A few random Free Realms thoughts

Free Realms seems to be the blog topic of the week, so since I don’t want to be left out, I thought I’d toss out some cranky thoughts about it.

I played a bit in beta, and now I’ve played a bit in launch. I’m far from the intended audience so I don’t think a ‘review’ from me is really appropriate; it wasn’t designed to appeal to me. So these are more musings than anything.

First, I thought it was interesting that the much-hyped Tuesday launch didn’t happen for most of the US, and no one started spewing hatred and vitriol at Sony. I suppose the free client is a big part of why, but a lot of MMO Rage isn’t based on any kind of logic. Maybe the Rage-types just aren’t interested in the game anyway? It was just sorta nice to see that most people interested in the launch found it in their hearts to be understanding about the delay.

Second, I keep hearing the gathering mini-game as being like Bejeweled. OMG don’t you people play casual games? It isn’t like Bejeweled! In Bejeweled, you swap the positions of gems to connect 3 or more of the same color. In the crafting mini-game, you don’t move anything. You just mark connected gems of the same color, at which point they vanish. This game exists in the casual world but I’m an old man with a faulty memory and I don’t remember the name of it. 🙂 But it ain’t Bejeweled! [Please note tongue firmly in cheek for this point.]

Third, the name still bugs me because it isn’t free to play. Sure, some of it is, but not all. And the $5/month subscription model still doesn’t get you everything; some items require an RMT. This includes Pets. And what’s the very first thing they introduce to you when you leave the tutorial area? Pets! That feels kind of sleazy to me, honestly.

Fourth, I wonder how many gamers will get frustrated by the tutorial because it is so slow moving. You can’t dismiss dialog boxes until the voice over completes. There’s a reason for this…the client is still downloading in the background so they *have* to slow you down in order to give that time to happen. Not being a paid subscriber I only have 1 character slot, so I don’t know if they change this in subsequent runs through the tutorial (or just let you skip the tutorial altogether).

I’m not sure I wouldn’t have pointed out that there’s a reason for the slow moving tutorial. I just worry that some people will get frustrated and leave before they ever start playing.

Fifth, just because a goblin-thingie wears a colander on his head as a helmet, it doesn’t mean he can’t kick your ass. Angela and I grouped up and tried a combat encounter mostly at random. We got *smoked*. I couldn’t see any way to judge the difficulty of the encounter (other than that we’d gone exploring and were a good ways from the starting location).

Sixth and last, Green Armadillo has a post up about points card for the game. Basically you get more for your money if you jump in your car and burn some fossil fuel to go to a retail store and buy a card which you can then throw into a landfill, rather than just downloading points. This sucks. Why not promise to kill a baby seal with every purchase, while you’re at it, Sony?

We didn’t play for long. First the server we were on crashed, then when we got into another server we spent a while trying to find each other, hoping we could ‘friend’ each other if we were in proximity, but we couldn’t. Long after we gave up trying we got a “Friend Server Down” message in the chat.

Angela wants to play more. I’m not as sure. Maybe. I’m kind of on the fence with regard to playing mini-games in a $5/month MMO for levels vs buying them for $5 or $10 on the XBox 360 and playing them for Gamerscore. The combat seems like pretty fun hack and slash casual gameplay, though, so I might give that a go. And just running around the world was actually kind of interesting, chasing bunnies and squirrels and stuff just for grins. So maybe. Maybe not. But again, I AM NOT THE INTENDED AUDIENCE so my playing or not playing isn’t really relevant to the success of the game.

Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Wii)

So I’ve been struggling a bit with FFCC: Echoes of Time for the Wii. I can’t decide if I like it or not. Ever been on the fence like that? I feel like it is in my best interest to either play it now (or at least decide I’m really sure I want to play it), or trade it in now while it still has some value.

I figured it was time for a list of pros and cons!

