Rune Factory 3 Special

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG / Management Sim

Players: 1

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Review:

Rune Factory 3 was a Top-Down Action-RPG and “Farming RPG”-style Management Sim first released in 2010 on Nintendo DS, at the time touting the subtitle “A Fantasy Harvest Moon”, highlighting this series as a spin-off of the… Story of Seasons franchise (I’m not going to get into the full story here, but the Story of Seasons franchise used to go by the name Harvest Moon in the West, and current Harvest Moon games are unrelated titles created by a different developer). Zoom ahead to 2023, and the Rune Factory franchise has already seen two releases on Nintendo Switch – the excellent Rune Factory 4 Special, a remastered port of this game’s 3DS sequel, and Rune Factory 5, the first fully-3D entry in the series, but sadly one that suffered from terrible performance issues and a painfully generic presentation.

Given that many series fans saw Rune Factory 5 as a misstep, it’s no great surprise that developer Marvelous opted to once again revisit the franchise’s past, with 2023 bringing us Rune Factory 3 Special, which remasters the original game for PC and Nintendo Switch, and adds “Newlywed mode” extra post-game content. Surely, this is just following the same formula for success as Rune Factory 4 Special, yes?

The presentation mostly looks great here, with the original game’s 2D environments upscaled in a way that makes them look slightly blurry, but contrary to what you might think, this actually looks great – it gives these visuals a nice, painterly look. This is joined by beautiful anime-style character portraits and… well, some pretty horribly dated 3D characters with terrible animation. Even worse, items in the games environments like the plants you grow look really artificial and copy-pasted onto the background. The result is a mixed bag of visuals that looks partly fantastic, partly outdated, and partly sloppy and lazy.

I suppose the same could be said for the sound here, which features a decent fantasy RPG-style synthesized soundtrack with a nice J-pop opening theme, and has intermittent voice acting for its characters that’s well-acted enough, but so much of it is poorly-written with far too many irritating or cliché characters.

This ties into problems the original release of Rune Factory 3 had, and those problems have been brought straight over to this remastered release – this game’s story and characters are pretty terrible, especially when held up against the absolutely delightful story and characters of Rune Factory 4. I found myself struggling to connect to any of these characters, and in a genre where you’re expected to form a relationship and eventually “marry” someone, that’s pretty disappointing. Oh, on that note, you can only play a male protagonist, with only female love interests, something this genre long ago left behind, but this release dredges back up once again.

The underwhelming story could perhaps be forgiven if the gameplay made up for it, but once again here Rune Factory 3 disappoints. Both combat and farming are made unnecessarily frustrating due to clunky movement and hit detection, and the only thing this game does that sets it apart is its protagonist’s ability to transform into a monster, something that just doesn’t make enough of a difference to make up for all this game lacks.

Rune Factory 3 still has its charms, and I’m sure for its time it was a true delight in the “Farming RPG” genre, but its time was over a decade ago, and this game has not aged well, especially when compared to other games in the genre, and in particular when compared to Rune Factory 4 Special on the same platform. If you already exhausted everything there is to do in both that game and its sequel, you may want to play through this remaster of their predecessor. However, if you’re looking for a Rune Factory game to start with, you are far better off going for Rune Factory 4.

tl;dr – Rune Factory 3 Special is a remaster of a Nintendo DS Top-Down Action-RPG and “Farming RPG”-style Management Sim with added post-game content. While this game still has some appeal, it has aged poorly in multiple ways, especially when compared to Rune Factory 4 Special on the same platform. A less-interesting story and characters, clunky gameplay, and a lack of anything truly unique and interesting to offer makes this a game that’s only worth seeking out if you’ve played the other Rune Factory games on Nintendo Switch and are absolutely desperate for more. Otherwise, stick with Rune Factory 4 Special.

Grade: C

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