Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny - Playstation 3

First off, I should make mention that I am a long-time Final Fantasy gamer. Not counting the online-only games, I have cleared roughly half of the FF Series since I started playing them when I was seven (on FF1).That said, if you are looking for a FF clone, this is not the game for you. Rune Factory is not a single-focus save-the-world RPG as are most of the FF games. Sure, your ultimate goal is to save the world, but the bulk of the game's action and playtime is actually deliberately not adventuring or combat. In fact, spending extended amounts of time doing adventuring can have adverse effects on your character and his other projects -- like building yourself a new home and a decent farmland.I make it a policy not to go into the actual storyline of a game, but I will say this much about it: this is not a short game. With all the stuff you normally have to get into, your actual advancing the quest work will happen once or twice a game week to prevent complications. Still, for what you have to do, going into battle every third or fourth game day is not a bad plan of action. The adventuring drives the overarching plot, but the home-front action is what achieves your goals. Once you get into item crafting and resource farming (literally), you will quickly learn to turn the tide of battle by starting your operations with your supply and equipment setup.The other aspect of the game is relationship building, which is technically key to the overarching plot. By what methods again I shall not discuss, it becomes clear after a while that moving forward with the relations begins to open up new quests and subplots, as we as add a nice amount of background and filler in the game. Always a pleasant thing to play through, at least in moderate doses. The sidequests of the game makes the charm, though, as well as keeps you doing interesting exploring and questing routines.If you're looking for a bloodfest, more traditional RPGs are going to be your preference. If you want something lighter and slightly more involved, this is an excellent game.

I like this game. Walk around, talk to people. Unlock different quests. No blood or gore. No scary thriller psychological themed darkness. Just a fun game. Can fight monsters with crazy weapons like sparklers and swords twice the height of the character. Nothing 'dies' in this game. Monsters are sent back to a 'forest of beginnings.' You can tame / catch monsters to do work for you on islands for crops and item generation, harvesting, etc. The graphics are good. You don't get to control the camera angle like in, say, final fantasy XIII or other games. You just press L1 and it resets it for you and as you walk along, the camera moves a bit to keep up with you. But nothing like a game where you use the right analog to control the camera angle as you walk around, so definitely not that fluid for camera. You don't get to look around much at the views the characters talk about enjoying unless you want to point your character a certain way and press L1, then repeat.If you lose or run out of stamina, you just wake up in your room (usually with a cold and lower stamina). But you can cure colds, low stamina, etc. with items quite easily.Increasing crafting or forging levels is a bit repetitive. May end up selling a lot of gear you make just to get the level you want for a more powerful item.Overall, it's a fun game.I'm finding I don't like the shooters, the blood, the gore, the intense psychological thrillers, or the violence of a lot of modern games. Thankfully, games like Rune Factory exist. And I like it a lot.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny had major improvements over the previous Rune Factory games. There is more of a focus on action, choice, and rewards.Skill levels are tracked for a wide variety of activities such as walking, jumping, greeting villagers, fighting with a sword, etc. You get a prompt and an RP bonus any time you rank up a skill level, which happens frequently due to the high number of activities being tracked. This makes you feel rewarded regardless of what activities you choose to do.Time pressure (managed in Rune Factory games by both RP and the game clock) is greatly lessened by having more ways to mitigate the cost (get RP back as you advance) and by reducing the time it takes to do things (farming is done by pets, mechanic to allow you to quickly teleport to dungeons).Improvements have been made to the combat system, making weapons feel more powerful and more unique by type.Relationship building feels rewarding, even with villagers that aren't romantic interests. Part of this is due to the new request board. Villagers will only offer certain requests once you are a certain friendship level with them. Requests can give you good items and open up new content.The one improvement I'd like to see in the future is having the friendship rank-up events evolve a bit more. If they were more like social links in Persona 3 or 4, that would be awesome. As it is, only a few of the villagers have compelling stories, with the mojaority being inane time-killers. Still, I think this is a fantastic title. Finally, the series has that blending of harvest moon and animal crossing, with action rpg combat, that I was wanting at the beginning.