game could have been a lot better, but I can tell that it was rushed.

I'll now move onto the things that test patience. It's not exactly a secret that Marvelous Entertainment's games are usually glitchy. Rune Factory 2 runs better than most other games from that dev, but so far I have to be careful especially when Mana was teaching cooking receipes in second generation. If I had chosen the "wrong" lesson to learn at the wrong time, the game would freeze mid-lesson. Eventually I got to learn all the things Mana and Barrett teaches, but it's still annoying.
Another thing is that there are a lot of things to memorize. So much, that without a piece of paper to note, the only other option for a player to take is to cheat and use a guide. Townsfolks actually do tell you most of the things needed to progress, it's just that after a while they stop, and the player is screwed at that point. I bought the game early when there wasn't really a guide available and this resulted in a lot of trial and error process for me that I felt wasn't necessary.
Oh, that leaves to a few final minor complaint for me. The game really skips on little details at times. For one, there are a few good ideas in combat. Problem is that a lot of them is done to you by the monsters and you can't do the same thing back to them. The enemies can gang up and do these crazy combos on you, and they can also knock you into the walls, leaving you dizzy. Some enemies can attack while being hit, they can paralyze you, and silence you. Guess what you can't do. Plus, there are shields for you that you can't really use to block anything, it just reduces damages. I mean, to me, it it looks like a total waste to put something in the game that can't be done by you.
It also isn't very cunning. The game is divided into two "generations" where half of the game is blocked the first few tens of hours. It's really, really obvious where those area are. For instance, there's a road that CLEARLY leads to some other places that is blocked off with a fence or stone statues. When you try to examine it, RF2 will tell you "I can't pass", or "I can't read the words on the statues." I mean, that kinda kills the mood, don't you think? The game's not really good at all at pleasantly surprising the player. Maybe it's to the weak writing that is to blame. I think you may have noticed, but the story is really really lame. The characters are kind of interesting though, so it luckily evens out in the end.
By the way, speaking of the characters, most people if they're like me, will have some hard time adjusting to the character portraits. They're all blushing all the time, I mean this game is Japanese and all, but that's really distracting.

Thanks for reading my review. Obviously, the game was enjoyable enough for me to not mind writing out this long script. For me the game felt like a mix of Princess Maker 2 and Diablo, but for children instead of adults. It's very off beat compared to a lot of other RPGs out there, and while it's not the best of its kind I think it's worth playing. I recommend buying it when it falls into 10~20 dollar ranges. -- I think RF2 is decent, but could have been better.