I mentioned the shock I experienced on first firing up the game and getting a glimpse of the graphics. I don’t mind low-resolution 2D sprites in ‘retro’ feeling games, but EoT has low-resolution 3D models that are pretty hard to stomach on a big screen; I’m fairly certain they’re using the same assets as those in the DS version (and I’m kind of wishing I’d purchased the DS version, in fact).

However, the writing, such as I’ve seen of it, is pretty good. There’s a lot of weird little things going on that don’t have any impact (at least, I don’t think they do) on the gameplay or the main story. For instance, I come into a town and see a woman standing near some clothes on a clothesline. She says something about having to do the wash all over, and indeed it is looking rather gray. I walk a bit farther on, and there’re 2 children standing in front of a scolding mother, while another mother stands off to one side. Of the two kids, one is bummed that she’s not going to get dessert as punishment for getting the wash filthy. The other is totally unconcerned about what the scolding mom has to say. He displays that sense of entitlement that we see all too often in small children these days. In the meanwhile, his mother (the one off to the side) is bowing frantically and apologizing for the behavior of her son, and chatting on and on as if she has no control over her mouth. He looks like a brat, she looks like a buffoon. How often have I seen this play out in real life?

Social commentary in an RPG? I appreciate that.

But back to gameplay… the controls are strange. Not really bad, just so unconventional that they’re hard to get used to. For instance, to cast a spell, I push right on the cross-button on the WiiMote, then use the analog stick on the nunchuck to move a cursor up and down to select the spell I want to cast. Then I push down on the cross-button to bring up a targeting cursor, and use the analog stick to direct it to the enemy. When I let go, the spell fires off. That isn’t *too* bad, but you can stack spells, too. In order to do that, after moving the targeting cursor, you press A to lock it in place, then press right-cross, use analog to pick spell 2, press down-cross to bring up cursor again, use stick to lay this cursor on the first one, and then fire them both at once. And if you take too long, your first spell will auto-fire.

In all honesty this sounds more cumbersome than it really is. When you’re not running for your life it’s very easy. But as soon as things get frantic, it isn’t like you can fall back on your years of video game playing to draw on muscle memory to pull off these moves. They’re just too unique for those tracks to be laid down in your brain. And to be even more honest, I am using the ‘expert’ controls, but my thought is that whenever a game offers ‘Beginner’ and ‘Expert’ controls, you may as well just learn Expert out of the gate; otherwise you’ll have to unlearn Beginner at some point.

Maybe I should dig out the classic controller and see if that helps with the controls?

When it comes to actual fighting gameplay, a few things bug me here, too. First, this is hack and slash RPG (which I normally love) that has a LOT of jumping around frantically. I’m a little too old for frantic…it makes me irritable. The dungeons are like those you might find in a tactics game, built of blocks of different heights. When you kill a monster, treasure explodes from it, pinata style. Often this treasure will fall off a ledge, or wind up on top of a switch or even another character (you can take AI buddies into dungeons with you, or of course play multiplayer). You have to press a key to pick up loot, so this means jumping and hitting that key at the right time to grab the loot on top of stuff (or jumping off the ledge to get stuff that has dropped, then doing a series of jumps to get back to your starting position). I’ve picked up my AI buddy by mistake quite often, which while funny (me carrying her, her with a gold coin spinning on top of her head) gets frustrating after a while.

There’s also lots of box moving, lifting and tossing. This is all really imprecise. You move a box by standing next to it; you’ll autograb it and can then drag it around until you hit a button to let go. This means you’ll accidentally grab boxes constantly as you try to walk past them, yanking them out of place. With the boxes you can lift, throwing them feels really loose and iffy, and if you bump into a positioned box, you’ll knocking it out of position; the boxes seem to have very little mass (even if they can push down a rusted floor switch).

Lots of bitching, right?

At the same time, the combat feels pretty fun. Good hack and slash enjoyment. Bosses have specific weak points and you have to figure out the best way to get at them. You might hit a boss with a freeze spell then run up and jump/hack to hit a spot on their backs, for instance. You might just jump on their head and try to stay perched up there. Each boss is a bit of a puzzle, and the few I’ve seen have been really fun.

