Video Game / Rune Factory 3

An Adventure That Will Transform You

The third installment in the main Rune Factory series, this game was released by Natsume in North America on November 9th 2010. It also makes significant improvements to combat, stats, and farming systems, as well as expanding on the message board requests introduced in Rune Factory 2.

One night during a storm, a mysterious golden-fleeced wooly collapses in front of the house of a young girl, Shara. Against her grandfather's wishes, she takes in the wooly for the night- but when morning comes around, the wooly transforms into a young man, Micah. Having no memory of who he is or what he's supposed to be doing, he escapes Shara's house, only to run into her - and a silent young woman named 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.

During the September 13th, 2022 Nintendo Direct it was announced that an Updated Re-release, Rune Factory 3 Special, would be releasing on the Nintendo Switch. Special released on March 2nd, 2023 in Japan and worldwide on September 5th, 2023 (For Switch and PC).

Has a character sheet that is in need of contributions. Please make sure to add any character related trope there.

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From this game, we get examples of:

• A Master Makes Their Own Tools: Not enforced, but the best gear to take on the Brutal Bonus Level must be crafted by you instead of bought. Additionally upgrades can be only done by your crafting stations.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: 10,000. For comparison, most players will probably finish the main quest well before reaching triple digits, and the final Bonus Dungeon has a suggested level of 220. In addition, each individual status (STR, VIT, INT) has a visible cap of 999, but actually keeps increasing beyond that, up to a maximum of 65,536.
• Achievement System: The right-side ladder inside your house leads to a place where trophies from festivals, among other achievements, will be stored. Some of them can be used to replay festival mini-games.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Your "Poison" skill goes up every time you get poisoned (or inflict poison on an 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.
• Action Mom: Shino, and Hazel to a certain degree. Also, your spouse.
• Adaptational Personality Change: The Special remaster makes several of the characters Lighter and Softer than in the original.
  • Micah's insults towards the townspeople are massively scaled back, with him tending to express surprise at their wackiness or wondering if he's going crazy, rather than acting like a Jerkass right to their faces.
  • Shara's random, unprovoked mocking/teasing of Micah that made her unpopular in the original version is removed in favor of her being more gentle and kind with him.
  • Kuruna's venting about humans is scaled back to focus more on her sheltered and weighty upbringing, and she no longer calls Micah a traitor for revealing his identity.
  • Sakuya is still obsessed with money, but she's more friendly and easygoing with Micah, and focuses more on her feelings for him instead of singlemindedly chasing her next big score.
  • Some of Sofia's more, erm, scathing dialogue was also toned down considerably compared to the original version.
  • Conversely, Karina's inner monologues (or whispers) become snarkier and snippier than they were in the original version.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: The Sol Terrano desert. It also has one with a big flower that Kuruna asks for and ends up attracting a Skelefang to the Desert Settlement.
• And Your Reward Is Parenthood: After getting married, you can have up to three children, the highest number in the franchise. They can have several varying personalities, but don't have the same Relationship Values as other townsfolk.
• An Interior Designer Is You: You can buy various decorations for your home from Evelyn. If you decide you don't want them, you get rid of them by whacking them with your weapon, which turns them into wood.
• Anti-Debuff: Certain foods help whoever eats them resist Status Effects. Eating food also overrides any positive or negative boost from the previous food as well.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Transform, Teleport, and Cure Seal all work while you are sealed, so you can still avoid getting knocked out if things go sour and you get sealed. Poison also doesn't knock you completely out, so you can wait until you get some RP-recovering items (to cast a curing spell), an antidote herb or antidote, or until one of the two witches decide to work to take care of the poison. Just don't do something stupid like go exploring a dungeon...
  • Special remaster gave a third upgrade to the refrigerator and chests which gives them vastly increased storage capacity compared to the original game.
• Antidote Effect: Healing Potion 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 65,535...
• Apologetic Attacker: Raven and Shara routinely apologise to the monsters they're beating up. The former does it only in the Japanese version or Special, though.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Quite well-done for a DS game. Villagers will go about their usual daily business according to who they are; it's not uncommon to find Carmen or Carlos fishing, for example, Raven writing in her diary, Rusk and Collette serving in the restaurant, or Marian at her cauldron. Other more generic actions include going for walks in the safe areas of the dungeons, having conversations with other villagers (although you fill in the blanks) and greeting you when you walk by.
• Artificial Stupidity: NPC allies will attack enemies even with attacks that would do no damage or downright heal them. They also make no effort to preserve any chests you find, so if you come across one you have to be fast lest they break them before you can claim its contents.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Some of the more aggressive AI NPCs (Raven, Zaid) will charge in with little regard for their safety. Makes keeping them up for battle difficult without good protective accessories (and maybe a Sun Pendant on Micah).
• Attack Drone: Most of the active seeds are essentially this, only they're plants.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Skelefang takes no damage from attacks until you completely destroy its body, exposing the core for a few moments while its body regenerates (and making it perform its Limit Break).
• Audience Surrogate: Micah, the player character. He's an amnesiac traveler that just arrived in town, has no idea what he's doing there and is completely unaware of the quirky population of Sharance.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The weapon ultimate attacks look flashy, deal a lot of damage and some give you invincibility for their durations. The problem is that you must perform a rather long combo to trigger them and against groups of enemies or most bosses this leaves you wide open for attacks.
  • The boss abilities of the last few bosses you can collect consume too much RP to be used often, although, to their credit, they can clear the screen of all non-boss enemies. And by the time you have enough RP to overcome usage issues, slow charge time becomes a bigger one (You're slowed to walking speed while charging, even while wearing Rocket Shoes, though you can still dash). Though the charge time issue can be mitigated with a Magic Ring (halves charge time).
  • Golden crops on their own. Their seeds are only sold in the Flea Market festival by Hazel and their crops are prohibitively expensive to buy from the general store for any budding farmer on the first year and their selling prices are barely on par with the flowers available after clearing Vale River.
• Beef Gate: You're free to roam any of the areas around Sharance as you'd like, but going anywhere besides Privera without preparation might get you a swift forced trip to the clinic.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Pia and Sakuya have one to attract customers.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • 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.
  • In terms of combat Power Wave is a Rune Ability that's available from start sold at Miyako Inn for a fair price. While not very flashy it doesn't consume a lot of RP and can be used to hit enemies from safe distances while magic can be costly early on.
  • Gust is another basic Rune Ability available from start. It makes Micah leap towards the direction he's facing and strike an enemy which doesn't sound like much, but it covers a rather large distance and can be used to either close in the distance against skittish enemies or leap away from danger when your dash won't do.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Sharance Maze under your home. As a bonus, levels will changes every time you enter.
• Boss Arena Urgency: If you don't defeat Death Wall fast enough, it will eventually crush you.
• Boss Rush: Entering the last two Bonus Dungeons while wearing the Holy Rosary accessory^note Normally, it just blocks the spawning of non-boss enemies in an area turns them into this, as the first room you enter will contain a boss and the warp to the next level.
