#Rune Factory Sonja

[runefactorynonsense]

Spooktober - Day 18 - Shadow

I'm thinking east may be the way to go.

[castoff-comic]

Sorry if you’ve answered this before but I’m a new reader as of a couple days ago, is Frankie inspired by Frankenstein’s creature or am I just making parallels because of the name and because he happens to look a lot like how I draw the creature? Either way I love him 10/10 would be his friend in real life and lie on the floor thinking about pancakes with him

tbh the Frankie = Frankenstein's monster thing was entirely an accident

I named him after the guy from one piece u_u

[myonmallow]

thots on rf:o

[pinkcatflower]

[bokumonocosplay]

Alice as Sonja! I like this outfit but what is up with that hat? 😂

[loraluna]

Rating Rune Factory Children

(Because I play favorites)

Rune Factory (1)

1/10

Cute but not much else to say. You have to wait a ridiculous amount of in-game time to get one short cutscene meeting your genderless nameless child (Game doesn't even bother to give them pronouns) and then never get to interact with them again. Disappointing.

Rune Factory 2

8/10

A unique idea that the series has yet to implement again, this game let you play through the second half of the game AS your child from the first half, and honestly It was a cool concept even if the gameplay got a little wonky and unbalanced near the end. The game also introduced the first female protagonist to the series, Aria (left). She and her twin Aaron (right) actually had some personality of their own and even had unique interactions with the other villagers and children of the town. Cool concept and solid designs. I just wish you could interact with them a little more as a parent before the timeskip.

Rune Factory Frontier

7/10

I may be a little biased here, as this was my intro to Rune Factory, but I love these kids. Default names; Leif and Leona, are the first, and so far only, RF children you can interact with at multiple stages, these kids have several cutscenes documenting different milestones and are quite cute to watch. Once they reach the final stage, they don't do much besides toddle around the farm and look cute. You can gift them certain items but that's about it. Still, It's refreshing to watch your kid grow over time as apposed to the usual montage you get with RF kids.

Rune Factory 3/ Rune Factory 3 Special

3/10

They get bonus points for being the first in the series to let you have multiple kids (up to three) problem is, there's not much difference between em. The birth of each one plays about the same and while there's technically some different "personalities" it's more like each kid get a random lot of four or so unique lines of dialogue and that's it. There are also just the two sprites so if you have two or more of either gender they'll be identical, no matter the age difference. You can't gift them and they don't sleep, leave the house or even show up on the map. Honestly they're little more than cute house accessories.

Rune Factory Tides of Destiny/ Rune Factory Oceans

4/10

First off, please pardon the crappy quality. This game doesn't have traditional character portraits so it's hard to find decent quality pics. Tides of Destiny kiddos were the first in the series to inherit physical features from the player's spouse. (Pictured are Electra's daughter and Sonja's son) They appear to use the same child models as Frontier with some minor cosmetic changes but I liked Frontier's kids so no complaints there. I do wish they had real portraits and more dialogue but they're okay. At least they'll accept gifts and the events leading up to their births are quite wholesome.

Rune Factory 4/Rune Factory 4 Special

9/10

RF4's kids are darn near perfect. Luna and Noel have identical dialogue but they have more to say than any RF kids before or possibly since. There are TONS of unique exchanges and events with them, they participate in festivals, and most interesting of all, you can equip them with gear and take them adventuring! These babies are really something special. If I had to pick one complaint, I'd say I wish they looked liiiittle more like their concept art. They look like they both got aged up a little, which isn't bad but they do look barely younger than some of their possible parents...

Rune Factory 5

9.5/10

Rune Factory 5's children are right up there with Noel and Luna, but they get a slight advantage when it comes to customization. Like RF3 this game lets you have up to three kids, but unlike that game, these kiddos are treated like actual characters. Depending on your choice of spouse and your answers in a particular conversation, your kids can have a variety of looks and personalities, including the fan favorite feature of inheriting hair and eye colors from the spouse, and continuing along that customization train, these babies can once again go adventuring! My one, one small gripe...It'd be nice if your eldest could grow a little by the time their siblings are born. Heck, it'd be cool if the villagers kids could grow too. I'd love to see teenaged Julian and Hina~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there's my thoughts on the Rune Factory children. I hope future installments continue the trend of more giving their kids more personality and better customization, maybe someday we'll even see kiddos inherit traits from non-human parents? How cool would that be if your kid could actually look half elf or mermaid or furry wereanimal? XD

If you agree with me (or strongly disagree) feel free to comment. Always up for discussing my favorite franchise~

[theeeveetamer]

Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (extended thoughts)

@saficswrites asked me to go a little more in depth and I've actually been planning on talking more in depth anyway, so this is a good opportunity! I'm also going to throw in some of the resources I used while playing because there's a lot of great ones but they're kind of scattered.