And there’s a crafting system of sorts, with lots of treasure being copper, sticks, fur, etc, that you can take to an NPC to make into weapons/armor/accessories. And a lot of gear can be socketed with gems, improving specific stats. Plus there’s this strange little “Scratch Card” system that gives you party buffs if you scratch the cards right (sorry to be vague, I’ve yet to figure that bit out). All this is stuff that I love in my RPGs.

The world is quirky and strange, the characters I’ve met have me intrigued and I want to find out what happens next. I’ve said too often that I’m mostly a narrative-driven gamer and the narrative here, while I’ve barely scratched the surface of it, calls to me. This is more of a ‘gut reaction’ than anything I can put a finger on.

So I have to decide if I can put up with the frantic jumping craziness (frantic to the point where it sometimes makes me feel queasy, motion-sickness style) and the really craptacular 3D graphics, in order to enjoy the dialog, crafting, world and button mashing combat.

Final thought: My Wii sat gathering dust for probably a year, and now suddenly I’m spending more time with it than with the PS3, XBox and PC combined. I’m not sure why that is…I’ve got great games waiting on all systems. There’s just something “cheery” about Wii games that is scratching an itch right now. I have no interest in picking up Resident Evil, Mad World or the upcoming The Conduit for it. I’m sticking to these kid-friendly, cheerful titles for now.

RFF: Mid-summer doldrums (Wii)

Everyone is complaining about the heat and most are heading to the beach on holidays. Everyone except me, that is. I’ve been run ragged trying to get my farm in order. Very little dungeon exploring these days; I let my lot go and it is overrun with tree stumps [apparently in the world of Rune Factory Frontier tree stumps grow on their own] and now I’m struggling to take back my land.

Lute came around and I bought a bunch of new gear for the house, but so far I’m not really putting it to good use. But at least I’ll be ready when I figure out some fancy recipes (or when Selphy gets some new books in so I can just buy recipes).

I also experienced my first storm. I got up at 6 am, like I always do, and headed for the door. Suddenly I got this thought into my head: “I shouldn’t go outside today.” No amount of convincing myself would get me out the door. So I did some blacksmithing at my forge until I was tired, then went back to bed. It was, of course, still 6 am. 🙂 Funny how time doesn’t pass when you’re stuck inside.

When I woke up the next day, my farm was a shambles. Branches, tree roots and pebbles had replaced patches of crops all over the place, and I could barely get around to what was left. Happily the rain continued to drizzle down, so instead of spending all my energy watering, I started the clean up process. But it really set me back.

I do have 2 ripe patches of strawberries growing in the dungeon on Whale Island, and a third coming along nicely. I pop up there every day, with my trusty ant companion (his name is Ant…he is an ant. I’m very original at naming my monster pals) to harvest the rune stones and get my energy back. Ant protects me from other monsters so I don’t have to spend my energy fighting my way in or out.

There’s a tree growing along the mountain path, and I can see a crevice behind it. As the tree grows, it pushes up a large chunk of stone, making the crevice larger. So far it isn’t open far enough to let me get in. I’ve taken to watering the tree in the hopes that it’ll grow faster. I suspect there’s a dungeon in there!

I must admit, I haven’t been very social. I did give Mist a straw hat, which she really liked (she wears it every day) and I talk to Melody at the baths daily, but aside from that I’m still keeping to myself, for now.

The work of clearing my farm lot probably sounds dull, but I find it rather satisfying, and I’m gathering plenty of lumber for future expansions. I know I won’t be doing any farming come winter, and I figure I can leave the dungeon exploring until them.

Oh, did I mention I gave that strange purple elephant monster to Bianca? She seemed very happy to have it. I stop by to check in now and then and it seems happy and healthy.