• But Thou Must!:
  • You can't refuse Shara when she wants to show you around your new home. Or explain the bulletin board.
  • One of Sofia's requests ends up with a decision where both options quite literally mean the same thing.
  • If you're going after Sakuya, you are going to get shaved for your golden wool, and no amount of arguing will deter her.
    Micah: It's gonna be a cold night tonight...
  • If you accept Daria's mission to find the Golden Wooly, you're given two choices: Trying to make a random distraction or revealing your secret. The first one never works, no matter how many times you try.
• Bragging Rights Reward: You can collect a number of trophies in the trophy room for completing certain achievements. Most are useless, but some serve as in-game options, such as to view the end credits again.
  • Hard/Hell Mode: The monsters are tougher, but you get the same rewards for defeating them: same XP, same monster drops...
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Daria seems quite fond of this, doing it on more than one occasion. In one of her conversations, she will exclaim "My art is calling me!", prompting two choices. Choosing the second will make her say something along the lines of, "Please choose the first one, next time..."
  • There's one conversation where Daria tells you her new name, which is so long that it goes off the edge of the text box. Micah's response? "It doesn't even fit..." ^note Sadly, this was removed in Special
  • During the farming tutorial, Shara runs up to the upper-left corner and jumps to indicate where your HP and RP gauges are, to which Micah responds with "I can't see them." Shara's response to that? "You can't see them when you're talking to people."
  • Seriously, whenever someone tells you how to do something by pressing the buttons on your DS, they're pretty much demolishing the wall.
• Came from the Sky: How Micah makes his debut in the game. It's loud enough to alert Shara too.
• Can't Catch Up: A potential problem with how many people are available for you to invite to party up and the fact there is no Leaked Experience for townspeople. Gifting them a Star Pendant can help hasten their level growth so they can catch up to Micah, though. Levelizers can also help them catch up to you, provided you can craft them in bulk or are obscenely rich to buy lots of them from Yue.
• Cast from Hit Points: 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 only three actions.
• Cast Full of Crazy: Rune Factory 3 is rather known for its colorful cast of quirky characters. We have a father and daughter perpetually stuck in Opposite Day and her sister that uses fish and food to make clothes, a CloudCuckoolander mermaid, a young girl prone to biting when she gets nervous, an absent minded blacksmith dwarf and his taciturn aide/adopted daughter, a Mad Doctor witch-in-training, a Mad Artist elf obsessed with art and rainbows, Large Ham fisher siblings, a chronically lazy shopkeeper, among many others.
• Catchphrase:
  • Daria's RAINBOW!
  • Pia's "Hey-ho" and "La-la-la".
  • Collette's "Heya".
• Chain of Deals: The Flea Market has some these around and you can get your hands on some rare items this way.
• Character Customization: Taken to obscene lengths. While the first two games had "fight monsters to gain EXP to raise stats," and skills weren't that important, what you do in this game will seriously impact how your character turns out. While skills only decreased RP consumption in the other games, in this one every skill is tied to at least one stat, and levelling has a limited ability to impact your stats. Oh, and did I mention there are an obscene number of skills, even one for walking and another that represents how well-fed you are? Add that to an enormous number of effects your equipment can have on you and your enemies, and you're set. Then there are your companions to consider...
• Charged Attack: More important for staves than other weapons, since that's how you use the spells you've imbued into it by way of monster drops.
• Child of Two Worlds: Micah is half-human/half-monster. Because of this, he is able to be accepted by the (mostly) humans of Sharance Village and the monsters of the Unvir settlement and help reunite them. Which was Aquaticus' plan all along.
• Collision Damage: Largely averted. Running into certain monsters that are obviously trying to stomp you still causes damage. However, using Gust skill to collide with Skelefang when he rushes at you reveals its core in one hit.
• Combos: You can chain your attacks with magic or Rune Abilities to increase your damage output.

• Continuity Nod: Talk to the travelers passing through town, and they'll make references to the earlier games.
  • As a nod to the tradition of the first Harvest Moon game of peeking at girls' diaries to find out how they feel about you, Raven keeps a diary on her dresser that has its contents change as you up her Relationship Values. Attempting to read it while she's around makes her really, really mad. As a joke, Gaius has one too, but he never writes anything in it.
    • Karina also keeps a diary in her room, however due to her extreme laziness, she stops writing in it after the first paragraph.
    • Sherman has one, too, but you can't make any sense of the words in it. If he's in the room when you look at it he mentions being notes and plans on how to make more people visit Sharance.
  • Collette mentions Herman, another member of the De Sainte-Coquille family visiting her family restaurant. When she talks about him, his curled blonde hair and huge appettite, Micah misunderstands and thinks she's talking about herself.
  • Evelyn makes a vague reference to Raguna and Kyle (protagonists of the first two installments) in the English version of the game: "Yeah, and I guess amnesiacs are a dime a dozen around these parts. You're not the first!"
  • Sofia mentions visiting Alvarna and how a building there has a golden turnip which befuddles Micah.
  • Yue from the previous game makes an appearance as well. She sells all sort of items in a randomized inventory, not limited just to monster drops like Sakuya's store. Although she cannot be befriended she will give positive reactions to Radishes and Aquamarines, the same items she liked in Rune Factory 2.
  • 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 Lover/Throbby Snapper (which was the item you needed to propose to her in Rune Factory 1).
  • 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, and she also mentions Lute, who visits Trampoli to sell his wares, who's also a painter.
  • Sometimes you can come across a certain tourist NPC called Mistress Rutpin^note anagram for Turnip, possibly the same NPC that would appear in Selphia as "Mistress Trupin", who is all but stated to be Mist that makes small talk about several things of past games.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses are immune to Status Effects and Failed and Disastrous Dishes (Super Fails). They, however, are not immune to debuffing things like Oil.
• Counter-Attack: The Naive Blade, a Longsword Rune Ability, does this.
• Critical Existence Failure: Your character starts to pant and look tired when low on HP/RP, but this is only cosmetic.
• Critical Hit: There are some skills which guarantee this, and various ways to up your chances of getting one. Different weapon types have different base critical chances, and magic can now score these as well. You can also critically heal.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: You can't really woo Kuruna until after the Unity Festival (because most of her Heart Events won't occur until afterwards). To trigger the Unity Festival, you have to raise another girl's heart level to marriage level first. You have to play Casanova to marry Kuruna.
• Curtains Match the Window: Collette, Sofia, Monica, and Evelyn, if the official artwork has anything to say about it. Also, Pia sorta counts, too.
• Cuteness Proximity: A good number of people are smitten by Micah's wooly form.
• A Day in the Limelight: Special remaster brings back the "Another Episode" Picture Drama which focuses on a day of one of the marriageable girls and Micah.
