Man, the 2020s have been a great time to be a Rune Factory fan. Rune Factory 4 got a Switch port, Rune Factory 5 finally came out after years of being in limbo, Rune Factory 3 also got a Switch port that just came out, and a new RF game is reported to be in development, Rune Factory 6. We RF fans are eating like kings and queens! As I just mentioned, Rune Factory 3 got a Switch port that came out in 2023 called Rune Factory 3 Special, a slight remaster of the Nintendo DS game from 2009, with the only changes being more polished graphics, some DLC outfits, the Newlywed Mode segments and extra episodes exploring the main cast. From what I’ve heard, Rune Factory 3 was the game where the RF series really began to find its footing and hit its stride, and it’s considered the best out of the three DS games. If you’re coming into this game after RFs 4 and 5, you’ll notice that this game doesn’t have a lot of the quality of life improvements that later games would have, such as choosing a female MC, interacting with your shipping box, and so on, but there are reasons Rune Factory 3 is still fairly beloved to this day.
On a dark and stormy night, a wooly falls out of the sky and into the town of Sharance. A girl named Shara takes it in, only to find that it disappeared the next morning. Unbeknownst to her, the wooly turned into a human boy, Micah, who is actually half-human, half-monster. Micah doesn’t remember anything as to what happened to him or how he came to Sharance, but he is welcomed with open arms, given a place to live, and tasked with managing a farm. As he gets to know the townspeople, he learns that there’s a settlement of creatures called Univirs in the desert, and the Univirs dislike humans. Upon re-discovering his half-monster heritage in light of this new information, he keeps his wooly form a secret from the townspeople, but surely there must be a way for humans and monsters to coexist in peace. Micah decides to take it upon himself to unite the two races just like they had once been many decades ago, and it might just prove to be key in helping Sharance.
Before I get into the review, I just want to put out a PSA real quick. I’ve been seeing quite a lot of people decry Rune Factory 3 for only having you play as a male character and romance only girls, claiming that Marvelous should have tried programming in a female MC, male love interests, or even gay marriage. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting these things, and later games would deliver on those, but those people are forgetting that Marvelous made it abundantly clear that Rune Factory 3 Special is NOT a complete from-the-ground-up remake. It’s just a remaster that only touches up a few things, that’s it. Rune Factory 3 first came out in 2009, before Marvelous even thought of putting in female MCs or gay marriage. Rune Factory 4 would introduce the former, and Rune Factory 5 would implement the latter, and will likely carry them into future games. Any complaints people have about RF3S’s dearth of modern features is from a combination of ignorance on how making games actually work and setting their expectations way too high, especially if they’re not familiar with the franchise’s history. So please, don’t lambast RF3S because it isn’t what you expect it to be, especially since the marketing made it clear that it’s just a cosmetic remaster and nothing more. Besides, any complaints about the game not having the features introduced in RFs 4 and 5 are completely moot anyway in light of the new game currently in development. Tl;dr, do your research, pay attention to marketing, and don’t expect an old game to throw in stuff it can’t just because they want to respect its original format. You have other options available.
There is no denying that RF3, having come out before RF4, doesn’t have the more polished features that the latter does. You’re not allowed to interact with your shipping box outside of just putting stuff in, so you can’t get stuff out, you consume recipe bread regardless of whether you learn anything from it so if you buy some without learning anything, you wind up wasting money, and the main campaign is really short. That being said, this was the game that really made combat mechanics a lot easier than the previous two entries, as from what I’ve heard, combat in the first two games was very clunky. The farming mechanics are pretty much the same as the later entries, with a few caveats: There’s no way to prevent typhoons or make your crops resist getting destroyed by them. Everything you do takes up stamina and rune points, but you also increase your skill levels by doing everything from walking to crafting items, so you’re always getting rewarded.
Plus, with the new mechanic of Micah turning into a monster, your Wooly form also has combat abilities, unique attacks, and a grappling system you can utilize when monsters are stunned. The graphics themselves are a product of their time, 3D sprites against 2D backgrounds, but the backgrounds, town, and the dungeons are all well designed, and the in-game sprites have been given a MASSIVE upgrade. The old sprites in the DS version were really janky and blurry, so Marvelous completely redid them, even the monster sprites, and the difference in quality is quite amazing. The sprites here look much better, even for the human characters. The visual novel portraits remain the same, and are still as charming as they were in the DS version. Now, for anyone who played later games, Rune Factory 3‘s main storyline is very short. Seriously, you can complete it before the end of the first in-game summer. There’s also the fact that activating a character’s events are completely reliant on fulfilling requests posted on the message board, which to me is WAY better than RF4’s crappy RNG system. Getting married is also a requirement in this game, so you can’t complete the main story without picking a girl to hook up with. But what RF3 lacks in longevity and new content, it makes up for with quality and charm, with a plethora of fun, quirky, interesting characters with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. Seriously, there are reasons why many RF fans really like this particular cast of characters and wish later games brought over that same level of writing quality.
That being said, the early DS era of RF games, this one included, had this habit of nudging you to go after one particular girl, considered the canon heroine, over all the other ones. Rune Factory 3 is guilty of this too, as it very aggressively wants you to marry Shara. Later games did away with this, as this practice had proven to be divisive, and the remake tones this down a bit by having new opening themes that gave all the love interests equal representation rather than shilling Shara all the way through, which is what the DS game did. I heard that Shara wasn’t very well liked in the DS era because for some reason, Natsume, when they first brought the DS games over to North America, intentionally exaggerated some characters’ personalities or added new additions to them that weren’t in the original, such as having Micah be really mean towards the townsfolk and their quirks, and Shara becoming a jealous harpy the second you married her. XSEED’s translation is much more faithful, doing away with the unnecessary exaggerations and personality changes, though some RF3 fans preferred the Natsume localization and the voice acting there. I’ve never played the DS version, nor do I have any interest in doing so.
Rune Factory 3‘s story in and of itself isn’t really anything new either, as it just involves mending race relations between Univirs and humans with a big party and not much else. You’re not gonna find anything deep or introspective here compared to other games tackling similar premises. But people don’t really play Rune Factory in general expecting it to be like, say, The Witcher or Elden Ring. Sometimes you just want to kick back, grow some crops, raise livestock, and hang with some mermaids, elf girls, and bipedal sheep. While Rune Factory 3 may not be anything groundbreaking, and its Switch port lacking the quality of life features of later games, I still found it to be a fun, cute game that I was genuinely invested in, and it did introduce a lot of series staples in the franchise as a whole, so RF fans owe the game that much. And now to eagerly await news of either Rune Factory 6!
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