[I flew past the 20 hour point in Rune Factory Frontier this weekend, and I’m still really enjoying the game, albeit in smaller doses. I generally boot it up and play through a day or two, then go on to something with a bit more action. It’s a little like Animal Crossing in that way, except it isn’t tied to a real life clock, so I can play whenever I want. I’ve mostly avoided spoilers, but have read a few, so I know that tree is opening the Summer Dungeon, and that there are 2 more I’ve yet to discover (Fall and Winter).]

Champions Online: The Nemesis

I’ll admit I haven’t been following Champions Online all that closely, so maybe this Nemesis idea has been explained somewhere. If so, can someone throw me a link?

I get (or at least, I think I do) that the basic idea is that you create a nemesis for your hero at the same time that you create your hero, and I presume that your nemesis “levels up” more or less parallel to you doing so. And I further presume that over the career of your hero, you’ll repeatedly have to do battle with your nemesis.

Assuming this much is correct, what I don’t understand is what the incentive here is. You can make a customized nemesis with all kinds of special powers, but given the opportunity, most players would make the wimpiest nemesis they could (special power? pillow fighting +1!!) so they could rush to cap that much more easily. In order to offset that tendency, I’m guessing there’s an incentive to making an interesting and powerful nemesis.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what that incentive is?

July 14th is the launch date, in case you somehow missed that news.

RFF – First week of summer (Wii)

So as I alluded to in my last post, the end of Spring holiday held its share of disappointments (I’m talking about Rune Factory Frontier here).

First, there was a festival celebrating the opening of the beach, which shook everything up. Lute wasn’t in his normal spot, and by the time I found out where he was (near the church, apparently) it was too late and he’d gone home. So my big forge room remains empty for another week.

Second, Day 30 was actually the first day of Summer, not the last day of Spring, so I lost some crops as they withered to dead grass.

Third, there was a contest at the festival, which I participated in…and failed at, much to the amusement of all the available young ladies present. *sigh*

But life goes on! This week, and today is Wednesday or Thursday of Week 1 of Summer in Rune Factory Frontier land, I’ve already expanded the kitchen area, and I’ve *already* harvested a crop of onions. How so fast?

The power of Runeys. I haven’t mentioned Runeys yet because I’m still figuring them out. Runeys are these kind of spirit things that float around in the world, and if you have a balanced Runey population, your land will become prosperous and things will grow more quickly. You collect Runeys via the (wait for it) Collector (hmm, or is it called a Gatherer?) which feels like a Ghostbuster Ectoplasmic Vacuum kind of thing. So I collected a bunch and set them free around my farm and now I can harvest animal fodder every day, and my onions went from seed to harvest in less than a week. Yay!

Runeys appear over mature croplands, apparently… but they also eat each other, so there’s some kind of balancing thing going on that I haven’t fussed over much yet.

However inside dungeons, instead of Runeys appearing from mature crops, you get these Rune Point Stone things that replenish your supply of Rune Points. I’ve got 2 patches of strawberries growing on Whale Island’s dungeon, so I pop over there, harvest berries, top off my Rune Points and I’m good to go for a while longer. More work!

Anyway, we’ll see how things go during the next holiday; hopefully Lute will be back and I can get both a better Forging Station and better Kitchen Equipment. We’ll see if the money holds out.

So far this week, not much dungeon diving. I did tame a new monster: an ant… so now I have a sheep (I can harvest wool from him) a cow (milk), a squirrel, (who runs around my farmland harvesting ‘wild’ weeds, which can be valuable), a goblin, (who harvests veggies), and the ant will be my combat partner, at least for now (He can harvest veggies too, if need be). These monster pets aren’t particularly efficient yet but I’m hoping they get better with practice. For now they just save me some time, but I still have to do some collecting/harvesting myself.

And finally, the purpose of this post. If you have a Wii, and my inane blatherings about this title have piqued your interest, Amazon has it on sale (today only, I believe) for $29.98. It lists for $50, but I think I paid about $40 at Best Buy a couple weeks ago.