So I will start by saying that I started on the series with RF4 back when it originally came out for 3DS and I played the heck out of it. Like, tried taming every single monster in the game levels of played the heck out of it. I've since played all of RF1, RF2, most of RF3 and RF5, and now RFToD. I chose to go back and play 1, 2, 3, and ToD after RF5 was announced. The only one I haven't touched is Frontier.

And yeah, Tides of Destiny does have some quirks and I can see why some people don't love it as a Rune Factory game. Just starting with some of the criticisms (because they lead into one of the things I actually really like about the game): The farming is very pared down and it's entirely reliant on the monsters you tame. Basically you just plant generic seeds and the monsters you put on the seasonal island determine what they grow into. Different monsters can grow different things.

That is somewhat annoying because you can't see what the monsters are called or what they plant before you tame them, the game doesn't really give you a clear list of everything you can plant, and you only get to tame 30 total so you're going to be doing a lot of swapping. It is possible to get everything with some planning tho (I borrowed the monster setups from this GameFaqs thread).

That said, I personally kind of prefer this? Micromanaging the farming has always been my least favorite aspect of the Rune Factory games. In Tides of Destiny you don't have to worry about that. There's no watering, no harvesting, no spreadsheets keeping track of exactly what seeds you need to buy, and the crops grow so fast (most are done in 1-2 days when you have your monster friendship maxed out) that you don't really feel the randomness. I'm in summer of year 2 and I've already got a storage full of full stacks of basically every crop in the game. That means you can focus 100% on the exploration, dungeons, making friends, etc.

And the exploration is. My god. I love it. It's basically if you threw Rune Factory and Legend of Zelda Wind Waker into a blender. For reference, Wind Waker is one of my favorite Zelda games ever so that colors my impressions of the game. The exploration is 100% riding around through the ocean on a giant golem, fighting giant monsters, and digging up islands and salvage points. The quests usually point you toward specific islands to unlock and there's no point where I felt like I needed an external tool to explore, but if you want help someone made an excellent, detailed map of the stuff you can find in the ocean. You also eventually unlock a fast travel and there is a way to speed up getting from point A to point B, so I never felt like wandering through the ocean was too intrusive.

I also really, really, really like the characters. Each one has a little required "friendship event" you need to watch to unlock their next friendship level, and each of the main island inhabitants has at least 6. All the friendship events are connected to a little character arc which is completed with level 6. The bachelor/ettes get an additional 3 event arc if you unlock their love events as well, though you can't access that until after the main plot is over (and gender locked unfortunately). And there's actually a reason to get them up to the max (level 6) before the endgame, since you get a benefit in the final boss battle.

IMO they're all just really likable, funny characters. Some of the events actually made me laugh out loud, and I was usually smiling the whole time any of the them were talking!

I also really like they way they handled the main characters (Aden and Sonja). The plot of the game is that Sonja gets trapped in her childhood friend Aden's body, and the story is about figuring out how to separate them again. You can play as Sonja once they're separated at the end of the main plot, but you do have to do the entirety of the main story as Aden. Initially I was kind of miffed about this, since I vastly prefer playing as female characters in games, but I actually really like how they did it. For two reasons.

One, I just really like Aden as a protagonist. I was expecting him to be kind of the goody two-shoes amnesiac like a lot of Rune Factory protags are, but no. He's sassy as hell. There was at least one point where one of the characters (I think Joe) is like "hey buddy ol' pal" and Aden is just like "Yeah we're not friends sorry you thought that tho."

