Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny - Nintendo Wii

After playing well over 30 hours already on this game, I feel I've adequately explored enough of it to write a critical review. I'm not going to belabour over the story or waste time explaining it, you can easily get it elsewhere. I'm rather going to do a comparison review between Tides of Destiny and Frontier, the previous Wii in the series.To start off with, let's go straight to the biggest change of all: Farming. In Rune Factory: Frontier, you had a more active role by clearing out your land for crops, plowing the land, seeding the land, watering the crops and finally harvesting them. Sure you eventually got animals to do the dirty work for you so it was less manual labor, but you felt a sense of satisfaction when you finally got your paycheck from Rosetta at 5 PM every day. In Tides of Destiny, its a more streamlined affair. Once you revive one of four 'dead/petrified' islands, you are then free to wave your magic stick and plant seedlings. At first, all seedlings are planted the same and none are any specific crop. That is where your monsters come in. They will determine what those seedlings will ultimate grow up to be. So the selection of monsters you have on your island at any one time is crucial to what you'll be harvesting a day or so later. You typically want two crop masters, one flower master, one tree grower and one harvest so you literally can leave the island on autopilot and come back a few days later only to plant more seedlings. This new farming method is vastly different from anything so far in the series and that is both a good and a bad thing. Bad because you no longer have an active role in how you farm, but good because there is simply way too much stuff going on this game (more than Frontier) to bother too much on farming. So streamlining it was probably the best choice, so instead of the primary focus, its merely secondary. (like most things in this game)The next biggest change would be the Runey system. In Frontier, it was more a task of micro-management to make sure they simply didn't kill themselves off and your crops along with them! The worse off your Runeys were doing, the worse off your crops would grow and ultimately not grow at all if you let them all die out. So to keep it all in balance, every few days, you had to do 'Runey management' to keep those little guys alive. It was tedious and it literally took up an entire day. In Tides of Destiny, they've literally eliminating that system entirely. There are Runeys still, yes, but they serve a far different purpose. You now find Runeys around dead/dried driftwood, trees and other wood-based things. You collect a bunch and when you come to the (above mentioned) 'dead/petrified' islands, you release them so you can plant your crops/grow ore crystals. The more Runeys you release on each of these islands, the more plantable spots you will have access to to sow your seedlings and saplings. When your islands are at 100% Runey capacity, you will have access to all planting spots. Its a more streamlined system of Runey management and they go to serve a useful purpose. The amount of Runeys no longer affects the length of growth for your crops anymore. This is one change I applaud.The next biggest gameplay factor after those two has to be Ymir, your traveling golem. In Frontier, you were doing all the footwork and all dungeons were within easy walking distance. In Tides of Destiny, its more like Zelda: Wind Waker where you have this insanely vast ocean with myriad of different islands and dungeons. The majority of which are on the bottom of the sea; this is where Ymir comes in. He digs these islands up for you and makes them permenant ocean surface landmarks. There are several 'types' of islands Ymir can find. There is your typical permenant non-essential islands that are merely there for extra exploration. Then there are story-driven islands that usually provide keys to the major dungeons of the game. Then there are re-raiseable islands where after you've finished exploring them, Ymir tosses them back into the sea and the next day you can re-raise them and get all the treasures over again. And then finally there are the dungeons that are already raised and consist of several floors and a hard boss. (seriously, they are hard!) As you explore, you may engage in mortal combat with huge monsters of the deep. These are relatively quick affairs and the controls are simple to understand. But the art of fighting takes a while to master. For an extra kick, press B when you are close to a stunned enemy who is low on health to see a unique Ymir Mortal Death Blow! Another feature is the quick travel system with Ymir. Pressing down on the control pad opens up the overhead view where you can 'quick travel' to anywhere you can reach. This helps speed up ocean travel and makes it far more enjoyable. This ocean exploration is really the 'bulk' of the game and where you'll be spending a good majority of your time, exploring the sea and traversing the islands and dungeons. It is a refreshing experience and I'm glad I got to revisit Wind Wak...er..the sea again!The actual combat portion of the game has been expanded upon and made a bit more robust than it was in Frontier. In Frontier, all you had was basic attacks and a special attack unique to the weapon you were holding. In Tides of Destiny, its a bit more complex than that. Each weapon you