I found a great website devoted to these games: http://www.ranchstory.co.uk/?games/Rune_Factory_Frontier. Gamefaqs has a lot of info too, and honestly for Gamefaqs, the community is decent, but I prefer visiting ‘indie’ websites when I am able to.

Failing the Focus Saving Throw

I guess if Tipa can own up to being distracted, so can I.

Not too long ago I got a tax refund. Now, in my old life I was a huge Game Grazer, and I bought a *lot* of games that I never finished, or in some cases never even tore the shrinkwrap off of. But life changes, and with it finances, and my buying habits had to change rather dramatically.

So these days (meaning for the last year or so), I buy very few games, but the tax refund made me feel unjustifiably flush at the same time that I seem to be more-or-less on a break from MMO gaming, and I have to admit I gave in to a spurt of retail therapy.

Problem now is…I can’t decide what to play first! So instead I’m round-robin playing all kinds of things, and not really making any progress in any of them. Must…gain….focus!!!

So over the past few days I’ve spent time in:

Rune Factory Frontier
(Wii): Day 30 ended up being a disappointment, but that’s another post. I really need to keep moving forward with this one, but I think I’ve accepted that it’s going to be a tortoise rather than a hare game. Given how many hours its taken me to get through the first season, I know I’ll never “finish” (if you really can finish) if I try to play it exclusively.

Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Wii): I’d heard that this was a pretty good action-rpg hack & slasher. I’ve only played a tiny bit. The graphics were a bit of a shock: you can get this title for the Wii or the DS and apparently the same assets are used in both versions. In fact on the Wii there are two screens (side by side) emulating the dual screens of the DS.

At the same time, what little bit of the writing I experienced, I liked. It sounds bizarre saying that, like taking a first paragraph of a book and declaring “This is a great book!” but it was just a feeling. I think I’ll enjoy the story. The combat seems ok, but again, much too early to say for sure.

Phantasy Star Portable (PSP): Yes, another hack & slash action-RPG. Only two sessions with this one so far. Lots of systems that aren’t immediately obvious. I think I may have to shelve this title until I’m ready to really focus on it. The controls are just ‘off’ enough that they’ll take some time to feel at home with, and that by itself kind of demands exclusivity. There seems to be a LOT to do in the game though, all kinds of ways of building your character using a FF like job system. Looking forward to it, but for now it might have to be back-burnered.

BTW, I bought Phantasy Star Portable for about $1 after trading in some old games to Amazon for $25 credit plus a $10 promotion they were running, so it doesn’t have to do a lot to prove its value to me.

Luminous Arc 2 (DS): This was an Amazon Lightning deal, I think. It came with a CD of the in-game music and an art book (which is kind of nice). I can’t remember what sucked me in to buying it beyond the fact that Atlus has a genius marketing department and I love supporting little publishers like this one. I *thought* I was buying another J-RPG, but it turns out this is a turn-based s-rpg, a la Final Fantasy Tactics or the wonderful Jeanne d’Arc on the PSP. I really, really enjoy games like this one, so I’m pushing it towards the top of the stack, but honestly have only played the first mission. Lots of story cut-scenes, which I absolutely love, but I know many people hate the idea of story slowing down their games.

Fallout 3 (PC): I fear this one got over-hyped. I keep waiting for it to hook me but so far it really hasn’t. It’s depressing as hell and, ironically enough (after what I said in the above paragraph) there’s way too much talking through dialog trees. I played for an hour today and never left town. Well I lie…I finally left town, started to fight something, and the game locked up. Yay PC gaming!

I’ll say its well written enough that Angela will chuckle or comment as she overhears 1 side of the conversation. I just think the pacing is a little off. Get the player out there fighting and then layer on the storyline. When I do leave town, I have to run all over hell and back through grim and *EMPTY* wasteland before I get to do something. I keep hearing this is like a 100 hour game, and I’ve only put in about 3 hours, so I probably need to cut it some slack. Maybe I’ll download that “greenery” mod for it.