• Dating Sim: Although the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games have always included elements of this, now you can take your love interests on actual dates.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Some items, like Oil, will increase the amount of damage enemies take from a certain element.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In Special remaster dashing is assigned to its own button instead of needing you to quickly double-tap a direction twice, but unlike Rune Factory 4 dash attacks can still be used just by running a bit around and attacking which can trip you up a bit.
  • Another change was the buttons for "Buy" and "Reset" in shops were swapped from Rune Factory 4 Special (which was released years prior to 3 Special).
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Compared to the previous games, which would net you a game over if you fainted in a dungeon, losing your money seems a reasonable alternative.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The aptly named "Millionstrike" Rune Ability delivers a flurry of attacks. Conversely enemies can do the same with attacks that hit you multiple times.
• Determinator: You cannot lose against Aquaticus' ultimate attack. Even at 0 HP, you simply shrug off his attacks until you hit him. Sadly, this does not happen in the rematch, for obvious reasons.
• Developers' Desired Date: This is averted in the first opening, but the second one focuses greatly on Shara, the young woman who finds Micah injured at the beginning of the game. Her everyday headgear, which is her most visible piece of clothing in most shots of her, is an item made out of flower ornaments and semi-transparent white fabric that wouldn't be out of place as part of a wedding outfit.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Micah will refuse to grab any orb after the boss fights if he has a villager in his party.
  • If you take Sakuya with you to the end of Oddward Valley after the incident where her food gets stolen you'll get a slightly different piece of dialogue upon reaching the boss room.
  • After completing Raven's final request, she can be brought to the Univir settlement in her phoenix form even before the Unity Festival takes place, due to being obviously non-human.
  • There are several requests, especially from bachelorettes, that has Micah doing a rather dramatic reveal of his half-monster heritage... And most of them change after the Unity Festival when Micah outs his identity to the entire populace of Sharance— for instance, one of Sakuya's request ends up with Micah unwittingly morphing into his Wooly form which would cause some trouble for him, but after the Unity Festival Sakuya only wonders why Micah changed into his monster form. The reactions of people during Micah's big reveal also varies whether they knew beforehand if Micah was the Golden Wooly or not.
• Dialogue Tree: Sometimes you're given the option to choose Micah's answer. You can talk to the person again if you want to see their reaction if you pick the other option too.
• Die, Chair, Die!: You can chop up your furniture, signs, shipment boxes, save points, and even the orbs you acquire throughout the storyline. Oh, and if you so much as sneeze on a treasure chest, it and its contents are destroyed. Pretty annoying if you have a weapon with a large range or have a dumb AI companion...
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Some of the townsfolk hold strong weapons for early game and if you befriend them early on they can easily solo the first bosses with very little problem.
    • Shino stands out; she starts at Level 25 with a very strong weapon for early game and she also has a very aggressive AI. Befriending her is easy as one of her favorite gifts are Mushrooms of any kind which are very easy to find in Privera Forest, the first dungeon.
    • 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. Once you get a Pot you can easily make one of his favorite gifts, Hot Chocolate, which requires only one Chocolate.
    • 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 Rice Ball/Onigiri a low level recipe which needs only one Rice as cooking ingredient and doesn't even require any cooking utensils to make.
  • Fishing can give you a hefty boost in funds early on if your reactions are good enough. Even with low Fishing and a Cheap Pole you can fish a Love/Throbby Snapper at Miyako Inn's pond which sells for a pretty penny from early to mid-game. With a handful of these you can get your hands on some of Gaius' bargain items and get stronger equipment before unlocking the crafting stations.
  • Milks from high FP Buffamoos sell for quite a large sum for early to mid game. You can befriend Buffamoos^note gift Buffamoos their own Milk to quickly raise their friendship as soon as you clear Privera Forest, which can be done as early as the first week, and ask Raven/Gaius to build a monster stable when you have the money and lumber requirements.
  • The Bonus Dungeons in the Sharance Tree, available once you clear Privera Forest, can give you a lot of goodies, especially if you get lucky with the rare chests.
  • Yue's items are completely random and she might sell very strong weapons or magic especially for early game. While you might burn most of your funds it buying a single thing from her, it can be worth the trouble.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: 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.
• Double-Edged Buff: Several cooked foods can increase one status and lower another, but these effects tend to be negligible. A few of them stand out, however:
  • The Formuade 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.
  • Prelude to Love gives you 50% resistance against every damage source for 3 in-game hours, but it will also cut your HP by 1/2.
• Dragged into Drag: Averted, but some people express interest in seeing Micah in "other clothes". Shino attempts to make Micah dress a girl's clothing, but Micah isn't amused and quickly nopes out of it. Checking the mirror in Evelyn's boutique will also have her wondering if Micah wants to test something, only to find out she only has dresses there.
• Dual Boss: The Twin lions Crimsone and Amaranthine (Hinoe and Kinoto). The former being more about physical power and the latter specializing in magic abilities.
• Dual Wielding: Introduced in this game. Effectiveness does remain in question, though. While dual swords are the fastest weapon, using them means you get no benefit from a shield, whereas using even a two-handed weapon only halves the stats you gain from a shield.
• Dub Name Change: Many names were changed from their original. Conversely, Rusk was left alone, despite his family's dessert naming (Chocolat and Gluten).
  • Sia —> Shara
  • Persia —> Pia
  • Donchacos —> Sherman
  • Karin —> Karina
  • Elisa —> Evelyn
  • Chocolat —> Collette
  • Gluten —> Blaise
  • Marion —> Marian
  • Toona —> Raven
  • Gadzhi —> Gaius
  • Shinonome —> Shino
  • Dahlia —> Daria
  • Zeze —> Zaid
    • Monster Village has also undergone a drastic name change, now becoming Univir instead. Additionally, Sialens has become Sharance.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The difficulty of Mystery Maze, the last area in the Sharance Maze, scales with your level and stats. Its initial recommended level is still fairly high at 220, but the tougher you and your party member becomes so does the Mystery Maze.
• Early Game Hell: Compared to the first two games the early parts of 3 are tougher with enemies easily being able to knock you out and you having very little RP.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Many of the cooked foodstuff restores HP and RP based on a percentage instead of a fixed amount. The crafting system is also much simpler compared to Rune Factory 4 and Rune Factory 5 with no Diminishing Returns for Balance for using the same type of item when upgrading weapons and no crossforging or Light Ores to mix up weapon stats.
• Easy Level Trick: Having a Rosary equipped before entering the Sharance Maze levels will cause it to only have rooms with mini-bosses and bosses which can be helpful to quickly farm their rare item drops.
• Edible Theme Naming: All in the same family, we have Chocolat (French for chocolate), Rusk (a dry, hard biscuit), and Gluten (a composite of two proteins found in grain, often used in breads and the like). Mais (which resembles "maize," or the term for corn in some countries, like Italy) can also count too. All of these were Lost in Translation except for Rusk; see Dub Name Change above.
• Elite Mook: The guardians at the end of every non-boss level of the Sharance Maze.
• Empty Levels: 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 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.
• Engagement Challenge: Aquaticus/Akhnabet, Native Dragon God of Water, challenges you to a duel to prove your love for your fianceé.
