This game helped me with being more patient. I think when it comes to games, my biggest weakness is that I am not patient. I don't like feeling like I am not getting my time worth of a game. That being said, I also have a tendency to rush through games to get to the next one. This game is one that you take your time with. Let it slowly cook, and consume it when the time is right.

To actually talk about the game though, its pretty good. I stopped at act 2, act 3 is too obtuse to find on your own and it ends perfectly fine at act 2. Combat is fine, it is serviceable and its not meant to be some type of hardcore action game. Its more about grinding and leveling up to overpower guys than swiftly dodging, although you still can. The game doesnt do any one thing great but its the combination of every thing that makes it great. How many games exist out there that are action jrps, with farming and social sim aspects? Not many. There much more I can say but I think I got the main point across. If you were thinking about trying this, then you should. It's great, and is a game that can suck the time out of your life very fast.

Selphia’s been on my mind lately.

I love this game. This was one of the first RPGs I found memorable where I was actually like, fully aware of what I was doing and what was going on.

Kiel was the first guy I romanced in this game and I think the first guy I ever officially romanced in a game period. I always got too focused on farming or was bad at giving gifts in Harvest Moon titles. I remember seeing Kiel’s name turn pink for the first time and pre-teen me was OVER THE MOON lol.

The combat is fun and easy to get a hold on. I found the difficulty for this game perfect in all honesty, but I think this is also subjective of my skill level when I played most of it in 2013/2014.

I talked about romance briefly but I think I like the characters in this game more than I like the characters in other farm sim/rpgs. The group convos are fun to jump in on.

You play as a princess, fight monsters, farm, and help out a dragon. Chefs kiss

Note : RF4S is a slightly better version especially because it's not on a 3ds, but if you actually want to play on a 3ds then this version is perfectly playable. If you can, pick a ROM with Japanese dubs.

There are a lot of times I look at farming games and think they look painfully bland. You position yourself in front of a farming tile, you press a button and watch a one second animation during which you do nothing, something happens -either you plant, you till or gather something-, you move forward in a janky manner and do the same thing in the next tile of your grid based farm.

Then you have Rune Factory 4. When you water your plants, you have to move along your land to progressively water it. You can press the tilling button repeatedly to till forward. You can even charge your tools like you would charge weapon. It FEELS like a game, it feels GOOD. Even when you pick up items, there's this positive feedback because there's a weight to the item, it's not just a long animation where your character picks up something and you're stuck watching, unable to move. Hell you can even pick up multiple items at once and stack then on top of your character. All of that is what makes the farming in this game really good to play.

When I first started this game, I thought it would be an average mix of anime tropes, maybe some JRPG elements and farming. I wasn't wrong but the game also delivered so much more. Sure, the story and the characters are very tropey but at the same time, the game makes such a smart use of dialogue that I've never felt like a game was this alive. The amount of dialogue is insane and even after a hundred hours of playing, you'll still have new things to read. Every day, every character says something new. They also talk to each other. There are also random events in town involving them and there are multiple dozens of them! Quantity over quality is not something I usually appreciate but RF4 is perhaps the only game that manages to deliver something out of that. The end result is that the tropey characters have a lot of nuance, personality and that ultimately I learned to love them and to not mind living alongside them. This goes to the point that I just cannot stand most similar games because none of them offers one tenth of RF4's writing. I've really seen no other game with such an organic town and characters and it doesn't help in making me enjoy other farming games.

RF4 is a great farming game, a great slice of life game and it's also a great adventure and RPG. Not only does it combine aspects of management and adventuring rather well, but the game also has a lot to offer. Crafting and cooking are core mechanics and the crafting in this series is perhaps the most in-depth I have ever seen in any game, with an enormous amount of freedom given to the player when it comes to customisation. You can use any item in the game to craft and almost all of them have a specific effect. You want to make a weapon with every single status effect? You can. A giant spear bigger than the screen? You can!!!

The freedom given to the player is a huge part of why this game feels fun. There are tons of ways to break the game, for example you can throw bad food at enemies and it'll affect them the same way it affects you. Have a rotten food which deals -50% HP? Throw it at a boss and see what happens, the developers did not prevent you from doing so! Every time you find such a thing, it feels rewarding and at the same time not out of place. Ultimately the game is a lot about minmaxing, grinding and optimizing things but in a fun and stressless ways. It's not a hard or frustrating game and yet it still is quite fun to break.

Despite its limitations, the game also offer a great amount of exploration in the style of ALTTP dungeons, with every screen usually being a separate map area. The world is huge and there are a lot of dungeons, enemies, items to be collected... Did I mention you can capture every single enemy and use them as fighting pets, mounts or have them work in your farm? And if you don't like them, then bring up to two villagers alongside you in battle, you can even equip them as you wish!

The game has a ton of such systems and you never get bored. Grinding is a core mechanic and everything in the game has stats, from walking to sleeping to taking a bath. Sure they don't amount to much but it's still great hearing the skill up jingle every time you level up your walking.

Perhaps what I like the most about the game is its ergonomics. Teleport home whenever you want. Need something? Press L1/LB to open your quick menu which allows access to your ENTIRE INVENTORY within seconds, seriously no other game can rival this. It feels like you don't waste a single second and everything is as optimized as it can get. It feels... great! Truly, one of my favourite games of all times.