So about the game...

[Cropper]

I am looking into buying this game, but I am not entirely sure if I want to.

I love HM games, which is why I want to try this game out. What are the major differences between normal HM games and Rune Factory games?

[Kam]

Rune Factory games have fighting and no blue feather. Also, tilled land doesn't become untilled unless you use a hammer.

[Googaboga]

Well Rune Factory is a series, not just a single game. There are five Rune Factories out now and a sixth on the way. They are not all the same. But in a general sense Rune Factory is like Harvest Moon with monster fighting. So if you don't like fighting games RF might not be for you.

You still got the whole farming, livestock owning, festival having, villager befriending, and getting married/having a kid stuff. But there are also dungeons and boss fights.

You can cook, mine and fish like in HM. But you also get to forge weapons, craft accessories, and concoct potions.

[Kiyoumi]

Aside from the fighting, you can grow crops in caves. From what I played of the first RF, the caves were seasonal and you could raise the in-season crops there forever with no worries...well, aside from the monsters attacking you, but after you dispatched them everything was rather well. And, yes, there is no blue feather. To propose to a girl, you'd either have to get the option while speaking to them or give them a special item in order to get the option to propose. Oh, and crafting/forging is something pretty new. Collecting drops from monsters would enable you to gain materials for making better weapons/accesories for battle.

On the topic of monsters, they become your livestock. By taming them, given you had a monster shed, they would live at your farm and produce milk/eggs/wool/honey, given you tamed the monster suitable for making produce.

[Part-Time Plower]

To be honest, unless you're a farming purist or hate RPGs/fighting, you'll probably enjoy RF, considering it's basically HM plus dungeon-crawler RPG.

[Cropper]

Thanks everyone!

youve convinced me to try it out. I love fighting games and monsters, so HM mixed with all that jazz sounds fantastic. Which game should i start out with? I have every console.

[hoshiko]

Weeelllll, a lot of times it's best to start from the beginning.
...I'd say Rune Factory 1 was the most "harvest-moony" of the ones I've played.
Also, the layout and such of it gets smoother in the next RF games, so it might be awkward to go backwards.

[Part-Time Plower]

Let's see... you won't be missing much if you skip a few games in the series, but if you want to catch the references and stuff you'll want to play from the first game, because going backward would be awkward-- RF1 and 2 have shoddy mechanics, so if you just wanna play I suggest just getting RF3 right away.

Hmm, and here's the rundown:

RF1: Worst mechanics, but a rather good (actually, the best so far) story, and the characters are decent enough. Also where it all started, so if you wanna see how this wonderful series began...

RF2: Has a two-generations gimmick: you play as your character's child during the second generation. Has better mechanics than RF1, but not by much. Personally my least favorite of the bunch: I found the characters boring, and the gimmick poorly implemented. But that's just me. Look for other opinions.

RFF: LOTS OF CONTENT. SERIOUSLY. But that's to be expected because it's a home console game, not handheld. Has pretty cool mechanics for smithing and fishing and such. Lovely characters, both from RF1, and new ones. The Runey system (you're gonna have to look up on that) can be a dealbreaker. Might wanna play RF1 before this, because as mentioned some of the characters here are from RF1. It's not really necessary to do so, though.

RF3: Story sucks. Really. Don't play it for the story. But at least it has VERY colorful characters, and it's a fun ride. The dialogue, scenes, events, a lot of them are bound to make you chuckle. It also has the best mechanics of the handheld ones so far -- everything moves smoothly and the crafting and cooking and socializing and fighting and such systems are robust, and generally everything is well-polished tl;dr The game RF wanted to be.

RF: ToD: ...ask someone who has the game *sob*

[Dizzy Cricket]

I have played RF2, RF3, and now i'm playing Tides of Destiny.

I would say RF3 was way better than Two. I didn't think the story was that bad, and the characters are loveable, the gameplay was awesome. I used to sit up in a study room and just play the game all night haha.

Now i'm playing Tides of Destiny, it's a little different but I love it x.x It's also a console game, for Wii and Ps3 so it keeps you more rooted but well worth it I think.