History VideoGame / RuneFactory3

*** Collette starts with a ''very'' powerful weapon and can easily outdamage Micah up to mid game-- to put it in perspective the Lollipop, Collette's starting weapon, is a ''Forging Level '''60''''' Axe. Any cooked food is a good gift for her, including the easy to make Rice Ball/Onigiri which can be easily made and doesn't require any cooking utensils.

*** Shino stands out; she starts at Level 25 with a ''very'' strong weapon for early game and she also has a very aggressive AI.
*** Blaise starts at Level 20 and with a pretty strong weapon that you cannot get until you have a forge. He can also heal Micah by throwing food.
*** Collette starts with a ''very'' powerful weapon and can easily outdamage Micah up to mid game-- to put it in perspective the Lollipop, Collette's starting weapon, is a ''Forging Level '''60''''' Axe.

One night during a storm, a mysterious golden-fleeced wooly collapses in front of a young girl, [[InnocentFlowerGirl Shara's,]] house; and yet, against her grandfather's wishes, she takes in the wooly for the night. However, when morning comes around, the wooly transforms into a young man, [[HelloInsertNameHere Micah.]] With no memory of who he is or what he's supposed to be doing here, he escapes Shara's house, only to run into her - and a silent young woman named [[SugarAndIcePersonality Raven]] - again not long thereafter. At the pair's suggestion, Micah decides to stay at the local farm, which happens to be housed in an enchanted tree. From there on, the story's up to the player to discover.

* AchievementSystem: The right-side ladder inside your house leads to a place where trophies from festival among other achivements will be stored. Some of them can be used to replay festival mini-games too.

* AdaptationalPersonalityChange: Downplayed, but the ''Special'' remaster makes several of the characters LighterAndSofter than in the original.
** Micah's insults towards the townspeople are ''massively'' scaled back, with him tending to express surprise at the wackiness or wondering if he's going crazy, rather than acting like a JerkAss right to their face.

** Conversely, Karina's inner monologues (or whispers) became snarkier and snippier than they were in the original version.

* EmptyLevels: Zig-zagged. Levels have less impact on a the main character statuses than it did in previous games and although still important most of your damage comes from having a good weapon and accessories on your character and allies. With that said, higher levels mean much higher HP which is [[JustForPun vital]] both for you and potential party members, who can only equip a weapon and a single accessory, especially to survive the potential onslaught that the last dungeons of Sharance Maze are.

** [[VideoGame/RuneFactoryFrontier Trampoli]] is mentioned by several characters in the game. Carmen and Blaise mentions a "whale-shaped island" in the sky and express interest in what kind of fish/ingredients they could find respectively. Daria also mentions Trampoli by name as well.

* AcquiredPoisonImmunity: Your "Poison" skill goes up every time you get poisoned (or inflict poison on the enemy). Aside from the same stat-boosts most skills give, it makes it harder for you to get hit with poison. This also goes for sleeping, paralysis and sealing status effects. Shino apparently developed this as well, as she gladly accepts ''poisonous mushrooms'' as gifts.

* AntiDebuff: Certain foods helps whoever eats them resist StatusEffects. Eating food also overrides any positive or negative boost from the previous food as well.

** Cooking wise recipes like Apple Juice (for RP) and Onigiri/Rice Ball (for HP) are perfect for early to even late game due to requiring low Cooking skill to make without failing and having very easy to find/cheap renewable ingredients that allows you to keep working or fighting.

* CastFromHitPoints: As in earlier games, trying to do anything without RP drains your HP instead. ''Unlike'' in earlier games, this HP drain is ''ridiculously'' fast, taking Micah from full health to KO in mere three actions.

** [[VideoGame/RuneFactory1 Mei]] also randomly visits Miyako Inn. She's the way you can change your name and your farm's name. While she cannot be befriended she accept gifts and fish in general makes her happy. Mei will give a rather amusing response if you give her a Love/Throbby Snapper (which was the item you needed to propose to her in ''Rune Factory 1'').

* {{Determinator}}: You ''cannot'' lose against [[spoiler:Aquaticus]]' ultimate attack. Even at 0 HP, you simply shrug off his attacks until you hit him. Sadly, this does not happen against the rematch, for obvious reasons.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Skelefang/Ancient Bones is a big step up in difficulty for bosses. You have to wear it down before attacking its core and it also has hard to dodge attacks, dangerous projectile spamming and a nasty attack before it reforms that can easily stunlock you from full health to zero since chances are you won't have any equipment to reduce the damage from it. Unlike the previous boss you cannot bring anyone from Sharance to help you fight it and your only option for a party member for the first fight against it is Zaid, who's likely to be KO'd before doing any significant damage to the boss, but having him there limits you to the Wooly form-- if you want to fight Skelefang with your human form you'll have to do so alone. If anything, it's how the game teaching you to not rely on party members and that dodging attacks is important.

** The Formulade restores 75% of your RP and boosts your strength, vitality and intelligence for 12 hours. It also reduces your HP by 90% for the duration.

* ForegoneVictory: [[spoiler: Aquiticus' last attack seems like a HopelessBossFight at first, [[ScriptedBattle until you realise you can't faint while you waddle up and smack him]]. If you rematch him, he can use this attack normally. [[CrazyPrepared Better have a water ring ready.]] ]]

** Villagers have their food preferences and some foods have DoubleEdgedBuff effects, but the negative effects will not trigger if said food is liked by them (i.e: Risotto will not decrease Collette's VIT and Prelude to Love will not reduce Pia's Max HP), but the game doesn't tell you which can make you avoid giving them really good food buffs since you'd expect the bad side effects to cripple them as well.