Free Realms (PC): I’m in the beta, but I dunno if they’re going to wipe (I assume they are) and launch is soon, isn’t it? I’m a bit wary of playing a lot, then getting wiped and having to re-do all the same stuff. NDA says I can’t comment on the gameplay, but I’ll definitely be giving it a look after launch.

EQ2 (PC): Don’t tell Angela, but I re-activated my account on Friday, got all patched up, but haven’t logged in yet. See above for reasons why. I’m very resistant to being sucked down the rabbit hole of an MMO right now, but she’s so excited about showing me the new guild hall… I need to figure out a way to play it “a little bit.”

LOTRO (PC): I log in here every so often to pay my rent and grind out some quests and just wander Middle Earth. Really enjoy the game but again, MMO. I’m kindof gravitating towards single player games with a The End screen that’ll eventually appear, these days.

Whew! So I think that’s everything (well, except quickies like Peggle & Aquia on the DS) or low-level shorties like Animal Crossing which I log into a couple times a week just to week the town and stuff.

Needless to say, I’ve got enough gaming here to last me through to December! And I pre-ordered that crazy Zeno Crash brawler from Steam that comes out this week. So more to come!

My Demigod saga ends happily

Kudos to Stardock for treating me like an honest customer. As of this evening, they’ve refunded my purchase price for Demigod, which I’ve now uninstalled.

I’ll cop to this mis-understanding between Stardock and me being mostly my fault. I got caught up in the hype of the new release, combined with some very rich and interesting backstory material I read, and jumped to the conclusion that this was more of an RPG than it is.

Here’s the first part of the blurbage on the ImpulseDriven (I bought the digital version) site:

The all father has vanished, creating an opening in the pantheon. To fill the void, Demigods from across from the mortal world must wage war against one another in a bid to ascend to true godhood.

Demigod is a real-time, tactical strategy game that includes extensive role-playing elements. Choose from several Demigods, each poised for battle with their own unique capabilities and awe-inspiring powers. Vanquish other would-be gods as you gain levels, increase in power, unlock the power of mystic artifacts and slowly battle your way closer to joining the Pantheon.

To me, fan of strategy-RPG games, “tactical strategy” + “extensive role-playing elements” = something like Final Fantasy Tactics, only this one would have a way of doing multiplayer skirmishes with other players in addition to the singleplayer strategy-RPG game. Not something I’d be interested in, I detest competitive multiplayer gaming. I’d rather spend an afternoon in the dentist’s chair.

I was assuming, and assuming wrongly, and in addition being hasty (farther down the same page the genre is clearly marked as “Strategy”). What Demigod really offers is a game that feels like Unreal Tournament or Quake Wars: a series of ‘matches’ played in arenas, complete with an announcer. Only in RTS form rather than FPS.

There’s nothing at all wrong with that, but it just isn’t something I personally am interested in.

*Most* PC game companies would’ve told me “Tough cookies, we have your cash.” but I was hoping given that I bought the game from Impulse and requested a refund within an hour of completing the download and installation (as soon as I booted it up and saw the kind of game it was, I know it wasn’t for me), that they’d do the right thing. (I’m assuming the Impulse launcher phones home whenever I fire up the game, so they could see I hadn’t played it much, and down the road can see that I’m not playing it).

And they did.

And in doing so, they’ve gained a loyal customer who, going forward, will shop with confidence (albeit after doing more research next time!) from Stardock and Impulse.

So thank you, Stardock, for treating me like the honest customer I am. Most PC gaming companies treat gamers like a bunch of thieves. You’ve shown yourself to be different. Kudos!

Demigod warning!

Remember this post when I became so enchanted with Demigod from the rich backstory?

I was so excited by it that I did something I never do these days. I bought the game at launch, rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of diving into that richly crafted world.

And, as is so often the case, got burned badly for rushing in.

