E3 2008 Preview
Having been one heck of a game, the original Rune Factory
delivered an experience that provided something unique that hasn’t been seen
since the first Harvest Moon titles. Now already complete in Japan and
localization already under way, Rune Factory 2 is on its way to American soil
for a combination of dungeon crawling, role-playing, and farming.
Mixing a variety of gameplay types, Rune Factory 2 starts off
with taking away the memory of the main character and having him wake up in a
peculiar town. Meeting up with a young girl named Mana, the adventure begins
with a lot of inspiration from previous Harvest Moon titles.
Gamers are provided a small farm to begin working on that’ll
allow them to harvest crops and collect materials to sell to continue building
up your farm. The items you collect or crops you harvest can be sold in town to
help buy or upgrade our weapons for when you go adventuring into the caves or
forest that inhabit the world. Another interesting aspect is the ability to
harvest crops to use for potions to supply your magic bar.
For the technical aspects, Rune Factory 2’s design is still
beautiful as ever along with the sound portions. Having 3D characters run around
in a 2D world, the game is an interesting world to run around in. As it was in
the previous game, the top of the screen still only represents the general map
of the world which is a bummer.
Though, Rune Factory 2 will have touch screen elements thrown
into the package, but I wasn’t able to test out their implementations enough to
get a feel for them.
Extremely similar to the first one, which was by all means an
impressive game, Rune Factory 2 is set to release on September 30 for the
Nintendo DS.
