For those of us who as of yet do not have a 360 or a PC that can run Bioshock. There is an excellent little title out on the DS. Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, is perhaps one of the most interesting games I have played on the DS as of yet. It's one part, Animal Crossing, one part Pokemon, and one part Lunar Knights (b/c I can't think of another decent action/dungeon crawler on the DS).

I had never played the Harvest Moon titles before, and from what I have read, I don't really think I would enjoy them. This game however, by incorporating a dungeon crawl and animal taming aspect, has really given a point to the whole farming, collecting, building side of things. I think a lot of people brushed it aside as another anime-esqe Animal Crossing/Pokemon rip and it's actually a really, really entertaining game. Just don't listen to the intro theme music. It's terrible. Absolutely horrendous.

I am not sure how many hours I have spent juggling the many components of the game. There are just so many parts of this game one can delve into, and I am pretty sure you can complete the game from more than one angle. Here is my little list of what I understand to be the different aspects of the game at this point.

1. Social - Making friends with the people of the village. You give gifts, engage in conversations, or complete story components and your friend (and perhaps love) rating will increase. This allows you to eventually marry one of 11 different female characters in the game.

2. Farming - obviously, as the other games have made significant, you plant seeds, water them appropriately and harvest them after the right number of days. This provides on of many sources for income and ingredients for your cooking.

3. Mining - you hit rocks with a hammer and get various metals and gems. Sell them, upgrade your weapons, or make trinkets.

4. Crafting - you can make accessories, armor, weapons, potions, cook food and probably other things...

5. Combat - with your weapons you fight monsters and things

6. Animal Collecting - you can tame animals and have them do a number of things: help you fight in the caves, harvest your vegetables, water your fields, harvest various goods (milk, honey, wool), or you could ride them. You have to take care of your pets by feeding them and brushing them too.

7. Fishing - ohh yeah, you can fish

On top of that there seems to be a story of your character finding out where he is from and solving this mystery of monsters being in the dungeons.

But with the good there is alway something right? In the case of RF, I really only have two complaints. The first is that they really don't explain a lot of their systems very well. I have had to go to the FAQs or a forum a number of times to get back on track. Secondly, there are some nuances with the button scheme and the interface where I have found myself accidentally wasting either harvested or purchased goods by throwing them away. I have gotten used to it at this point, but it's certainly a bit of a headache when starting out.

Beyond that, the game has been great fun and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking to put some hours in on the DS.