# DS #1893: Rune Factory 2 (Japan)



## T-hug (Dec 30, 2007)

^^ndsrelease-2710^^


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## Kamiyama (Dec 30, 2007)

Finally something what I can play.


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## OSW (Dec 30, 2007)

qoah, didn't hear about this one coming.

then again, this probably won't have an english option will it /_\


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## Dragonlord (Dec 30, 2007)

Did not finish the old one. I got somehow detracted by other games 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 . What are the major changes over the previous version? Hopefully you can get that dragon in a usable time


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## James B. (Dec 30, 2007)

woww... is it just me or was that really fast?

EDIT: Just me, I just realized that the JAP version came out a long while before the US version


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## Elfish (Dec 30, 2007)

screenshots? anyone?


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## Chevreuse (Dec 30, 2007)

Another year to wait for a US release just like the previous Rune Factory...


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## OSW (Dec 30, 2007)

yeah, i never finished the first one either. I got to a certain point, then lost my savegame (had a backup but it wasnt the most recent) then i didn't really feel like repeating the same tasks again.
plus there were many other games to keep me occupied


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## WeaponXxX (Dec 30, 2007)

Im still playing the first one and love it...has a perfect blend of harvest moon and RPG...Anything new in the sequel or is basically just bug fixes? I really can't see the point in a two as what can be new? You farm and hack and slash....


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## Destructobot (Dec 30, 2007)

So do you just ditch your wife from the first one and find some new chick? Or is this not such a direct sequel?


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## stephenophof (Dec 30, 2007)

This game is 1Gbit.. (128 MB's big!!)

Very big game.


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## Gene98 (Dec 30, 2007)

??? 128mbs - pretty common game size this days. But 256 - big.


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## Railgun (Dec 30, 2007)

you missed the icon thug^^
here is it:


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## stephenophof (Dec 30, 2007)

QUOTE(Gene98 @ Dec 30 2007 said:


> ??? 128mbs - pretty common game size this days. But 256 - big.



128 MB is very big for a Nintendo DS Game.
A PC game of 128MB is not big, but 128MB for a DS game is big!

1024Mbit (1Gbit) = 128Mbit


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## stephenophof (Dec 30, 2007)

QUOTE(Gene98 @ Dec 30 2007 said:


> ??? 128mbs - pretty common game size this days. But 256 - big.



128 MB is very big for a Nintendo DS Game.
A PC game of 128MB is not big, but 128MB for a DS game is big!

1024Mbit (1Gbit) = 128MB




OOPS, double reaction. Sorry.


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## Satangel (Dec 30, 2007)

No, its not that big.
There are alot of 128MB games for the DS now.

A big DS game is a 256MB game, only one that is so big atm.


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## Deleted User (Dec 30, 2007)

DS game are limited by the ram size... Bigger games means more swapping in and out of content, and often it means bad or none compression of data.
I thought people stop caring about cartridge size after SNK made it into a commercial feature in their ads...

On topic, what are the bug you talk about ?


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## Masked (Dec 30, 2007)

Why... why is the main character wearing a crop top?


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## ojsinnerz. (Dec 30, 2007)

I have yet to play the original, but man, I want to play this game...


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## gh0ul (Dec 30, 2007)

I dont know about you guys but i got really bored of the first game. It either got repetitive (farming), or too many games were out at the time i stopped playing


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## FAST6191 (Dec 30, 2007)

I knew this was coming but I did not expect it now. For what it is worth the original used shiftjis with a basic pointer system and they normally do not change this if anyone wanted to have a hack at the text (the menu was included in said text as I recall).

@Elfish screenshots from the site in the NFO, as good a start as any:
http://www.mmv.co.jp/special/game/ds/runef...stem/index.html
Also Amazon Japan:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC...99040041&sr=8-1


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## raulpica (Dec 30, 2007)

Yay! It seems more Harvest Moon-like than the previous. Also didn't really like the dialogues. They seemed a bit stupid.