Demigod is not a game that takes place in a rich fantasy world. It’s a tournament game… like a kind of RTS bloodsport. If you’ve played something like Unreal Tournament with a big announcer voice booming out “RAMPAGE!” and crap like that while you play, then you’ve got the feel of Demigod’s structure.

There is no campaign, no fiction… just “Pick a side… FIGHT.” Then get a score.  There’s also no tutorial and the camera controls suck. It locks up if you try to skip the intro stuff, too.

If you’re primarily a multiplayer gamer, then it might be an excellent choice. But as a single player game, it’s… well, pretty damned non-existent. My fault for not researching the matter more thoroughly.

Caveat emptor.

Rune Factory Frontier – Day 29 (Wii)

On Day 29, I finally, barely, scraped together enough lumber to get Kross to add a dedicated Forge area to my house. I needed 240 lumber, and I had exactly 240. Late in the evening on Day 28 I realized that my existing axe *could* break down tree stumps into lumber if I was persistent enough. Had I not risked a pile of Rune Points on this discovery, I never would have made it.

Tomorrow is the end of Spring, and a Holiday. I believe I have enough gold to buy an updated Forge from Lute, the salesman who only visits on Holidays. This should allow me to craft better tools and weapons. I have a great amount of iron and scrap iron stored up. Not much copper and nothing more precious, aside from the odd gemstone or two.

I’ve pre-purchased my first run of Summer seeds. I think early summer will be spent digging out all the tree stumps in my field (how do these things grow, anyway…every day there are more!); half of it is over-run with stumps and boulders.

A few mysteries plague me. First is the small purple elephant who has taken up residence in the vestibule of my barn. I first met him in a dungeon. He wasn’t aggressive and I let him be. When I returned from my outing, there he was, hanging out in the barn. He’s gentle but is resistant to brushing or any other kind of interaction. Hmmm.

Second, on Whale Island I found a tower, and spied a young lady watering the plants outside of it. Before I could reach her, she’d gone inside the tower, and no amount of effort would get her to reappear.

These mysteries will have to wait until I get the summer planting in order. It’s going to be a busy few days. Oh! Did I mention I tamed two more monsters? One produces wool, the other milk. That reminds me, perhaps Lute will sell me a “Maker” that will turn wool into yarn.

Oh yes, and not one, but two bunches of flowers were given to me. I extracted seeds from both, but each is a Spring variety of flower. When I can find time I’m going to plant them in the Green Ruins, where it is eternally spring. I’m sure I can make some friends with fresh flowers.

Rune Factory Frontier – Intro (Wii)

A while back, Wiqd, Tesh, Ysharros and a few others were talking about what a Harvest Moon MMO would feel like. It’d been a long time since I played a Harvest Moon game but I remembered the series fondly. All that talk got me reminiscing.

Before I knew it, I’d ordered Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, for the DS. When I mentioned this to a friend, he told me he’d been enjoying Rune Factory Frontier on the Wii. Being a crazy person, I picked that up as well.

And I’m glad I did, because honestly I found RF2 to be a bit overwhelming. RFF, on the other hand, eases you into the life of farming and monster bashing…wait, monster bashing? In a Harvest Moon game?

Yup, it appears the series has expanded beyond its non-combat roots. Harvest Moon used to be all about running a farm (unless my memory is playing tricks on me). It was more or less a time management game where you had to balance raising crops with befriending villagers (and eventually finding a spouse). Along the way you’d have to chop wood in order to get lumber to increase the size of your house, and so on. Or at least, that’s how I remember things.

Rune Factory Frontier still has you tilling the land, socializing, expanding your house, fishing, gathering wild herbs, but now you can also go out monster hunting. And time management is still a huge part of the game, in two ways.

First, your character has Hit Points and Rune Points. Virtually every action, be in tilling a plot of land, or swinging a sword at a monster, uses up Rune Points. When you’re out of Rune Points, these actions start using up Hit Points. When you run out of Hit Points, you pass out and wake up the next day at the infirmary. So Time Management Thing One is managing your Rune Points.

