(ignore that my main is attached... my main is not a kinblog..... i just desperately wanted to add images and can't do that on anon.........)
do YOU like life sims!? maybe you enjoy a good ANIMAL CROSSING or STARDEW VALLEY? good! keep reading!
any life simmer worth their salt has heard of Harvest Moon, of course! the quintessential farming and relationship sim-- raising chickens, growing turnips, spamming your favorite townie with gifts so someday they'll marry you... giving flowers to the townies that only come once a week because you don't understand the concept of nonmarriage-able candidates... accidentally losing all your animals because you thought they'd hibernate through the winter... yes, Harvest Moon is a wonderful game...
but i'm not here to talk about that! i'm here to talk about THIS THING
"but mysterious anon," you might be saying. "what the hell is that?"
great question, viewers! this is Rune Factory, a fantasy Harvest Moon! yes, they literally call it that. specifically, this is RF4! there are...... a lot of titles in the series, so i can only speak for this one. but speak i shall!
you, upon getting mysteriously drop-kicked out of the sky, lose your memories and wake up in the town of Selphia. although you are understandably bewildered, they assume you are simply the Prince who was meant to arrive that day, and give you free boarding in the castle. (sidenote: yes, they assume this even if you are playing a female character. it is... very amusing.) even when the actual prince shows up (we'll get to him, don't worry), the townsfolk are happy to accept you anyway and welcome Selphia as your new home.
also, yes that is a dragon. we call her Venti and she is the entire reason i'm pitching this, because i'm so ungodly disappointed everytime i see the name Venti and they're talking about Genshin.
as the god presiding over this town, Venti has spent the last several years keeping her distance from humans, because awful things keep happening to those she does hold close. she was on a solid self-isolation streak, pretending to be very formal and stern... until you literally fall onto her from several stories up, and she is too surprised to stop herself from breaking facade.
she is sweet and funny and not above poking fun at you, and you quickly grow close. but... why does she keep herself so isolated? what exactly happened to her old friends?
maybe you can find out.
this is... well, i'd feel bad calling it a GOOD game, but i can call it "unreasonably fun". there are so many cheese-able mechanics (look at the "How to be a Smart-er Blacksmith" guide on GameFAQs if you don't believe me) that absolutely break the game, you can do some sequence breaking if that's your thing... look, it's not meant to be a hard game! at least, i hope it isn't. if it was, they might've failed.
the real appeal of this game though, and a big reason i'd like to sic it upon fictionkin spaces... is the characters!
there are so many wonderful, wonderful characters here! equal amounts of bachelors and bachelorettes, with personalities from silly to jaded to sweet. they all have their own pasts, and their own edges in their character that keep them from being pure archetypes.
my personal favorites examples of this are Amber and Doug! Doug is a bit... complicated, but i can certainly talk about Amber.
Amber is your classic happy-go-lucky, almost childishly sanguine character. she sees the best in every situation and is always happy to shrug and go along with things! those traits aren't an accident or simple naivete, though. there are just as many things she hates about the world, but she wants to grow to love them anyway, because she says she'll be happier if there are more things in the world that she can love. and, well...
... she has her own troubles to work through.
notice a pattern? memory/forgetting are really big themes of this game! your own missing memories, the people Venti has to leave behind, an increasing number of incoming townies with amnesia... this game interrogates the concept of loss, of both people and yourself.
in the town of Selphia, you get the chance to meet all kinds of new people, and grow close with them. who knows? maybe someday... something really special could happen...
....
nahhh i know what we're all REALLY here for:
MAKING THAT BANK!!!!!
anyway yeah play RF4. its a little ugly but whatever.
a pitch most splendid!!! mod is definitely not hoping to pursue vishnal in mod's save (mod is so early in the game itll be forever... but one day) mod will also note that rune factory 4 fucking wont let you be gay (this is resolved in rune factory 5) however if you brave the nexus ... there are mods that fix this! and the game is quite worthwhile regardless, there's something cozy and comforting about it, clunkiness and all.
oh vishnal...
and while there is combat, as somemod who kinda sucks ass at combat to the point of being terrified of the stardew valley mines, mod can verify that this game is on the easier side, and is very fun to cheese shit in.
+
unlock being gay via the power of trans here ( + additional patch) (PC)
rom hack savvy and still need gay on the OG (original gay) hardware? here u go (3DS)
and maybe check out the soundtrack of rune factory 4!
or at the very least, this song that mod likes!
