The 3DS, like any portable console, has never been one of my favorite consoles for reasons of blood circulation concerns in my hands: they go numb very quickly when I hold one of these devices for more than 2 minutes . Therefore, many series that have never left their wearable ecosystem are foreign to me. It is therefore with a misplaced curiosity that the reissue of Rune Factory 4 in a "Special" format on home consoles allows me to discover this series which was successful on Nintendo's portable consoles.
Why misplaced?
Well, that's embarrassing, because I thought it was a series of J-RPGs à la Secret of Mana or Zelda A Link To The Past when we're actually dealing with a farming game.
That's it, kidding. But whoever laughs last will laugh because farming games, I love that! So let's see what gives Rune Factory 4 Special, the time that the eggplant that will beat you up for making fun of you, grows...
The game begins on an airship in which you find yourself on a secret mission which seems to be of the utmost importance and which would involve some strange stones. Unfortunately, you are not alone on this ship, since two suspicious individuals, hidden in barrels, clearly mean you harm.
Why are they after you? What is this mysterious mission that seems to be a top priority? Who knows, since literally 1 minute after the start of the game, you become amnesiac following a fatally prodigious fall from the top of the airship.
Your salvation? Not much except that your fall was unwittingly broken by a primeval dragon lounging in its palace. From then on, you find yourself living in this unknown village that this dragon protects and where you will be given tasks to perform to earn your place, until your memory returns, but also to help the well-being of this village and of its inhabitants. Classic for a game of this genre.
Moreover, Rune Factory 4 Special will neither reinvent the genre, nor even transcend it. He will simply apply the farming game codes to the letter in the correct way. Yes, just correct because the game has flaws and issues.
And not necessarily small ones, the main fault is that bringing a 3DS game - and therefore with a stylus on a touch screen - to a home console - and therefore with a controller only - is a delicate and difficult task than this Special version can't overcome. We thus find ourselves with a cumbersome and tedious interface, a lack of precision and responsiveness, not to mention the worries due to the cutting by screens à la Secret of Mana but much more poky. The whole results in strong lack of precision, a visual that transpires the 3DS.
A solution to make the game more fluid would have been to adapt the inventory of tools and weapons to a system of shortcuts for the most frequent tools, rather than having to type in menus and submenus whenever you want change cultivation or combat instrument (and you will change very very often!). Another, complementary, would have been to allow the game a little flexibility, rather than having to be almost pixel-perfect. Not even to mention the very annoying screen change that instantly resets opponents, some of whom present an equally annoying technique to push you back. Already the game is imprecise, adding this type of ordeal is a pain.
Your daily life will therefore be to satisfy requests, cultivate your fields, maintain your relationships with others, make and prepare recipes and explore the surroundings to defeat and raise monsters which can then help you with your crops and in hostile places. , and this, until the fateful hour of 2 am which will sign your imminent drowsiness and therefore a one-way ticket for the village doctor, or rather the village thief who will puncture you from a huge part of your finances . At an extremely abusive level. So, it is more than advisable to spend everything and invest in materials and equipment before leaving the village so as not to lose your money. And don't hesitate to go so far as to restart the game even if it means losing a little progress in each of the many skills, but if you save at least every morning or evening before bedtime, you won't have much to catch up on.
If you are a fan of the genre, you will quickly be familiar with the game, because as I said above: Rune Factory 4 Special will not reinvent anything, but will offer a nice little game capable of keeping you going for several dozen hours. alone, with certainly a strong lack of ergonomics on the controller, but which in the end are not such unpleasant hours once the game routine has been mastered.
- Xbox (Tested on Xbox Series X)
- PlayStation
- Steam
- Nintendo Switch