Two, initially I was thinking that the whole "my best friend is living in my head" thing was going to be some secret they kept. Like Sonja was going to be there, but she was going to be quiet most of the time or not really interact with the world. But no. The first thing that happens is the obligatory RF starter girl (Odette) finds Aden, and the first thing out of his mouth is "Sonja is stuck in my head, isn't that weird?" and EVERYONE just goes with it. I love it. They really lean into the wackiness/silliness of it all. Sonja is very present in the dialogue and the plot. On her birthday characters wish Aden happy birthday to pass it along. The writing frequently plays around with the dynamic of them being stuck together (such as the two of them arguing over how Aden is going to take a bath), and they frequently swap off in dialogue and give different perspectives. They each kind of have their own relationship with the various characters around town. Most of the friendship events feature both of them in some way. It's also really nice how they'll talk to each other throughout gameplay. They'll say good morning to each other, Sonja will warn you when your health is getting low or what time it is, etc.

Despite playing as Aden (physically) I really feel like you're actually playing as both of them to some degree, and I really like that. It actually feels kind of lonely once they split at the end of the main plot and you don't get Sonja's little quips in your head anymore.

I think those are the big things. There's also lots of little things I enjoyed. I love the aesthetic of the world, and the gameplay systems relating to RP management and stuff are much more refined than the older games. I'd say the only mane difference between it and RF4 is that swinging your weapons still costs RP. The crafting is a little annoying until you get the hang of it (you can craft anything up to 20 levels higher than your current level, so it doesn't suck to grind too badly). There's a bizarre amount of spelling errors, which isn't super intrusive but it is kind of funny lol.

On the negative side, the story is pretty short. You can easily beat it in less than one in game year if you're rushing. I'm also not a huge fan of the main story needing to be 100% completed before you can do marriage and the like, since the game is basically done at that point. I don't think there's much post-game other than the goals you make up for yourself. I do think playing as Sonja was a bit of an afterthought. She has like a quarter of the romance options Aden has and there's some odd mistakes I've noticed playing as her (like trying to knock on Sierra's door while she's asleep will have Sonja saying a line about how the bath is closed ???) but it doesn't bother me too much so far.

Those are pretty minor negatives though. I still had (and am having) so much fun with the game!

I also heavily used this website as a guide. The only thing is that I wish they had pictures of the monsters because I think they have slightly different names from the rest of the series, and it can be confusing cuz some monsters have different colorations and therefore do completely different things.

[coderedblood]

Rune Factory English Voice Actors/Actresses:

I’m a huge fan of Rune Factory. It seems sort of niche bc when I ask other gamers (I’m a casual gamer, don’t ask me to be on any teams 😂) about it they don’t really know what it is. One of the things I love about is is how they get these huge voice actors for the games, which seem so small (but I know it isn’t, it’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies)

WARNING: ONLY ENGLISH VOICES ARE COUNTED HERE. I’M DOING THIS FOR MYSELF AND WHAT I KNOW. I MAY DO A JAPANESE VERSION.

Raguna (Rune Factory and Rune Factory: Frontier) is Vash the Stampede, Ichigo from Bleach, Sabo from One Piece, and Nero from Devil May Cry

Mist (Rune Factory and Rune Factory: Frontier) is Haru from Persona 5

Bianca (Rune Factory and Rune Factory: Frontier) is Saya from Blood+ (I didn’t see that one coming)

Tabatha (Rune Factory and Rune Factory: Frontier) is Mima from Perfect Blue and Rem from Trigun

Iris (both of them, RFF) is Rukia from Bleach and Yuki from Haruhi Suzumiya

Anette (RFF) is Starfire (and Blackfire!) from Teen Titans and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time

Raven (RF3) is Amy Rose from Sonic Boom

Electra (Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny) is Annie from Attack on Titan (didn’t see this one coming either)

Bacchus (RFTOD) is Vampire Hunter D (and D’s left hand!) (loved this one)

Vishnal (Rune Factory 4) is Leonardo from the 2003 Ninja Turtles cartoon and Kappa Mikey

Clorica (RF4) is Shiki from The World Ends With You

Xiao Pai (RF4) is Jenny from My Life As A Teenage Robot

Doug (RF4) is Sasuke from Naruto

Margaret (RF4) is Hinata from Naruto, Kyrie from Devil May Cry and Orihime from Bleach

