Rune Factory 3

Got this a few days ago and just got through the first spring. Never played a RF game and my only harvest moon was Mineral Town(Which I really liked). So bear with me as a rave about improvements in RF3 that have probably been around for years.

Farming is a lot smoother, even with just the basic non-upgraded tools. I particularly like that you can carry multiples of the same item, so I'm running with a ridiculous tower of nine strawberries over my head and toss them all in the shipping bin. Lots of crafting to do, I've mostly just cooked to bring up crop value, but you also get a workshop, minipharmacy and forge(Which I still need to buy..wood's kind of scarce after I tilled my field).

Combat is button mashing, but with lots of options. A few weapons to choose from, lots of spells, turn into a sheep and use sheep-fu. You can bring pretty much anyone from town to fight with you and in addition to providing milk and working the field my cow monster will let me ride him into battle and crush my enemies with his mighty hooves. Ok, his hooves aren't that mighty and his damage is weak. But there's no way I'm going to say riding into battle on my cow isn't awesome. Combats been pretty easy, although there is a hard mode you can turn on and off that I haven't messed with yet.

The town's my favorite part as it's a pretty huge upgrade over mineral town. There's three big things. Though I'm sure they'll run out of fresh text eventually so far most townsfolk have something new to say more often than not. You can build love/friend points just by talking to people and don't need to hand out gifts like every day is christmas(Though you still can if you want). And there's no timelimit before someone else swoops in and steals your girl.

That's where I thought mineral town really dropped the ball. You'd go up to your potential wife, she'd say the same thing she does every day and then you'd give her the same gift you do everyday. All while feeling the weight of the clock, even if it's more than reasonable. I read 4 years gametime until people start getting married in mineral town..and I only played the game 2 or 3, but I still felt rushed. Like my farmers mother was calling him every day wanting to know why she doesn't have any grandkids yet.

Some of these RF3 bitches are crazy though. And by some I mean pretty much all of them.