* HomingProjectile: Sonic Wind and Earth Spike both homes on the closest enemy. Usable both by the player, some party members and monsters

* ImprobableWeaponUser: Being a Rune Factory game you can still use your farm tools as weapons. This time they're fast enough that they don't feels like something you'd use as an improvised or emergency weapons.

* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: Shields are present as usual. However only a few select weapons like Short Swords, Sickles and Watering Pots will give you their full bonuses. Any other weapon, two-handed weapons, will cut their defensive benefits by half.

* MookMaker: The monster portals. Depending on their colors they can drop specific elemental crystals and are cannot be damaged by their corresponding elements.

* PowerupLetdown: Once you Cooking skills reach really high levels, from 70 to 98, your cooked foodstuff will get an extra level for each 4 levels you rise in Cooking. This is a problem for foods with DoubleEdgedBuff like Risotto and Prelude to Love as while it'll give their bonuses it'll exarcebate their debuffs; with Risotto it'll decrease your VIT to '''''0''''' and with Predule to Love it'll decrease your max HP by '''''98%''''' at Level 10.

* RainbowPimpGear: Downplayed. Only a shield and weapon are visible, but a few of them really stands out. You can make it even more noticeable by changing Micah's clothes from Evelyn's clothing store too.

** Two of the most effective recovery items in the game are Medium Cheese (75% RP) and Toasted Rice Balls (75% HP) - both easily and cheaply made. Bamboo Rice, Fried Eggs and Ice Cream are also recipes with excellent HP/RP recovery and that uses few ingredients that are easily replished as well.

** The Mind Thrust Rune Ability can inflict a random status effect upon striking enemies. Certain foods when throw at enemies will also inflict StatusEffects as well.

* UnpredictableResults: Eating a wild mushroom can restore up to all of your HP/RP, cause or cure status effects, or just damage you. Thankfully, there are none that are instantly fatal. Apparently, there's five distinct shippable types of mushrooms, but you won't know which one is which until you eat or ship it.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Skelefang/Ancient Bones is a big step up in difficulty for bosses. You have to wear it down before attacking its core and it also has hard to dodge attacks, dangerous projectile spamming and a nasty attack before it reforms that can easily stunlock you from full health to zero since chances are you won't have any equipment to reduce the damage from it. Unlike the previous boss you cannot bring anyone from Sharance to help you fight it and your only option for a party member for the first fight against it is Zaid, who's likely to be KO'd before doing any significant damage to the boss, but even that limits you to the Wooly form-- if you want to fight Skelefang with your human form you'll have to do so alone. If anything it's how the game forces you to not rely on party members and learn that dodging attacks is important.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Sofia's Another Episode in ''Special'' tells a day during her pregnancy where she's fearful about her baby taking up her habit of speaking in opposites and how she's concerned about their future. Whereas the subtext of Sofia's opposite speak quirk is somewhat touched upon in the main game in certain conversations, here Sofia's narration makes it clearer she views it as a potential hindrance to her child's regular life, especially when meeting new people, and it's easy to see the whole thing as a parent with a form of mental disability being very worried that their child will copy/inherit their "bad" habits.

* PowerupLetdown: Once you Cooking skills reach really high levels, 70 up to 98, your cooked foodstuff will get an automatic level for each 4 levels you rise. This is a problem for foods like Risotto and Prelude to Love as while it'll give their bonuses it'll exarcebate their DoubleEdgedBuff with Risotto decreasing your VIT to '''''0''''' and Predule to Love decreasing your max HP by '''''98%''''' at Level 10.

** Golden crops on their own. Their seeds are only sold in the Flea Market festival by Hazel and their crops are prohibitively expesive for any budding farmer on the first year and their selling prices are barely on par with the flowers available after clearing Vale River. All golden crops, and an Emery Flower, are necessary for the rather profitable Golden Juice, hwoever.

* MagikarpPower: Villagers are initially not very powerful and can go down quickly compared to you, but get them good equipment and Micah a Sun Pendant and they'll slaughter anything with about the same efficiency any player would.

* HardWorkHardlyWorks: Averted. While Micah can reach a point where he can effortlessly cook difficult dishes Blaise notes that they don't have the same flavor and passion in it, but rather in his ''ingredients'', Blaise notes Micah is better suited for farm work than cooking despite his culinary skills.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: 10,000. For comparison, most players will probably finish the main quest well before reaching triple digits, and the final BonusDungeon has a suggested level of 220. In addition, each individual skill has a visible cap of 999, but actually keeps increasing beyond that, up to a maximum of 65,536.

* AntidoteEffect: HealingPotion type items made with alchemy restore set amounts of HP, with the best ones going up to 2000 hit points' worth. However, most food restores via percentage of your maximum HP/RP, and considering your ''base'' HP cap is 65535...

* NoAntagonist: [[spoiler:There's no BigBad, no outter forces working to destroy the peaceful Sharance... [[TheirOwnWorstEnemy except Sharance's own people and the Univir Settlement]]. One could call Aquaticus, who robbed Micah of his memories and (quite literally) threw him on Sharance an antagonist, but he's a WellIntentionedExtremist at worst once he explains the reason he's done this to Micah.]]

* GlassCannon: Some of the villager companions can be this. They are not so much fragile (since the bosses hit you just about as hard) but their AI is so much dumber than the player (hopefully) that they just stand there and get hit. Thanks to an accessory called the "Sun Pendant", though, some villagers can do insane damage (the pendent doubles their damage).

** Villagers have their food preferences and some foods have DoubleEdgedBuff effects, but the negative effects will not trigger if said food is liked by them (i.e: Risotto will not decrease Collette's VIT and Prelude to Love will not reduce Pia's Max HP).

* BottomlessBladder: Partially averted. While you don't ''have'' to do these things, there are skills that reward you for making your character live a healthy life: eating well, getting lots of exercise, sleeping early, so on and so forth.