Call me a cheater, but I would much rather reset my game and redo fifteen minutes of progress rather than give up half my life savings.
A little too realistically, the doctor proceeds to slam you with a hefty medical bill. Rather than being sent back to the title screen after a defeat, you are instead warped to the doctor’s office. Fear of a ‘game over’ wasn’t my motivation for doing well it was a fear of going bankrupt. The strange combat balance also carries on when being penalized for losing. This cheapens the gameplay by making the enemies feel more like progress walls to climb rather than a legitimate challenge. On the flip side, when you are appropriately equipped, the enemies become too easy. You can master a boss and get his pattern down, which is nice and rewarding, but unless you happen to be at the level the game secretly wanted you at, or decked out with the latest gear, you will be dealing a paltry amount of damage and receiving tons in return for making little mistakes. It became less a battle of skill and more of a stat indicator. For instance, I was able to blow through an entire dungeon and do well on the boss, only for it to power up and dwarf everything that came before it. It might be a decent level to fight the initial enemies, but not for the ones that show up later in the dungeon. Most of dungeons have signs that give you a level recommendation, but it can be misleading. Part of that frustration arises because the game’s expectations for progressing can be unclear. I don’t mind a challenge, but it felt very unbalanced at times. There’s a slight delay while healing yourself with either an item or a healing spell, which can’t be afforded when there are enemies ready to take advantage of the delay. Additionally, it’s tough to bounce back during these encounters. This drains the health bar quickly and I found myself avoiding sections of the wall rather than the enemies.
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When stuck, enemies are free to wail on you and there’s no way to escape. Common enemy tactics are to either swarm you or trap you in a corner. Rune Factory 4 doesn’t always play fair, though. It’s a simple formula, but I found it to be effective. Essentially the combat boils down to running around to avoid attacks while looking for an opening to retaliate. The basics of combat are easy enough to pick up you move around in an isometric space and mash an attack button to defeat enemies.
While these activities are polar opposites in terms of pace and mechanics, they end up working together to form a cohesive experience.Īt the start I was more excited to head into battle than tend to my farm. In broad terms, Rune Factory 4 is an action RPG in which you fight monsters, all the while practicing farming as a trade and maintaining a home life. The plot is pretty silly, but the writing is charming enough to sell it. Rather than eating you, however, Ventuswill, the Native Dragon of a small town named Selphia, decides to make you a prince. The scuffle ends with your character getting amnesia, being thrown off the ship, and landing in a chamber housing a giant dragon.
The ship gets invaded by “gangster soldiers” and you take control to fight them off. The game opens with a character (you can choose to be either a boy or a girl) on an airship about to make an important delivery. Rune Factory 4 is the latest installment, as well as the series’ debut on the Nintendo 3DS. For the past few years, in an effort to spice things up even more, the games have spun off into a full-on fantasy setting with the Rune Factory series.
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I’ve come to a point where I’m fairly certain that video games can make any kind of boring task seem fun, and the Harvest Moon series has been keeping that idea strong for a long time.