• Even the Guys Want Him: The protagonist of the story, Micah (or whatever you name him) absolutely matches the trope. Just look at him!◊. If you give Carlos his favorite gift on his birthday, he asks if he can kiss you. Gaius also hints at this when you give him something he likes.
• Evil Laugh: Once you reach the story point in Vale River you'll hear the boss cackling in a distance.
• Evolving Attack: Leveling your fighting skills increases the length of your weapon combo and can add associated effects.
• Express Delivery: It takes a matter of days from your wife discovering she's pregnant to the actual birth. And this happens THREE times, a year apart each occurrence. Ouch.
• Family Business: A very common thing in Sharance:
  • Blaise's diner is ran by him and his children: Blaise is the head chef, Collette the sous chef (and waitress) and Rusk is the pastry chef.
  • Miyako Inn is ran by Shino and her daughters with Sakuya selling uncommon items (i.e: monster loot) as souvenirs and Pia helping with the counter and the baths.
  • The Witch's Cauldron, Sharance's apothecary, is ran by Marian, but her grandmother, Marjorie, keeps a close eye on her making sure she doesn't go too far with her shenanigans.
  • Blacksmith's, Gaius' shop, is ran by him and his protegé/adopted daughter Raven.
  • Fantastic Flowers, Wells' flower shop, is ran by him and Shara with Monica also occasionally helping.
  • Diamond General Store is ran by Hazel with Karina's (lazy) help.
• Fantastic Racism: The main plotline is about trying to bring humans and the Univir together. To the storyline's credit, the Univir are just as bad as the humans themselves.
• Fanservice: Almost all the villagers have their own swimsuits. Even those who live in the desert. Seems Neverland and Marvelous didn't forget the ladies this time round. Carlos, anyone?
• Freaky Is Cool: Sofia is well-liked for her quirky way of speaking having the tendency to say the opposite of what she means.
• Forgets to Eat: Gaius sometimes spends days at the forge. It takes until he runs out of materials or get distracted by Raven for him to just pass out just so Raven can get him to sleep. To a lesser extent, one of Daria's requests has you get her food because she's so hungry from working on her art that she can't get any herself.
• Foreshadowing: There are people in Sharance that are obviously not entirely human (Pia, Daria and Gaius) and despite Wells' bias against the univir he never speaks ill of them. It more or less signalizes that despite his strong dislike of the univir Wells is far more tolerant than he seems and in fact is the first to accept and any ideias that would mend the relationship between them and the humans.
• Foregone Victory: Aquaticus' last attack seems like a Hopeless Boss Fight at first, until you realise you can't faint while you waddle up and smack him. If you rematch him, he can use this attack normally. Better have a water ring ready.
• Full-Contact Magic: Screw Rock and Avengerock are two magic spells that requires you to be close to enemies to hit them.
• Gambit Roulette: The entire plot of the game turns out to be an elaborate plot by the Dragon God Aquaticus to tear down the racial barriers between Humans and Monsters and prevent the region from withering away and dying. The problem is that beyond choosing someone, Aquaticus had no idea how this person would act or react especially given the feud between both races. Micah was chosen due to his kindess and being half-human, half-monster, but Aquaticus ultimately reveals that even he wasn't certain his plan would work.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Villagers can faint, but leave the map you're on and they'll revive themselves with one HP. Healing them via magic also revives them. Sadly, this doesn't apply elsewhere—fainted monsters will be returned to your barn, and exhausted active seeds will revert to their seed form and have to be placed in your backpack overnight before they can be used again.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Even after the Unity Festival, Kurana still refers to humans as the "vile hornless" in certain quests that were available from before the festival. Also, you can still "reveal" your Wooly form to some characters even after revealing it to the entire town.
• Gameplay Automation: Just like previous games you can asign befriended monsters to water and harvest ripe crops for you. You can also task them with planting random seeds if you have money to pay them as well.
• Giant Mook: Giant mushrooms. And ducks. And woolies. And trolls.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: Most of the repeatable message board quests are this, along with 20 Bear Asses. Though to prove they're not so lazy, sometimes the villagers go out with you in search of what they want. And sometimes they want to give you their inventory items, so what goes around comes around.
• Glass Cannon: 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 ^note if equipped on Micah it gives villager party members a hefty boost in statuses and makes their AI much more aggressive, though, some villagers can do insane damage.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Almost every villager can be one, with a few exceptions.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Villagers have their food preferences and some foods have Double-Edged Buff 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.
  • Upgrading Staves with certain monster materials changes the property of their charged attack, but the game makes no effort to let you know about it and one might only discover by accident fooling around.
  • A very fast way to increase your FP with monsters and get higher level materials from them is to give them gifts, but what they love is never mentioned. While their favorite gift is usually what they produce, or an item they drop when defeated, the only way to find out is by trial and error.
  • Monsters will have their statuses permanently increased if you feed them cooked food and statuses vary according the tool you've used to make the food.
  • Winning the Catch the Most Squid festival is mostly a matter of luck, but the Miyako Inn's pond has a higher-than-average squid population which helps you have better odds of winning, but there's no way you'd know this unless you've been fishing a lot everywhere.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: The villagers will complain if you don't talk to them for a while, asking if you're busy, if you hate them, that you don't respect the elderly, etc, etc.
  • Some people were guilted into marrying Raven, because they were worried she would remain alone and miserable forever if you didn't. Marry someone else and take a peek at Raven's diary. Even Micah feels it.
• Half-Human Hybrid: You, Raven, Pia, and all the horned people in Univir Village.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: 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.
• Harder Than Hard: Like in Rune Factory 4 Special, Hell difficulty was introduced in Rune Factory 3 Special making every enemy much tougher and hit harder.
• Healing Spring: As with the earlier games, the baths.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Some spells and Rune Abilities. The last move of your basic weapon combos tend to be this.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: A common tactic employed against nastier bosses or when they Turn Red and windows to hit them safely become much smaller. Some magic spells and Rune Abilities are perfect for this.
• Homing Projectile: Sonic Wind and Earth Spike both homes on the closest enemy. Usable both by the player, some party members and monsters.
• Hover Board: The leaf slider active seed, used for getting across water. It also goes on land.
• Hyperspace Mallet: Daria's default weapon.
• I Call Her "Vera": Zaid calls his cutlass "Mr. Slice" or "Sunderer" in Special.
• Improbable Weapon User: 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. In fact, you're forced to use a hoe as a weapon during the tutorial.
  • Pia and Collette's default weapons are a giant fish and lollipop respectively.
  • There are joke weapons of every type, the giant fish is a greatsword and the lollipop is an axe. Gift them a different weapon of their chosen type and they will use it.
  • Shara and Carmen use a watering can and fishing rod as well.
  • Some of the player's options for weapons include a spoon, backscratchers, a carrot, a daikon radish, and a baseball bat. Not to mention the Twin Leeks.