I'll try this right now


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## asuri (Dec 30, 2007)

urrently, only a Japan release date has been set, while release dates for other parts of the world are yet to be announced.
nvm...


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## cupajoe (Dec 30, 2007)

This game wasn't my favorite when it came out... Maybe the second will be better.


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## refugio (Dec 30, 2007)

ok after FFIV DS i gotta finish the first one, i got side tracked too


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## raulpica (Dec 30, 2007)

QUOTE(cupajoe38 @ Dec 30 2007 said:


> This game wasn't my favorite when it came out... Maybe the second will be better.


Yes, it's better 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Waiting for US release


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## Seraph (Dec 30, 2007)

It still looks like they're using those ugly 3D character models, the character art and everything else look beautiful though.  It's supposed to be set a few years after the first game.

And 128MB is pretty big for a DS game since it's the largest size most games have used.(except for 1)


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## SaltyDog (Dec 30, 2007)

Looks exactly the same to me, and its got that crappy artwork I can't stand. It's like some perverted form of G-Collections games except no nudity.


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## Lumstar (Dec 30, 2007)

Yes, but PSP discs can still be over 4 times bigger than the new 256MB carts for DS.


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## ZAFDeltaForce (Dec 31, 2007)

The first game kicked ass. I can't wait to find out how this will turn out


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## Kamakazie (Dec 31, 2007)

Ah holy hell I loved the first one, is this one playable for a non-jp speaker?


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## Nero (Dec 31, 2007)

QUOTE(theclaw @ Dec 30 2007 said:


> Yes, but PSP discs can still be over 4 times bigger than the new 256MB carts for DS.



We might never know how big DS cartridges can actually get..
Who knows.. The limit could be 1GB or over.. That would be absurd though. UMDs can only hold 900/1.8 GB of data.

~Nero


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## SpiritBoy (Dec 31, 2007)

Awesome. Gonna wait for my DS and play it, since I see there is no release date for the US.


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## shakirmoledina (Dec 31, 2007)

i don't think non-jap players can play it and man i wasn't expecting this one early


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## Raisingod (Dec 31, 2007)

QUOTE(shakirmoledina @ Dec 31 2007 said:


> i don't think non-jap players can play it and man i wasn't expecting this one early




Yep its japanese only as far as I can see 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 Anyway I guess that I'll be playing this one on the weekend .


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## ShadowStitch (Dec 31, 2007)

Wow.... RF2 ALREADY?? Seems quicker than it really is, even taking the original's JP release into account.

Personally, I got really tired of the tediousness of RF... I like my HM the old fashioned "chickens and cows" style, without all the ad-hoc stuff they seem to enjoy (poorly) cramming into it... like the mining and stuff. I guess I'm just a relic that way. Plus I HATE the monkey-armed 3d system, with the miserable hit detection.

The point where they have me growing crops in a dungeon to regenerate points used to _swing my sword_? No, sorry. I'll go back to FOMT, thanks.


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## Keitaro Urashima (Dec 31, 2007)

Finally, something to play for New Year. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  I finished the first one. I hope, they released the USA version in half of year.


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## Wolfsclaw (Dec 31, 2007)

Finished the first one, although i only planted those potatoe seeds that recovered all the time, upgraded to level 10 so i had like an infinite amount of money avaible, wasn't a great deal beating the game, but it was fun anyway! definitely will play the second one when its coming out in the u.s.


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## hellklown (Dec 31, 2007)

I liked the first one, but because of the flood of good games from the last month I stopped playing it. The art is nice, but some dialogs are weird and the usual bugs that appear in HM are present in this game (mostly text-related ones).
Hoping that the US release comes soon.


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## GeekyGuy (Dec 31, 2007)

Well, I only played it for a minute or two, but I did notice they changed the run option to a toggle, which will be very much appreciated. In the first one, it was rough on my fingers to have to hold down the R-button while also hacking away during a frantic boss battle. Loved the first game though -- one of my all-time favorite games on any console. Did someone say this game had an English text option?


