The only downside to the RF3 request system is that you can only do (for example) one mailbox request per day. The main reason I chose Vishnal over Dylas was because his marriage events triggered first and I was sick of waiting. It could take a long time for this to happen. I like this about RF3: You have control over your own fate! In RF4, to advance in relationships with the characters and get married, you have to hope you can trigger random events. By doing this, you can eventually marry them. By meeting numerous requests of the girl you like, you get to know them and participate in stories with them. In RF3, there are a lot of requests more related to character development and story progression. You get rewards, but they are less story-based. In RF4, this is more about encouraging you to extend yourself and try out the different things you can do in-game, like growing/shipping certain crops, raising friendship levels, raising skills, etc.
As you get to know characters better, you’ll hear different dialogue and see character growth from them.īoth games have a request system. In both games, the characters have lots of different dialogue – you can talk to them every day and hear different comments each time – and characters will interact in lots of enjoyable little stories and cut scenes throughout the game. There’s a lot of humour – particularly from your character, the only sane person in town, responding in bewilderment to the nonsense going on around him. RF3 has a lot of the same strengths as RF4, though. So if you’re playing as a male protagonist, RF3 might be better – as there’s much more choice – whereas if you want to date guys, you’ll need to play RF4 (and I think the male characters like Dylas, Doug, Vishnal etc are better than the bachelorettes of either game). In RF4, you can play as a male or female protagonist, and this affects whether you can romance the male or female singletons in the town (there are six of each gender). Then again, in RF3, you get a lot more choice in who you can date – 11 bachelorettes, as opposed to 6. So I must say I do prefer the RF4 characters.
The RF4 characters are tropey (that is, many of them fit into recognisable anime stereotypes) but in general are less one-note. After Hazel has made her twenty-seventh comment complaining about her lazy daughter, Pia her fortieth comment about fishies, and Marian her seven hundred and eighty-first comment about forcing medicine on an unwilling victim, you may prefer not to pursue friendship with them. Some of them can be a bit one-note, in that many of them really have one or two topics of conversation. The RF3 characters are all very distinctive and fun. Let’s look at some areas and compare them with RF4. However, Rune Factory 3 is still well worth playing. Certain gameplay mechanics are improved and the characters are slightly more two-dimensional. It’s more developed and the game lasts longer. Rune Factory 4 is generally held to be the better game, and I’d agree that it is. The gameplay elements are very similar to Rune Factory 4, which I have described here. You can lead them all on simultaneously, before picking just one to be the winner. Half the town’s population is made up of young, single women, many of whom are slightly crazy and/or generators of drama (just like the real The Bachelor). This game is like a fantasy The Bachelor. You will settle down to farm and get to know the locals, while you help with the occasional monster problem, go after your lost memories, try to keep your secret from those around you, and seek to help the Tree. This is an ancient tree that has watched over the land for generations – but it hasn’t bloomed for many years. A kind village girl takes you in and sets you up with a home in the Sharance Tree. The story is simple: you are a young man who has lost his memory. Okay, here’s another farming simulation/rpg type game for the DS.