• Inconsistent Spelling: In the original Japanese, Mais (Micah) has been variously Anglicized as Maisu, Mice, and, well, Mais. Sia (Shara) is occasionally referred to as Shia. Toona (Raven) is occasionally referred to as Touna, and Cururufa (Kuruna) is occasionally referred to as Klurufa, Kururufa, or Clurufa. Then there's Gadzhi (Gaius), who is at times referred to as Gaji. Finally, there's Elisa (Evelyn), who is often referred to as Eliza.
• Indestructible Edible: You can find food items in treasure chests, throw them on the ground, leave them there for days (even having a child afterwards), and they don't go bad. Fish found in treasure chests are still alive and skipping, as though freshly caught.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Made worse by the fact that they randomly appear, and vanish without a trace if you leave the map they're on.
• In-Universe Game Clock: This time it runs considerably faster than the previous games.
• Invulnerable Attack: Some of the ultimate attack from weapons (Short Swords, Greatswords) make you invincible for the duration. You're still vulnerable once it ends, though.
  • The dual-sword, short sword, and wooly kung-fu are fast enough to make button smashing viable. Wooly throws do make you invincible during their animation but the recover time on some throws are so long that you are almost guaranteed to get hit if you are surrounded.
  • The spear makes you invincible during the combo, when you spin the spear to shortly after the attack finishes.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: A humorous example happens when Micah helps Sakuya (during a request where she was very insistent that she didn't want Micah's aid) and then continues her requests after the Unity Festival. Sakuya will mentions having seeing a Wooly helping her get something, but Micah will let slip asking why would a golden wooly do that... but Sakuya never mentioned it was a golden wooly and she quickly deduces it was Micah who helped her. And as punishment she asks Micah to give her some golden wolly fleece (like it would happen normally) much to Micah's chagrin.
• Item Crafting: Greatly improved from the previous games. In addition, upgrading equipment with various items can improve stats, change elemental affinities and confer special abilities.
• Jerk Ass God: Aquaticus, the Dragon God of Water. He forces Micah to be the driving force of his Gambit Roulette and Micah's reward for seeing it through is either to leave his past unremembered for good or to leave his new life, and bride, behind for good. Jerk.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: That Levelizer you want to sell? 1,000G. The Levelizer you want to buy? 150,000G.
• Kiai: Not exclusive to Micah, but most townsfolk also let out battle grunts when fighting alongside him.
• Kill Enemies to Open: During the story Oddward Valley and Vale River have a few parts that forces the player to defeat all monsters to proceed. Vale River takes it up a notch forcing you to also break the monster gates as well.
• Lampshade Hanging: Particularly, concerning how many characters can fit in a dialogue box:
  Daria: Did you know, [Micah], the longer an artist's name is, the better they are?
  Micah: Is that true?
  Daria: That's why I'm changing my name. Announcing: [Daria] Gorgeous Turnip Rainbow Nice Ambiti
  Micah: It doesn't even fit...
  • One of Pia's requests requires you to obtain a strong string and give it to her. The quest reward? The exact same strong string you just gave to her. This does not go without comment.
  • One NPC lampshades how nearly every Rune Factory game has an amnesiac protagonist stating that "amnesiacs are a dime a dozen around these parts".
• Last Chance Hit Point: As with Acquired Poison Immunity, you can build up a resistance to being KO'ed or getting downed by One-Hit KO blows. Can save your bacon when fighting the higher level Bonus Dungeon bosses.
• Leaked Experience: Monsters in your barns will receive a portion of the EXP from other enemies you defeat as well. Good for raising them equally and getting larger versions of certain items. However townsfolk do not get any form of leaked experience.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Micah thinks that Karina and Hazel are a lot alike, the two of them both immediately yell at him that they aren't. Keep in mind Micah doesn't actually say this. Then again Hazel leans on the wall on multiple occasions and Karina has a second sentence (in a thought bubble) after every sentence or two.
• Level Grinding: Largely averted, as levels have a reduced impact on your stats this time round. You can raise your stats and skills by collecting rune spirits and rune orbs that appear when you harvest crops. However, you must have gained a skill through actually performing the associated action (eg. swinging a hoe for farming) to be able to raise it through rune orbs.
  • Levels are still (somewhat) important for party members as levels are the most reasonable way to build up their HP so they can keep up with you without dying in one or two hits.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Not directly. When their FP gets to 3 you can invite them to accompany you to dungeons, but they'll leave at 7PM. Once it reaches 7 they'll stick around even past 7PM, for bachelorettes it also means you can take them to one of the four scenic spots around Sharance for a date.
• Like Brother and Sister: Gaius and Raven's relationship is something between this and father/daughter.
• Limited Wardrobe: Largely averted. You can buy a large number of different outfits from Evelyn, and the other villagers change into their swimsuits when they go to the beach during summer. The minor characters, though, still suffer from this.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Battle Requests requires you to defeat a number of a certain monster and while this usually isn't a problem, sometimes you are given the task of defeating a monster that doesn't spawn very often, or that spawn rarely in one specific screen, like Master Trolls in Sol Terrano Desert.
  • When you ship a monster drop Sakuya may sell them in her shop at Miyako Inn, but her selection is always randomized. Similarly Yue sells a bit of everything in the game with a few expections, but due to that Yue is even more random and to complicate things further Yue visits Sharance randomly.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields are present as usual. However only a few select weapons like Shortswords, Staves, Sickles, and Watering Pots will give you their full bonuses. Any other weapon, two-handed weapons, will cut their defensive benefits by half.
• Luring in Prey: You have to use a fried/grilled char to lure out the bosses of Oddward Valley, Crimsone and Amaranthine (Hinoe and Kinoto), in to fight. It happens to be their favorite food, so much so that they've been attacking the villagers to get at it.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The happy song Pia hums all day? It's titled "death to all squids".
• Mad Scientist: Marian appears to be this when it comes to medicines, having no ethical qualms about using you and Collette as test subjects. Evelyn seems to be similarly obsessed with her fashion designing.
  • Marian will give you "tea" in some of her requests that will turn you into her suddenly-effeminate willing servant. Things you'll then say will usually end with a star or a music note. Her madness goes up when you continue this quest and learn that she wants you to hold down villagers while she tests her newly-made medicine on them. There's also the time she tries to force-feed Micah an experimental potion to change his gender...
• Magikarp Power:
  • At start most villagers aren't very powerful and can go down quickly compared to you, but get them good equipment and equip Micah with a Sun Pendant and they'll slaughter anything with about the same efficiency any player would.
  • In terms of farming every flower starts with unimpressive selling prices barely on par with crops, but if you tend to them and level the seeds up their price quickly overtakes most crops— while a Level 10 crop will increase the price up to (usually) x2, most flowers at Level 10 have their prices upgraded to x5.
• Man-Eating Plant: One of the active seeds grows into this sort of plant. Thankfully, it eats enemy monsters.
  • There are many of these in harder areas of the Sol Terrano desert that do damage the player and any partner upon contact.
