XSEED claims Rune Factory Frontier will be released in North America on March 31st.
Let’s see if they’re better than Natsume at keeping their promises. 
Well the question is, is it worth buying a Wii for? I really don’t think so…if there was a good working emulator for PC, I’d buy it though, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.
Naw… I don’t think it’s worth buying a Wii for just one game. If you aren’t planning to get a Wii, then just pass on it.
They’ve started development on Rune Factory 3, which should be out late 2009 for DS. According to the last interview, Rune Factory Frontier is a “special” title for the Wii: it’s technically Rune Factory 1.5 (given it takes place between the two DS titles). The series will continue on in handheld format.
One day Natsume will have the newest Harvest Moon ported into English. The only question is when. Magic-8-Ball says: anywhere between 2009 and 2011. 
EDIT
If you own a PSP, the next Harvest Moon is on that platform. It’s not a port either - a PSP exclusive. Basic premise is the same as HM: Save the Homeland. Official site is here. I’m sure Alice will be the “secret girl” you can have as a wife. Beat evil corporate expansion with some beefy country love. :twisted:
Although isn’t Dia mega rich too? Why doesn’t her family just buy the island for her?
I’m looking for what system most of the rpgs will be coming out for from companies like Square-Enix, Namco-Bandai, NIS (to a lesser extent), Atlus, Konami…
You might wanna seriously consider the XBOX360 then. Just randomly off the top of my head: Fable 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Mass Effect trilogy, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Tales of Vesperia, and The Last Remnant. It also has quite a few MMO… Champions Online, Phantasy Star, and possibly Knights of the Old Republic Online.
Only thing PS3 got, which XBOX didn’t get, was Disgaea 3.
Wii isn’t any better, with only Dragon Quest X, Fire Emblem, and Tales of Symphonia 2 being the top tier titles. Nintendo said they’re going to push hard for 3rd party support in the RPG genre, but they’ve had a REALLY tough time, as they pissed off the smaller developers over the last few years (Nintendo has been playing favorites, ignoring the smaller companies by withholding hardware or software suites).
Out of those, DQX, Star Ocean and Disgaea, in that order are the only ones I care about. I’ve given up on FF series for new titles…remakes are still good.
I’m with you on the anti-Final Fantasy feeling. The last title I really liked was FF7.
FF8 was a let down (Time kompression? God that’s lameass). FF9 was horrid (kiddy garbage). FF10 was interesting until they made FF10-X (defeats the purpose of the sacrifice ending in FF10). Passed on FF11 (the MMO just didn’t appeal to me). By the time FF12 rolled around, I was tired of the franchise (knights and airships don’t float my boat). However FF13 has the cyberpunk feel that attracted me to FF7… I’ll wait though… no hurry with a title like that. It will be available EVERYWHERE for years on end.
Well FF6 was the last one I really liked. FF7 was good, but the fact you could swap out any character for any other one made me not care for it, gameplay-wise. Storyline-wise and character-wise it was still good. FF8 had cool cutscenes…and that’s it. The characters looked like crappy 3-D paper dolls and the storyline I didn’t care for. The battle system was horrid. FF9 I actually kinda liked…but it kinda reminded me of hearking back to the old FF days…but that ended midway through the game somewhat. However it is probably my favorite still of the games after 6. FF10 I felt too much like I was on a track…I hate track games, especially when most of the characters are meh…excpet Auron (he’s the only reason I trudged through it so long). FF11 i don’t play online mmos…don’t believe in “renting” my character. FF12…the battle system imo was worse than 8…for different reasons. Plus the leveling system reminded me of FF7. And FF13 is suppose to be a similar battle system so meh…
But damn…if I got a 360, that would mean I’d not be able to get DQ10…but i’d be able to get Star Ocean…why can’t they come out on both?
What is this!? A beautiful Rune Factory site in English!? OMG! End of the world! END OF THE WORLD!!!
Rune Factory Frontier Official Site
Samples of the voice acting are in the official trailer. Kinda miff’ed they put a spoiler in the trailer… I mean you’re not supposed to know about the Dark Iris yandere problems at first.
Also the Harvest Moon PSP site keeps getting updated. This title is going back to the “North American” style of farming, as recently HM had been experimenting with a European look. HM PSP even has a hoedown. :lol:
Guess more of their target audience doesn’t care for the European look. Wonder why they don’t go for an asian look.
I am unfamiliar with “FF10-X”. Perhaps you’ve been playing too many XXX games lately? But FFX wouldn’t make a good ero-RPG anyway. Cast isn’t diverse enough.
And yeah, I own FFX2 but I don’t think I’m ever going to play it. TOo many games, and it screws with the storyline from FFX.
I don’t think they’re going to abandon the Euro style… two characters in the upcoming PSP HM have the same attire.
That Euro style HM sold well in Japan. Also as a general whole, HM is just as popular in Europe as North America. I remember reading an interview somewhere, that Marvelous has better relations with their European associates that they do with Natsume. So if anything, I believe we’ll see more Euro HM in the future. 8)
I suppose there’s no Asian style HM, because Japanese gamers want that “exotic” feel. However they occasionally have an “Asian wife” in the mix. Rune Factory always has one.