Time Management Thing Two is that time is always passing while you’re out and about. You wake up every morning and as soon as you set foot outside, time starts to advance (time stands still inside buildings, for some reason). At some point, you’ll need to go to bed. Sleeping replenishes your Hit and Rune Points, fully if you get enough rest. So when to go to bed is up to you. Get there early and you’ll be fully refreshed. Stay up too late and you’ll start the next day partially depleted, or worse, get sick and end up starting a day with 50% Hit & Rune Points.

At the start of the game, there isn’t a lot to do, nor are there many villagers to talk to. You’re given a run-down farm to use, some seeds and some cheap basic farming gear. Your job is to till the fields (initially 1 ‘square’ at a time), plant the seeds, then water them. As you do all this, you’ll gain skill levels in almost every action. The higher your level, the fewer Rune Points it takes to carry out that action.

With your free time (and early on you’ll run out of Rune Points with plenty of daylight left to burn) you can run around and get to know the villagers, who might give you simple quests, or new farm tools to use. Getting a cheap axe lets you start to chop branches for lumber. Getting a cheap hammer lets you pulverize the pebbles in your field. Both of these actions clear the square for future tilling. Both also has a Skill Level attached.

It won’t be long before you find your first dungeon, at which point you can start hunting monsters (which drop craft materials), mining ore, or even planting crops in the dungeons. Eventually you can tame the monsters, at which point they’ll go live in a barn (which you’ve had to purchase) where you need to brush them every day to get them to like you. Once they like you enough they can be put to work helping around the farm.

I have to say, this is the first game I’ve played that has me brushing a goblin in order to get him to harvest my crops.

You can expand your house with a forge, a kitchen, an alchemy lab, and other ‘crafting stations’ and use the materials you’ve gathered to make better, more efficient tools and weapons. For instance, once you upgrade your watering can you can water 3 squares at once using a ‘special move’ that uses twice the Rune Points of a regular 1 square watering. So a 50% increase in Rune Point efficiency, plus some time saving.

All the while this is going on, the days are passing, new people are moving into the village, and hopefully you’ve been starting to woo a future wife.

At which point we hit one big drawback: you can only play a male character, who can only woo a set number of “heroines” as a future wife.

But hopefully you can see how the game branches out as you play more and more. Suddenly there are too many activities per day, and you have to figure out where the best place to spend your time is. When you wake up to find it raining, you’ll rejoice since it means all the time and rune points you usually spend watering crops can be spend on clearing the field, or dungeon diving, or going fishing, or crafting… still too much to do!

There are 4 seasons, each 30 days long. Different crops grow in each of Spring, Summer and Fall (nothing grows in Winter). Different dungeons allow you to grow different seasonal crops all year long. So inside the “Green Ruins” it is perpetually spring. But you have to fight monsters (using Rune Points) to go in there to tend your crops.

This is going to be a LONG game. I’m 13 hours in, and only on day 23. That is, I’m still in Spring of my first year. There are flowers that take 100+ days to grow (obviously they can only be grown in dungeons where seasons don’t end).

And at 13 hours, I still feel like a complete newbie, still learning to do new things, still meeting new people, still figuring out new relationships and mechanics.

In a very real way, this is scratching my MMO itch. In fact, I got into the Free Realms beta this weekend, and tried to play it, but kept getting drawn back to Rune Factory Frontier instead. If you’re a big fan of crafting systems in MMOs, it’s really hard to resist the appeal of trying to get deep enough into the dungeon to get some copper so you can upgrade your sword, and doing it quickly enough that you can get home to bed early enough that you’ll have enough energy to tend the crops (which you’ll whip up into delicious food for sale) the next day.

Harvest Moon games are often a hard sell, as they can really sound boring. But I find them remarkably compelling. I thought the addition of dungeon crawling would dilute the experience, but it really doesn’t. Having to schedule a dungeon outing, in fact, adds to the experience of the game.

Only 13 hours in, but so far, two thumbs up.