• Marathon Level: The last area of the Sharance Maze, with twenty levels and ten bosses. Pack lots of food and be ready to spend possibly entire in-game days in it.
• Marshmallow Hell: Pia gives you one. And yet, afterwards you're the one who gets pictured as a pervert.
• Mascot Mook: The woolies.
• May Fly December Romance: If you marry Kuruna, who is hundreds of years old.
  • Daria also frets over her marriage to Micah, as she's already presumably much older than him and might outlive him.
• Meaningful Name: Sialens, the original Japanese name for the town in which the game takes place, is the Welsh word for "challenge."
• Mercy Invincibility: Taken out for both you and your enemies. The only time you're invincible to enemy attacks as a result of being hit is when you've been knocked down and are recovering. Makes Spam Attack particularly dangerous.
• Mega Manning: Upgrading staves with monster drops can allow you to use monster abilities. This works even for bosses, although boss abilities tend to cost large amounts of RP.
• Mermaid Problem: Pia gets around this by only gaining her fish tail when she comes into contact with water, though she notes that she has to be careful washing the baths because of this.
• Money for Nothing: Money isn't the case as the game has Money Sink things worth investing into, but played straight with Lumber. Once you get all furniture upgrades from Diamond General Store and Monster Barns from the Blacksmith there absolutely no use for it.
• Money Sink: Sakuya's shop is a prime money sink if you have plenty of gold and doesn't feel like farming boss items, ones which buying more than one can get very expensive very fast. Yue's shop is another one, she sells all sorts of random goodies and one of them is Levelizers, which cost 150,000 a pop.
• Monster Allies: A staple of the series, only this time you befriend them by bribing them with food.
• Monster Town: The Univir Desert Settlement (aka Monster Village). Attempting to enter while in human form (before the Unity Festival) gets you evicted in short order.
• Motive Decay: Turns out none of the sides, human or univir, really knows how the entire conflict started, but neither side is willing to take the first step in making amends either. Until Micah comes along and finds out about the Unity Festival.
• Mook Chivalry: Painfully averted. If enemies surround you nothing stops them from attacking you all at once with no pause for you to escape. This is particularly dangerous in Sharance Maze levels where every enemy has beefed up statuses.
• Mook Maker: The monster portals. Depending on their colors they can drop specific elemental crystals, and portals in higher-level areas take no damage from some or even all elements.
• Nerf Arm: Some weapons you can craft include backscratchers, vegetables and pitchforks. The game readily acknowledges this by having these weapons produce little turnips and a "pop" sound upon hitting an enemy, despite them being just as effective as other weapons.
• No Antagonist: There's no Big Bad, no outter forces working to destroy the peaceful Sharance... except Sharance's own people and the Univir Settlement with their feud (unbeknownst to them, however). One could call Aquaticus, who robbed Micah of his memories and (quite literally) threw him in Sharance the antagonist, but he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst once he explains the reason he's done this to Micah.
• Non-Idle Rich: All members of De Sainte-Coquille family all have occupations in Sharance. Sherman is involved in getting what is needed for certain town events. Evelyn is a clothier. Sofia helps her father ship the local produce (including yours) out of town, and can be seen at the blacksmith's and general store while having good knowledge about shopkeeping.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Failed and Disastrous Dishes (Super Fails) are meant to be used as some sort of Poison Mushroom to cripple enemies, but you can give them to Sofia not only as her loved gift, but also to heal and buff her statuses.
  • Cooked foodstuff can be used more than to heal yourself and your allies: while bosses are immune to Status Effects and the abovementioned Failed and Disastrous Dishes, they are not immune to items that would also heal them, but have also have Double-Edged Buff. One example: if you throw a Stew at the boss it'll heal them, but it'll also reduce their STR as well.
  • Some Rune Abilities like Gust, Flash Strike and Axel Disaster can be used not only to damage, but to also get away from enemies or dodge incoming attacks.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Micah says, in both versions of the game, "What was I doing again?", but the game makes no effort to keep track of any chore you were doing. However sometimes the townsfolk will talk about the current story events you're at every now and then, so you're not completely lost.
• Noob Cave: Privera Forest is the first recommended area with hostile enemies and Wells even makes sure to warn Micah that the other areas surrounding Sharance are far more dangerous. Surely enough Privera has the easiest enemies, but also teaches things the player has to know and be wary of: enemies have ranged attack, magic attacks, status effect attacks and that if you go too far ahead you'll face stronger variants of enemies, potential Beef Gates.
• Noodle Incident: Two of Sharances great unanswared mysteries: 1) Just what exactly happened when Blaise got drunk? 2) What happened to Sofia while she was being treated by Marian?
• Odd Friendship: Between Karina, Sofia and Raven. Karina is a perpetually lazy girl who rarely bothers finishing speaking what's on her mind, Raven is a no-nonsense Terse Talker and Sofia is a very outspoken, if quirky, lady of high status. All three hang out during festivals and if talked to when one is visiting the other's shop they always get along pretty well usually talking about their (surprisingly in common) interests and giving each other some advice, for work or life in general.
• Old Save Bonus: For the Special remaster if you have saves from Rune Factory 4 Special and Rune Factory 5 you'll get access to Lest and Ares' outfits respectively.
• Older Than They Look: The Univir, just like the elves, are long-lived races with lifespan that far surpasses humans.
• Only Sane Man: As a larger and larger percentage of the cast gets quirky with each game in the series, your character is probably going to end up being this.
  • Karina is this as well. Unlike Micah she seems to enjoy watching everyone else's quirks, rather than wonder at them.
• Opposite Day: Sofia and her father are perpetually in this and pepper their speech with red text that means the opposite of what it says. It gets very confusing since they don't reverse everything they say, just enough to screw with your mind. For added confusion, Sofia is the only person who loves (really!) to eat Failure Dishes and Super Failure Dishes.
• Optional Boss: All the bosses in the Sharance Maze which includes many bosses from the previous games, including Terrable and Fiersome, the final bosses of Rune Factory 1 and 2 respectively, and some of them were given a more aggressive moveset to match the faster paced combat compared to their games of origin.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: Shine and Prism Light magic grants this to the user. Shine is powerful, but breaks on the first hit, Prism on the other hand will constantly hit enemies until it wears off, however its raw power is much lower.
• Our Dwarves Are Different: Gaius is supposedly a dwarf, but he looks more like the traditional western elf.... He fits the crafter archetype to a degree, but is incredibly laid-back and friendly. Then there's Zaid, a belligerent warrior dwarf — looking similar to Gaius — who complains that the "short, bearded man" bit is a racist stereotype.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Debuting in this game are the "vegetable ghost" series of monsters. Each one holding a lantern in their right hand, wear patched-up rags, and have vegetables for heads, giving them a vaguely jack-o-lantern or scarecrow-inspired design. They come in tomato, onion, pepper, and turnip varieties.
