A farming game where farming is ironically, nearly utterly useless. A different if repetitive, dungeon crawler.
As for gamers who generally don't know what HM, its pretty much raising crops and tending to livestock. To be quite frank, for those who haven't experienced it yet, or are willing to try something different, it's quite amusing. At least for the first few hours.
And then the monotony sits in. Working the farm in Rune Factory involves doing the same tasks over and over again everyday. Plant seeds, water crops, harvest crops, gather produce from livestock. Sure its different but the novelty of a farming game wears off sooner or later. Granted, ALL games do involve repeating one sort of task or another, the problem with Rune Factory is that the main premise of the game is simply overshadowed by the fact that time spent within the dungeons are time spent better than in the farm.
Mining which involves going into the numerous caves of Rune Factory yields so much more cash than farming that it's just broken. That is, if you needed cash anyway.
The thing is, cash is needed to upgrade and furnish your house. However, once this goal is achieved, and it IS achieved quite easily for those who actually choose to ignore the farm, money tends to be useless.
Sure there are other things to spend money on such as buying materials and ingredients to upgrade your crafting skills like cooking and smithing. But most materials needed are simply found within the dungeons of Rune Factory and not in the farm. What does this all mean? It means that its not a farming game with dungeon crawling, but rather, a dungeon crawling game with farming elements thrown in.
With regard to the dungeon crawling, its alright for what it is. The game is relatively easy and thankfully, your character controls quite well. When you're not dodging and slashing within the caves, mundane farming tasks can be slightly automated, relieving some of the tediousness of the act.
The problem is, the game is slightly time based. This creates two sub-problems. First is that your character's energy runs out a tad too quickly. Due to this, some players might find themselves sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the bath house to open, in order to refill their energy. This means leaving your DS on for about a few minutes just so the in game clock ticks by. Second, the advancing in the game is slightly dependent on the seasonal calendar. That is, one of the dungeons in the game, the Misty Bloom cave can only be accessed in winter (its mandatory to go through all of them in order to complete the game). This means that players who know or at least figured out how to do things efficiently suddenly find themselves unable to progress as the they're stuck in summer or fall, waiting for the days to pass. On the other hand, some players might progress too slowly, and find themselves being able to only access Misty Bloom only after winter is nearly over (not likely though).
This can be ratified by simply sleeping the days out, but to be quite frank, if a game requires you to actually waste time just to progress, there's obviously some error in the design elements.
Alternatively, you can spend the long days gathering materials needed to level your different skills up. Which brings us to another slight complaint. Leveling your crafting skills (pharmacy, smithing, decoration, cooking) involves standing in front of a counter or anvil, inputting recipes from materials you collected. Collect, input, collect, input.... translating to doing the same thing over and over again just to raise your skill.
As for the dating aspect, wooing a lady pretty much just involves talking to them or giving presents. That's it. There's not much to say and its really just an afterthought. If you wanted a dating sim, you'd probably be better off playing Tokimeki Memorial instead. With regard to the bringing livestock or familiars in combat, it's pretty much moot too, as you can get by without them.
So why did I score this game a 7, putting it 2 points above average? Again, though a bit monotonous, the game is still different, and that means its still worth checking out just to see what's the fuss about. Give Rune Factory a rent if you feel like checking an action RPG with some farming thrown in. Again, the control is quite good, and those who feel like hacking and slashing through a dungeon certainly won't be dissapointed.
Just 2 things to remember while playing. 1, farm a bit to experience it's novelty and then forget it. 2 don't bother maximizing your days too much. If you find yourself out of energy, just head to sleep. It'll make the game progress much faster.