On a different note: while there isn’t a playable second generation in the Euro HM, if you have a daughter she becomes best friends with a boy named Kevin. If you have a son however, he becomes best friends with the twintopian Sigyn and Laramie.
It seems Marvelous likes having twincest in the second generations. I’m assuming that’s because the second generation doesn’t have children of their own… which would kinda be a problem with twin wives: Who has the kid? Why don’t they both have kids? Etc.
I managed to finally finish Rune Factory Frontier with all the girls… not an easy feat.
Major Spoiler about Iris (girl with the split personality):
Eventually her two personalities get seperate bodies… thus Iris and Iris actually become twins. Sadly there’s no twincest… you can marry White Iris or Black Iris, but not both simultaneously. 
Well I hope they don’t ruin the RF series with an MMO. Ugh. I hope they cancel it before its too late.
Anyway, I have been considering getting a Wii. My future roommate will have a 360 and he was also considering a Wii. As there is only 1 game I seriously want for the Wii, RFF, and 1 in the distant future, DQ10, I’m not sure though. Of course there’s only 2 games I want that are on the 360 though, Disgaea 3 and SO:Last Hope, and neither as much as the other 2. So I’m like meh, I dunno if I should get the console. There are no games like CT which were good enough on their own to warrant a console purchase (i had at the time not had an SNES). I’d rather wait for the console system to drop in price, but until recently they were selling like hotcakes.
lol, that shop managing+minigames thing for WiiWare… I don’t think it has any online features. While I’m a pretty heavy MMO player sometimes, I don’t want to see a Harvest Moon MMO either. XD Little online features now and then are nice, but a full blown game… I dunno how it’d work. I also hate it when people suggest that the series go real-time like Animal Crossing. I can see it now… “What’s that? Didn’t play for a week? All your crops are dead and your animals hate you!” :lol:
In other news, Natsume just announced English releases of the next games, Waku Waku Animal March for Wii (now Animal Parade) and Shining Sun and Friends for DS (now Sunshine Islands) sometime in the Summer. Knowing them though, the games will probably be delayed into Fall or Winter… :roll: And even with those announced, there’s still a bit of catching up to do with the Wind Bazaar and Sugar Village games.
Canned Dogs made a short translation of a Marvelous Entertainment interview:
http://zepy.momotato.com/2009/06/15/mar … #more-2857
Despite the bad market, the company is doing normal business in Japan. However they’re reporting failure in Europe and America (more so in Europe than America).
They also report their problems with expensive console games - which explains why they primarily stick to handhelds and the Wii. I feel for them - I really do - but they have to know the obvious: they target a niche market of the gaming industry. Not everyone is into farming or fishing simulators. They also have HORRIBLE quality control with Natsume releasing their titles. Their ability to have Rune Factory Frontier released by XSEED, was simply AWESOME beyond words - about time they got nearly perfect translation and solid voice acting for their English release - but sometimes I wonder if it was a bit too late. Maybe if RF and RF2 were released by XSEED, they’d have sold RFF better.
Meh… Harvest Moon is still stuck with the Natsume curse… although Natsume has come a long way to improve itself.
IMHO, they should focus strictly on the DS and Wii: more Rune Factories and more Harvest Moons. Stop wasting time on the PSP market. Have both game series released by XSEED. They should also consider better QA’ing for programming - the “screen lag” in their titles are becoming more obvious with each new release (although that problem wasn’t in RFF - probably due to the superior hardware). Also more winnable girls and town NPC… no one ever complains about that. No recycling of all the girls from older series (that gets boring fast).
Much as it pains me to say it: keep the Boy version and Girl version format of the games seperate. It’s cash cowing, but fans happily end up buying both if there’s enough improved content in the Girl version (and the Girl version is released 8 to 12 months later). Works for Pokemon… If they REALLY wanted to impress people, but still use recycled ideas, they could make a super Harvest Moon for Wii. More than one town… combine the 3 (or is it 4) alternate HM Farm communities into one game. As the player completes the adventures in one town, he can move into another (and allow moving between the towns), then pick his wife out of the three dozen lovely ladies. They could have it where each farm grows different crops and animals… maybe have it culturally themed (an American farm, a European farm, an East Asian farm, and a Tropical farm).
Yea, the girl version of FoMT had some nice improvements, improvements not re-added in their later games, notably the ability to rewatch specific scenes once viewed.
As for overseas market, I’m wondering do they make AU and/or Chinese and/or Korean titles? Those might also be what they mean about overseas. Of course, that they specifically mentioned Europe shows that the downturn in the states is not beyond what they expected and they might still be able to make a profit or break even. I hope it doesn’t mean they will pull out of a US market. RFF and its possible sequal was one of the few Wii games I ws looking forward to.
Rising Star has announced release of the European version for Rune Factory 2 in Fall 2010.
I suspect RF3 for the Americas will be 2011 at the rate things are going… and Europe can expect to see that in 2013…
I wish I was only being sarcastic, but I’m not. 
Also the newest PSP version of Harvest Moon was released last month in English, as Hero of Leaf Valley. Quite interestingly, the PSN download is only 120MB. Not complaining about the file size… quite happy actually.
Where did you get autumn from as shops are listing it as out in 3 weeks time