• Parental Abandonment: No one has both of their parents. In fact, most of the characters have no parents, with no explanation. Raven at least acknowledges the fact that she never had parents, and Micah gets a flashback involving his parents having one line of dialogue each, but that's it.
• Patchwork Map: When a half-frozen river is just a short walk away from a scorching desert, it certainly seems this way.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: You can access the island on the right side of Privera as soon as you can afford to buy the Lily Pad. The bosses that spawn there can be pretty tough, but not only they can be easily beat with some preparations, but their loot can be used to beef up equipment for at least a couple levels.
• Percent Damage Attack: Failed Dishes/Super Fail (Diastrous Dish) will deal damage based on a fixed value and also debuff the target. Poison also saps the targets slowly based on a small percentage. Neither work on bosses.
• Permanently Missable Content: Averted. Plot Coupon items will appear by your bed if you manage to lose them one way or another (i.e: giving, dropping them in water). You still can craft yourself supposedly special equipment that happens to be quest rewards.
• Player Nudge: Some villagers can give you some hints about unusual tactics, like Carlos who mentions you can throw food that would normally cause you a debuff or status condition against enemies. While most foodstuff will heal them, as long as the enemy isn't immune to said condition, it will also cause a debilitating Status Effect as well.
  • What the villagers are sometimes carrying around is usually a hint of their gift preferences.
• Player Party: You can have up to one villager, one monster companion, and one active seed on your side at any one time. However, you can't have a monster and a villager with you at the same time; if you try to add a monster while you're with a villager, the villager will leave, and if you try to add a villager with a monster the villager will say that you already have a member in your party.
• Playing with Syringes: You've visited Marian? She'll be wanting to give you a shot. You pass by? She'll want to give you a shot. You leave the game while she's your companion and return? She'll want to give you a shot so you won't forget. You do other girl's requests while you're married to her? A shot is in order. Take note: that ridiculously large thing that looks like a musical instrument in her hand— THAT is her syringe.
• Pointy Ears: Raven, Kuruna, Daria, Ondorus, Zaid, and Gaius all have these.
• Poison Mushroom:
  • Some food items such as wine, oil and failed dishes can decrease your HP/RP and cause status effects. Since you can throw food to monsters in this game, it's clear they were meant to be used as attack items.
  • There are literal mushrooms that will restore HP and RP, but may have side effects, including poisoning.
• The Power of Friendship: In order for the Sharance Tree to bloom, humans and monsters must stop their Fantastic Racism and become friends. This ends up being a far more serious issue since Aquaticus mentions that were the conflict not be solved the land around the Sharance Tree would wither away.
• Power-Up Food: The main purpose of cooking. While HP/RP restoration via Hyperactive Metabolism is nice, the stat buffs that come along with it are the kicker, not to mention eating once a day ups your "well-fed" skill, which in turn permanently increases a number of your stats.
• Power-Up Letdown: 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 Double-Edged Buff like Risotto and Prelude to Love as while it'll give their bonuses it'll exacerbate their debuffs; with Risotto it'll decrease your VIT to 0 and with Prelude to Love it'll decrease your max HP by 98% at Level 10.
• Power Up Mount: You can now ride a large variety of monsters, all with their own attacks. Humanoid monsters like orcs and goblins may do the same.
• Pregnant Badass: You can take your pregnant wife adventuring with you, and she still kicks as much ass.
• Punched Across the Room: The Flash Strike and Giga Swing Rune Abilities will throw anything that isn't immune to knockback across the entire screen if it lands.
• Quirky Town: Sharance stands out even among other Rune Factory games by having a lot of really colorful people full of quirks and oddities living in it, which considering the other games, is really saying something.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Downplayed. Only a shield and weapon are visible, but a few of them really stand out. You can make it even more noticeable by changing Micah's clothes from Evelyn's clothing store too.
• Rainbow Speak: A godsend for the players who don't speak Japanese, as key items and requests are highlighted in blue. Sofia's opposite-meaning words are highlighted in red, too.
• Randomly Drops: Still around, although much, much better than the last two games.
• Randomly Generated Levels: While all areas of Sharance Maze are randomly generated, Mystery Maze, the final area, is even more random bringing out every boss for you to battle.
• Rare Candy: Various alchemy products serve this purpose, with Levelizers being the most direct example boosting one level per use. There are also Runeys (rune spirits), which increases a random status, and Rune Orbs, which increases a random skill in your skill pool. This is also how you learn new item crafting abilities: eating recipe breads.
• Recurring Boss Template: While most of the bonus bosses recycled from earlier games still have all their signature moves, they're a lot tougher and far more aggressive this time around.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Sharance Maze's bosses reuses music from previous games.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Shara and Raven have this dynamic. Shara is very friendly and receptive while Raven keeps to herself and is aloof towards strangers.
• Reduced Mana Cost: The handknit scarf has this ability, but it works only for certain actions.
• Required Party Member: Some message board requests involve this.
• Runaway Fiancé: Your chosen wife becomes this for a while just before the end of the game.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Late game combat in Sharance Maze can easily become a matter of whether you're powerful enough to kill enemies/bosses fast enough before they use their strongest attacks.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: An in-universe example- When you first enter Sol Terrano Desert, there's a little sequence with a sign kindly informing you that it's called Sol Terrano Dessert. Unfortunately, it was dry and sandy tasting.
• Sand Is Water: In one section of the Sol Terrano Desert, you can catch fish that swim through the sand below your feet.
• Secret A.I. Moves: NPCs party members can use ultimate attack of weapons without having to perform the entire combo Micah would need to. Other villagers like Shino and Evelyn can use projectile attacks that aren't available to the player either.
• Scratch Damage: Weak attacks will never do zero damage even if you do only single digits to enemies.
• Shout-Out:
  • The twin leeks weapon is a direct reference to Vocaloid's Hatsune Miku.
  • Whenever Rusk comments on his dislike of vegetables, Micah responds with a random fact that gives Rusk second thoughts. When Rusk says he hates eggplants for being soft, Micah claims that there are wizards made of eggplants in far-off kingdoms.
  • After completing Gaius' first quest to get the hammer and having him fall asleep, attempting to talk to him will yield the line "Iron, iron, everywhere, and not a drop to drink."
  • Every so often when spoken to, Sherman will sing a short ditty along the lines of "Food, ODIOUS food, CLAMMY sausage and custard!"
  • During a conversation with Collette, she talks about a popular play from the city when she was a kid, about a disembodied head that recruited five teenagers "with attitudes" to fight monsters with oils and spices. The theme song of this show? "Go, go Radish Rangers!"
  • The Safety Lance◊.
• Secret Shop: Yue's shop is never clearly advertised anywhere and she randomly shows up at Miyako Inn which can confuse new players even more.
• Shared Family Quirks:
  • One noted by Marjorie: neither Karina and Hazel are good at taking the first step in showing how much they care for each other, so they end up fighting and arguing over small things.
