It’s a bit late for a progress report, seeing as I am 38 hours into Rune Factory Tides of Destiny, level 24, finished 2 and a half dungeons, well on my way to making Lily/Violet/Maerwen/all three my waifu. Still, better late than never. Here’s what I think about the game so far.

Dungeons: PITA. It’s annoying having to jump through all those hoops. The levers and gates in the Fire Shrine were particularly irritating, because every time you flipped a switch a gate would open, but the map would orient itself all weird so you couldn’t be sure exactly which gate opened where. I’m just glad I can warp directly to the floors I’ve finished so I don’t have to do everything from scratch every time.

The enemies in the dungeon are fairly challenging, which is good, but there are just too many of them and they take waaaay too long to kill. You won’t have time to do anything if you go about killing them. Not to mention they have atrociously low drop rates, almost as bad as the original Rune Factory, so killing them isn’t even rewarding. I even had a dream a night or two ago where I killed a bunch of slimes and they actually, shockingly dropped a whole bunch of teardrops, what a happy dream. That’s what Tides of Destiny has reduced me to.

Current progress: I made it all the way to the final boss of the Water Shrine, that boxing alligator thing. I was doing pretty well against him too, but then he turned red and killed me in a few hits. I need to find a food or accessory that prevents daze, and maybe I should see if I can get some better accessories, then we’re good to go.

Waifus: They’re all meh. The reason I can’t choose between Lily, Violet and Maerwen is because there isn’t much to choose between them, not because they’re so charming. Also having Aden possessed by Sonja puts a damper on my romantic life because then I have this jealous childhood friend making rude comments every time a girl starts blushing around me. I was going to pursue Violet, but Sonja’s attitude ruined all the fun. So I’m currently going for Lily. I like her enough, her favorite food (fruit parfait) is quite easy to make and I’ve never had my main character marry an older woman before so it’ll be novel. Maerwen is fun to tease and I like marrying dark elves, but maybe I’ll save her for another playthrough.

Farming and mining: Instead of buying seeds, planting them, watering them and harvesting them, you just wave a magic wand and sprouts pop up. Then you coerce monsters into doing all the hard work of growing and harvesting them and just reap the profits. Only you don’t really need the profits after a little while because there’s almost nothing to spend your money on. It’s a pointless chore now, but somehow I can’t stop myself from going out there every day. Somebody stop me.

Fishing: Fun and all, but it takes too long for fish to bite on non-rainy days. It also sucks that 90% of the time all I ever catch are sardines, cherry salmon and squid. Fish isn’t a particularly good food after the early days either. It’s only good for giving as presents to Mikoto (grilled/fried fish) and Bacchus (he likes dried sardines). I want to play an RPG with a fun fishing mini-game in it. Maybe I’ll finally get round to playing Breath of Fire 4 soon. Either that or I’ll replay BoF2 for like the 5th time.

Other stuff: Exploration: I wish exploring the ocean was more fun. There’s too much empty space as it is, Ymir takes forever to get anywhere and you can’t really discover anything good until the story allows you to. I miss the sequence breaking from the earlier games.

Festivals: lots of fun, especially the one where I had to slash the dummies. I’m bummed that I only got 3rd place in Fashion Contest though. I thought Aden was looking pretty spiffy with his wooly accessories.

Time management: It is surprisingly easy to lose track of time. At first there isn’t much to do, but once you raise a couple of islands and get some monsters working for you, it can take 3-5 hours to brush them all, pick up crops and ores and plant new stuff. Then I have to go round town and say hi to everyone, sometimes it can be 2 or 3pm before I finally get round to dungeon crawling. TBH the dungeons aren’t much fun, so I’m never in a hurry to get out there. I really needs some Quality Fur and Teardrops though, so time to head over to Jungle Island again.

That’s enough for a first report. I’ll be a bit too busy to play console games in the next week or two, so I’ll be working on Aria of Sorrow (c’mon Death, die already) and Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 instead. I’ll probably write about the latter next time, once I’ve gotten the forever alone ending I’m inevitably headed for.

Related posts:

Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 1 Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 2 Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 3 (finished) Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (Progress Report 2)