Current Events > Rune Factory 5 was just announced, and Nintendo is offering a free trial of RF4

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I figured I would take a look at the Rune Factory games, and upon checking them out, found out that it's apparently a spin-off of the Harvest Moon series? So is it similar, yet different from the Harvest Moon series somehow?

Also, it seems like the localization name for Harvest Moon was changed to Story of Seasons at some point. I went looking into the Harvest Moon games, and holy shit, there are a lot. I can't believe how long it took the developers to just simply add a male/female option for your character in the games. It seemed like even up until 2007, they would occasionally make a "girl" version of the exact same game that recently came out. It boggles the mind.

But since there was some hype over Rune Factory 5 being released, and Nintendo hyping it up with a free week trial of Rune Factory 4 Special for Nintendo Online subscribers, I was curious what's different about the Rune Factory series from the Harvest Moon series. It looks like you're still growing crops and raising animals and making money for your farm. And... also getting into turn-based battles with dragons? Also, Rune Factory 4 Special seems to be a re-release of a Nintendo 3DS original release. What differences does Rune Factory 4 Special have from the original?

I was considering trying to play the games from the beginning if I were to try and get into them, but they date back to 2006 on the Nintendo DS, and there's a few spin-off games on consoles as well, so I doubt I'd be able to do that.

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Oh wow is the rf4 trial available now? I played the first 3 games on DS and loved them. Couldn't get into 4 on 3ds for some reason

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I only played the first Rune Factory, but it was basically a fantasy Harvest Moon combined with a dungeon crawling RPG. So part of the grind in addition to farming and stuff is to kill monsters, level up, upgrade your weapons, get loot, and whatever. There was also a more involved story that had a real climax IIRC.

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Did they ever let you make the dragon your waifu in the RF4 remake?

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