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## Jeda (Dec 31, 2007)

Just played the first 14 days. While the core seems to be the same there are some very good looking improvements. First of all they have balanced mining a lot better this time. This is done by making rocks only mine-able once a day, and by no longer multiplying sell prices by the item level. You can still make some nice money by mining but no longer as fast. On the other side, the value for crops seems to have gone up a bit and there are a lot more drops from monsters, like 1 item in 3-4 kills. Nice for crafters...

Does anyone know what the round sword item is for that can be equipped in the magic slot? 
Also, how do you open locked paths in the dungeons? Killing all monster spawns does not have any effect since they get regenerated when you leave one area of the dungeon


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## FAST6191 (Jan 1, 2008)

I did do this yesterday but forgot to hit send before I went out.

Still @ShadowStitch personally I liked the mining/weapons manufacture aspect and wish more games would do it.

None the less the game was pulled apart (note that this will come in English and I am very much unavailable for any new hacking projects right now, it is easy enough for pretty much anyone who has done this before or is willing to spend 20 minutes reading to mess with though):

The rom goes like this
data\dwc
\res
\res\obj\

All 7033 objects are in the obj directory (bar the wifi dwc one).
So far Deufeufeu was correct when he called no compression as I am seeing 00's run for several bytes (just for fun the rom zipped is 80 megs, 7zip the files alone is 63 and trimming takes about 10 megs from the file).
Text seems to be in relatively nicely named files (see below).
Other stuff is in bog standard Nintendo formats (see http://tahaxan.arcnor.com/index.php?option...&id=7&Itemid=36  and the forums there as well as http://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/nsbmd.html if you are unfamiliar)

Text is ShiftJIS in *.jpn files. 
Most of the time pointers are literally that: not relative, not offset just the usual flip (FA07 becomes 07FA etc for the smaller files and it goes up to 32Bit for larger files: F88A0400 becomes 00048AF8). Other times they have rather obvious formatting/padding in between them.
Screenshot of my hex editor:



Emulator shot (no$gba 2.4c) of my proof of concept, not the most inspired hack I have ever done but it works:






The text is not taken from the same place but I changed the name, highlighted for those not willing to play spot the difference..
For more text here is a simple dump of the ingame NPC names with the 00's replaced with 0d0a and copied directly from my browser (they are one of the best viewers for text of a known encoding like this in a pinch):
???
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The same names as spat out of a romaji converter ( http://www.romaji.org/ ):
???
kairu
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arusu
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aria
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dagurasu
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mana
????
juria
????
natari^
????
arishia
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rei
??
mu^
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su^
????
go^don
????
doroshi^
???
kanon
?????
endo^ru
????
seshiria
????
jieiku
?????
orufasu
????
ta^nya
??
roi
???
burai
????
baretto
???
ri^n
??????
herichakosu
?????
rozarindo
????
makkusu
????
ramuria
??
yue

Although I did nothing special/in depth a quick peruse with a tile viewer shows plenty of 4bpp GBA style and some 8 bpp too (which is obvious when you consider the files from the Nintendo SDK), a tile editor or something like crystaltile should make short work ( http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=45360 if you are unfamiliar and have a desire to know the encoding).

Enjoy.


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## deathfisaro (Jan 11, 2008)

I failed to raise fishing and camping to level 99 in the first game. Those skill levels were one of the biggest grind fest I've had recently. 
Hope things are better in this one


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## gabor_sama (May 8, 2008)

Take Harvest Moon DS, which looked and feeled like a straight port from the GBA games but with a irritating menu system, and compare it with the Rune Factory series with its way better everything and then take a look at the newest Harvest Moon (island and sun, Japan only at the moment) and you can see that they're learning from the feedback of the Rune Factory games 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




I've played a little of RF2 and it definitely looks, moves and behaves better with the only exception being the automated touch screen tool controls that as far as I've seen is doesn't work that well.


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