Forte (RF4) is Abbey Bominable from the first Monster High cartoon

Amber (RF4) is Morgana from Persona 5

Dolce (RF4) is Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist (this one actually makes sense), Maka Albarn from Soul Eater and the female protagonist of Persona 3

Frey (RF4) is Gaz from Invader ZIM

Ares (Rune Factory 5) is SwaySway from The Breadwinners

Scarlett (RF5) is Retsuko from Aggretsuko, Akko from Little Witch Academia and Ryuko from Kill La Kill

Lucy (RF5) is Loona from Helluva Boss and Emira Blight from The Owl House

Martin (RF5) is Louis from Beastars

Cecil (RF5) is Hunter from The Owl House and Remy from Big City Greens

Ryker (RF5) is Trebol from One Piece (also, also did not see this coming)

Livia (RF5) is Rebecca from One Piece

Misasagi (RF5) is Tatsuki from Bleach

Rudolph (RF5) is Mugman from The Cuphead Show!

Yuki (RF5) is Beauty from Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo

Darroch (RF5) is Jelly Jiggler from Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo (which brings back memories and makes actually a lot of sense)

Radea (RF5) is Reiju from One Piece (also makes sense)

Gideon (RF5) is Griffon from Devil May Cry and Scratchmen Apoo from One Piece

SHARED VOICE ACTORS/ACTRESSES

Lara (RF1 and Rune Factory: Frontier), Eunice (RFF) and Maerwen (from Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny) have the same voice actress (and are Kitana and Mileena from Mortal Kombats 9 and X)

Melody (RF and RFF) and Sonja (Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny) have the same voice actress

Carmen and Shara (both Rune Factory 3) have the same voice actress and is Triela from Gunslinger Girl

Rosetta (RF and RFF) and Beatrice (Rune Factory 5) have the same voice actress

Nancy (from RF4) and Hina (from RF5) have the same voice actress who’s also Kikimora from The Owl House

Ventuswill and Lin Fa (both RF4) and Selphy (RFF) have the same voice actress who’s also Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop

Micah (Rune Factory 3) and Bismarck (RFTOD) have the same voice actor who is also Ling Yao from Fullmetal Alchemist and Natsu Dragneel from Fairy Tail

Violet (RFTOD) and Priscilla (RF5) have the same voice actress

Lily and Sierra (both RFTOD) have the same voice actress

Pandora and Quinn (both RFTOD) have the same voice actress

James (RFTOD) and Leon (RF4) have the same voice actor who’s also Law from One Piece and Levi from Attack on Titan

Dylas and Bado (both RF4) have the same voice actor

Arthur and Jones (both RF4) have the same voice actor who is also Donatello from the 2003 Ninja Turtles cartoon

Father Gerard (RFF) and Heinz (RF5) have the same voice actor who’s also adult Gohan from Dragon Ball Z and Kiba from Naruto

Cinnamon (RFF) and Fuuka (RF5) have the same voice actress who is also Marinette from Miraculous Ladybug and Verosika Mayday from Helluva Boss

Simone and Julian (both RF5) have the same voice actress who’s also Ash from Pokémon and April from the 2003 Ninja Turtles cartoon

[fantasy-harvest-rune]

Well after racking up about 150 hours in Rune Factory Oceans, I’ve finally done just about everything there is to do. I beat the main quest line, returned Sonja to her body, and defeated the Colosseum golem. I ended up marrying Aden, James, Maerwen and Violet. Maerwen is definitely my favourite but Aden did grow on me over time. I’ll miss Fenith but looking forward to playing Rune Factory 4 and 5!

[runefactorynonsense]

Huh? What’s this? @totally-okayy, I was also YOUR @runefactorysecretsanta! You said you might want some Aden/Sonja, so here you go! Ready to kick butt as a powerful fighting duo~ Have a Happy Holidays and a great new year! <33

[awkwardshyfangirl]

Thank you, Mitsu! @lazzledazzler

I got Corrin last week & my Mom bought the Rune Factory items last month for my B-Day ^-^

[mermaidsbiann]

Female protags

[pinkcatflower]

[melodybottles]

my evil wife who wants to conquer the world