Gaming Harvest Moon: Rune Factory

[Dwight]

I've been looking for a good time consuming game that will last for a while, and then I remembered these games. I've never tried any of them, so bear with me. I know that they are normal harvest moon/dungeon crawler hybrids, which excites me. I just want to know which one to play. All three of them (Wii game included) got very similar reviews, so I'm just curious which ones GBAtemp would recommend for a first time player.
I'm also leaning towards the DS versions and not the Wii one, for the portability aspect alone, so keep that in mind.

 

[SanktyRG]

Hi, I played this games a little ago, the chronologic order is:

1. Rune Factory 1 for the DS
2. Rune Factory Frontier for the Wii
3. Rune Factory 2 for the DS
4. Rune Factory 3 for the DS (is still in Japanese)

Hope you like these games, they sure can give fun

 

[Dwight]

Is it completely necessary to play them in order for the sake of the story? I'm mostly just looking for the most solid game, but if the story will suffer if I go straight for the best one game-play wise, I don't know if it would be worth it.

 

[Aeladya]

Is it completely necessary to play them in order for the sake of the story? I'm mostly just looking for the most solid game, but if the story will suffer if I go straight for the best one game-play wise, I don't know if it would be worth it.

Not really, they don't have much of a connection to each other, except maybe the first one and the Wii one...I haven't played the Wii one yet so I'm not sure.

 

[Dwight]

So would it be best to skip straight to the 2nd DS one then? That's what I'm leaning towards right now.

 

[Private|Par]

That's what I did Dwight, and you don't miss any story as it's a completely different town/character, bar a mention of "Raguna" or two which all you need to know was the main character of the first game. That's all the prior knowledge needed when going into two.

I think you'll have good fun with these games, although they vary a bit from Harvest Moon.
Another tip is that in the beginning you won't have all your tools that you'll expect to have from HM. Once you do the first round of quests on the Bulletin Board, you will get most if not all of them. Just letting you know as I was confused as hell at not having an axe.

 

[Dwight]

Alright, sounds good. How much playtime did you end up getting out of the 2nd one anyway?

 

[ShinRyouma]

If you play Rune Factory 2, use "Save Checksum Bypass Cheat" to prevents Save Corruption. Use it from the start and everytime you play the game.