have has a unique set of combo attacks and once you level your skill with it up enough, you have access to various perks, like a charge attack, mid-air special combo, rune abilities and more. This further diversifies the actual combat and gives you a few more options with which to pummel your foes with. Sure it lends to a lot more button mashing, but its a bit more satisfying to beat up on enemies now. Especially since each type of weapon performs equally well. I definitely loved the improvements on this portion of the game.Now to the flipside of this, the actual Fenith Island town itself. After the crazy-long prologue tutorial, navigating your way around Fenith island is actually quite simple. In Frontier, there was no in-game map and you literally had to memorize what times/days/places people were when you went to go find them. It was annoying at times and very tedious to go from location to location trying to locate just one person. In Tides of Destiny, they gave you a godsend: the town map! Not only does it display in fine detail where everything is, it tells you exactly where every character is, whether or not they are inside a house or not or if they are on the move or standing still. Its extremely helpful and makes your daily rounds much easier to manage at any time of the day.A new thing they added was the request bulletin board. Every villager will have a wide variety of requests for you to accomplish. This can involve to anything from simply delivery quests, fetch quests, 'go kill these monsters' quests, to taste testing, finding materials, answering riddles, finding ghosts, wearing certain clothes, etc. All these requests come with a reward attached of varying degrees. Some are more worth doing than others, but they all flesh out the local population and endear each character to you as you help them. So far, my favorite characters are Maerwen, Lily, Mikoto, Gerard, and Joe.Another nice touch to the villager system is that at some point in the game, you have the option of switching to either male or female. There are, obviously, far more female brides-to-be than males. But there is a small selection for those female gamers who want a man to marry. Furthermore, for all marriage candidates (so Gerard, Beatrix, Bacchus, Kelsey, Quinn, etc. do NOT count). can accessorize. What I mean is, you give them a nice hat, brooch, ring, neck towel, cat ears, whale hat, wooly belt, etc. THEY WILL WEAR IT! That awful hat James wears? Give him a new one and he'll sport that sucker! A nice little touch, I'll admit, but it is fun going around re-dressing all the marriage candidates in finery or silly get-ups.Getting deeper into your townlife experience, you can craft potions, armor, weapons and food dishes straight from the get-go. There are various utility sections in individual houses on the island where you can combine up to 2 ingredients to make things. However, without upgrading your house, you are ultimately stuck on how much you can really do. Once you upgrade your home, a wealth of crafting possibilities are open to you. The crafting bar mini-game has been modified slightly as well from Frontier. For each level of difficulty in crafting, there is a unique red/blue bar to craft to. So that keeps you on your toes as you are crafting various levels of ability. A new crafting skill they give you is Carpentry. Where you get to make your own furniture and utilize it in the front foyer of your own home or sell it for big bucks! A nice little addition if I do say so myself. They have also streamlined the level system of your items. Instead of levels 1-10 like in Frontier, they've simplified it to 'having a star' and 'having no star.' With the starred items being worth more/more effective. I rather like this change as it makes things so much simpler.Speaking of skills, they give you a redonkulous amount of skills to level up in this game in comparison to Frontier. I mean, you literally have a skill to level up by merely WALKING! There is also eating, sleeping, bathing, jumping (yes, you can jump in this game!), and...well you get the picture. If there is ANYTHING you can do in this game, there is a skill there to level up for it. Its pretty silly. You really must have no life if you ultimately get all those skills to 99. But its fun to try never-the-less.Overall, I feel this is an improvement on Frontier, yet not effectively replacing it. I feel this game stands on its own and should be treated as such. It is trying to do a lot of different things and I feel it succeeds at most of them. I like how they streamlined or simplified a lot of aspects from Frontier to make the game have a fluid rhythm. It draws more casual gamers in a lot more than Frontier does and it succeeds on giving you plenty of things to do, despite the fact that farming and villager interaction have now been moved to a more secondary role. Even the festivals feel like they are far less interactive than in Frontier. But despite those misgivings, this is a solid game and I heartily recommend it for both non-fans fans of the series. The developers tried to make something different and yet still retain the Rune Factory feel, I feel they've succeeded. I have immensely enjoyed Frontier, and I've also immensely enjoying Tides of Destiny. They are great games in their own right. I just prefer Tides of Destiny because of the design decisions made. But don't let my opinion sway you, play/rent it and find out yourself!

