Rune Frontier Review
If you've ever heard of Harvest Moon this game is something like it with a little added extra. You will be playing the part of a person on a mission to find a lost friend. You will become a farmer, crafter, adventurer, and so much more. You will get to meet several different people along the way and explore different locations as the game goes along. The main objective is to help the town, and to grow an amazing amount of plants and flowers.
The graphics for this game look pretty good for a Wii game. There are a couple of characters that early on you're going to confuse until you talk to them, but other than that everybody and every place has a distinctive look. The one thing that irks me is the camera angle that the game takes. There are so many times, especially in dungeons, that you'll miss something subtle because the camera hides it from you.
The music and sounds feel recycled. I feel like I've heard versions of the voices and music in other games. The voices, that's bound to happen, but the music really misses its mark.
The controls I have to say can definitely piss you off quickly. The first thing I recommend is to go into the options and turn the Wii-mote motion sensing off, doing so will calm some of your nerves. You're also going to want to learn how to use the custom page so that you can get to items and tools quickly. Other than that the game acts like its suppose to with controls. I wish that the controls for farming a specific square were a little bit more precise, as you might find yourself trying to farm a specific square 7 or 8 times, if you're lucky, before the indictor is on that spot.
The gameplay is confusing. You are thrusted into this world where you're going to be farming, but really what you are going to need to do is not do anything until you're told, or you know exactly what has to be done, otherwise you're going to lose a lot of crops. Also gaining the different tools requires magic, what I mean by that is it isn't clear how you come to gain those tools is through talking to a ton of people that you might have the right stuff to get an extra tool. The thing that really gets at me in this game is the fact that your character tires out with just the slightest exertions. You will be spending the vast majority of the game cursing under your breath as your character will be having to go to be probably before noon every day. The one thing I did like was the adventuring, too bad that the weapon and armor system really don't seem to be well implemented. There will be times where you will wonder into an area just after an area in which you were basically killing everything with two swings where you'll end up dying in two swings. Speaking of swings every time you use an item either by accident or on purpose you are going to become fatigued, and once your RP bar disappears its going to take life, and once that's done you're back in the infirmary.
This game has or I should say had great potential but too much of it is squandered on game mechanics that just take the player out of the game. If you want a farming sim, this might be for you, but if you want anything else out of the game you'll be throwing you Wii-mote before the game is over. I can't recommend this game to anyone who wants a bit of action. This game gets a 5.3 out of 10.