Tides of Destiny is an excellent addition to the Rune Factory series, keeping almost all the gameplay of the original Rune Factory games while adding a lot more. It's my favorite in the series so far, though fans of the downplayed elements may be a bit disappointed.You already know the Rune Factory basic premise: Harvest Moon, but with RPG-style dungeon-crawls added on! And that's...exactly what this is. You raise and harvest crops and critters, while fighting your way through dungeons. You form relationships with the locals (who are still engaging as always, but a little less one-note quirky compared to previous installments in the series), complete quests for them, try to get married and solve the main plot and run your farms and... Well, so forth.The farming aspect has been pulled back somewhat in this version. Instead of hoeing, seeding, watering, and harvesting every square on a field with your own bare hands, you set up "sprout points" (the number of them available is based on how many rune spirits you've stuffed into a given island), and the tamed monsters you've put on that island raise the crops. You brush the monsters, harvest the crops, reset the sprout points... The rest the monsters handle. People who really loved Rune Factory 3's soil condition mechanic will probably find this simplification annoying; personally, I found it a great relief. I like farming, but I don't want it to feel so much like work as it sometimes does in earlier Rune Factory installments.Conversely, dungeon-crawling has been made much more interesting. Instead of having a set number of dungeon locations to work through as you level up and unlock them via plot, you go stomping around the ocean on an enormous golem (with handy monster barn inside!), lifting islands from the ocean floor. And temples, and sunken ships, and monsters to fight in your mecha-golem... This is definitely the highlight of the new twists in Tides of Destiny. There are tons of tiny islands unlocked with quests, along with the big obligatory elemental-themed temples, and even your planting locations are all on special seasonal islands. Stomping your golem (Ymir by default, but I named my Splashy) through the water to heave another chunk of rock up from the ocean floor is one of my favorite parts of the whole game.Crafting has been slightly improved--there are now furniture crafting options, and you can do simple crafting in various houses of friends before you buy your own equipment--but is generally about the same as in previous versions of the game.Quests are pretty similar to before, but they're helpfully marked as plot-relevant vs. ordinary, and rated in turnips so that you have an idea of how difficult one is going in. Quest rewards vary from "Nice job, buddy!" to recipe unlocks and major item upgrades.Relationships are rather more interesting than in the previous games. Now, every time you level up your relationship, you'll get a cut-scene involving the progression of that character's personal subplot--and this is true for both romantic and non-romantic relationships! It's a bit reminiscent of the way Persona 3 and 4 handle that, and it's a welcome addition to the series. It feels more like you're learning more about a character, and not just grinding up their numbers.Combat is dead simple. (I consider this a plus.) There are combos to learn and execute, dozens of weapons to unlock and craft, magical staves to use... But really, you can just buy the special weapons that are sometimes offered by one character's quests, take your three strongest monsters along with you, and then hammer the attack button repeatedly. The instant teleport is a godsend for getting around, both in tight combat situations and just for convenience. And the skills for everything (katana use! bathing! eating! walking! chatting with people! golem navigation! being knocked out in combat!) mean that even a player with difficulty with combat will be slowly increasing their stats, and eventually be able to get past everything. There are some basic puzzles, but even the occasional jumping puzzle or what not is only mildly challenging. Mostly you're in this game to see your character look awesome in a whirlwind attack on screen, not to figure out truly difficult puzzles.The game manual is anemic; go online if you need help with explanations for things. A lot of important game aspects are hinted at, or talked about completely in-character, in such a way that dealing with them can be frustrating if you didn't pick up on the hint the first time. But that's what game walkthroughs and FAQs are for.The controls handle just fine on the Wii. I've had no problem running around and getting things done, and I often do in this type of game. Hitting the green zone for the crafting//fishing minigame can be annoying, but since you level a little even by failing at it, and don't waste ingredients on a failure except in cooking, it's again something that weaker players can get past with a bit of patience. The graphics upgrade on the Wii, compared to the DS version, is also nice; I especially like that you can see the accessories your character wears, or even see those accessories on other characters if you give them some. If you want your love interest to wear a fluffy scarf, goggles, and metal bracers, you can do that.Short version: excellent game, with marvelous new additions, and more of the stuff we all love. Unless you really loved hoeing and watering things. There, you're going to be out of luck.