  • If there's one thing in common with the quirky de Sainte-Coquille family branch of Sharance is that they all have something to note about their own family members: Sofia finds Evelyn's clothes design appalling, Evelyn is concerned about her father's endless appetite and both his and Sofia's habit of opposite talk, and Sherman is puzzled by Sofia's fascination with trash items.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Collette and Rusk. Collette eats all the time and just about anything, but especially rice and vegetables. Rusk, on the other hand, is an incredibly picky eater, only liking certain sweets. The only thing they have in common is that they use the same hiding spot ( That tree in the plaza. Collette hides in it during one of Marian's requests, and Rusk hides in it during one of Collette's requests.)
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • 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 use few ingredients that are easily replenished as well.
  • Gold and Platinum Rings don't offer crazy status boosts and require only 4 Gold and 5 Platinum to craft respectively. Gold Ring gives you protection against most elements (Fire, Water, Earth and Wind), with Platinum covering Dark and Light as well. While this doesn't seem like much many of the dangerous bosses in Sharance Maze make liberal use of elemental attacks, so having it helps a lot surviving them.
  • Magic Charm accessory is excellent for anyone using both non-magic and magic attacks constantly since it will use ATK or M.ATK, whichever is stronger, for damage calculations. For some characters that use magic but have subpar INT, like Sakuya, this turns her modest Big Fire spell into something that hits on par with dedicated magic users like Karina or Rusk. And for characters with low STR, but high INT, like Pia and Shara, this makes their normal attacks hit as hard as Raven or Gaius'.
• Sprint Shoes: Ghost Boots will increase your walking speed. Rocket Wings are in upgraded version and will double your speed.
• Starfish Language: The monster language. While not explored in-depth it's noticeable when Micah talks to random monsters in the Univir Desert Settlement, they all speak in small noises, but Micah answers as if they've spoken a whole phrase.
• Stationary Boss: Terror Tree, until it Turns Red.
• Status Buff: Besides the Power-Up Food you can equip a Sun Pendant to give any Sharance resident ally a substantial boost in all statuses and make them more aggressive in combat. The Field and Dew Pendants will do the same for monsters and magic seed plants respectively.
• Status Infliction Attack: Certain enemies have attacks that can Poison, Paralyze, Sleep, Seal or Dizzy you. Enemies from Sharance Maze, especially bosses, usually have nastier versions of said attacks that can inflict multiple status at the same time.
  • The Mind Thrust Rune Ability can inflict a random status effect upon striking enemies. Certain foods when thrown at enemies will inflict Status Effects as well.
  • Upgrade a weapon with a Song Bottle and you can use it to inflict any status effect in the game, even cold and fatigue.
• Super Mode: One of the dual swords skill seals makes your basic attacks much, much faster.
• Sweet Tooth: Kuruna, Blaise and Rusk are also openly fans of all things sweet, especially Cake and Chocolate.
• Take Your Time: The game never imposes a time limit despite some situations, like monsters pesking or outright threatening certain people, happening in Sharance. Even when Micah's fianceé goes missing.
• Talk to Everyone: Your very first message board request is for you to introduce yourself to everyone in town and then ship one item.
  • You're told to do this with Kuruna in the Unity Festival, although it doesn't matter if you do or not and you don't get anything for it.
  • The game also implies this is necessary when your fianceé goes missing. Though you only need to talk to Carmen (or Carlos if you chose to marry Carmen), Marjorie and Ondorus, in that order, to go forward.
• Teaser Equipment: Some of Gaius' "Bargain" items, randomized weapons and accessories for sale, can be very powerful equipment, like the Elemental Shield, which you won't have anywhere close to the money you need to buy it unless you spend quite some time farming.
• That Came Out Wrong: After Pia learns about your little secret, she tries to keep it a secret by referring to your transformed state as your "thing." So when she blurts out that your "thing was cute" around her mother figure after being asked how your date went, Shino not so subtly begins to threaten you while Pia remains oblivious.
• Their Own Worst Enemy: The rift between Sharance and the Univir Settlement has been going on for ages and none of the sides really remembers how or why it started. Mending the relationship between them is a major plot point and as Aquaticus later reveals much more important than it seems. With humans and monsters at each other's throats the Sharance Tree flowers would not bloom and if they do not bloom the region would wither away and die.
• There Are No Tents: Due to massive underusage in the earlier two games, the camping skill was taken out, along with sleeping bags.
• Thriving Ghost Town:
  • Justified in Sharance; plenty of faceless NPCs pass through and can be seen patronising the shops in town, and Hazel presumably sells your shipped items to other places through the DSC family.
  • Played straight with Univir Village. Ondorus mentions that traveling merchants do stop by Univir Village, but you never see them. There is a merchant that sells you Cooking Bread that occasionally shows up in the desert, but he doesn't ever pass the entrance...
• Title Reading Gag: The game has Pia proudly announce the game as Rune Factory 2 before going, "Huh? They made a third one!?"
• Tough Room: Pia and Sakuya's Boke and Tsukkomi Routine is quite a bit funnier than you and Shino make it out to be.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Most of the villagers have one; giving them food they like while they're in your party often buffs their stats beyond what it says on the label, or ignores negative effects the food would ordinarily have.
• Transformation Trinket: Your transformation belt. Although you have it at the beginning of the game, your character doesn't remember how to use it until you beat Tanuki.
• Traveling Salesman: Yue travels back and forth from Alvarna to Sharance selling her wares.
• Turns Red: Or, more correctly, turns black. Every boss has a "rage mode" they get once you wound them enough.
• Universal Poison: Apparently, poisonous mushrooms and rainbow trout sashimi are equally poisonous to everything, from humans to monsters.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Micah can stroll into Sharance in his wooly form even inside houses and while people will react with surprise/fear/fascination/charm to him they won't do anything to kick him out. This is averted with the Univir Settlement— if Micah waltz into it as a human Kuruna will swiftly expel him... Until Micah himself reveals his human form to her.
• Unpredictable Results: 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. There are six distinct shippable types of mushrooms (two of which are exclusive to the Sharance Maze), but you won't know which one is which until you eat or ship it.
• Useless Useful Spell: Most status afflictions such as sleep, paralyse, and the like don't work on bosses, and by the time you've managed to inflict them on normal enemies, they're mostly dead already. Although it must be said that some, like lifestealing, can be useful; and that while bosses are mostly immune to negative food effects, it is still possible to lower their elemental resistances through food buffs.
• Unusual Ears: Pia, a mermaid, has rather peculiar fin and external gill-like extensions in place of where "normal" ears might otherwise be. It stands out from everyone else, even those with Pointy Ears.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Dragon Cave right by the Dragon Lake in Sharance.
• Visible Silence: You get a lot of this from Raven. Micah has plenty of times where he responds this way too, especially when talking to Pia, Marian and Daria.
• Voice Grunting: Unfortunately, this appears to be the case. The number of incomplete responses and mismatched VA is staggering, possibly because the game was so large the cartridge was strapped for space.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Micah can transform into his Wooly form at will, though some requests have him involuntarily forced into it. Raven can also voluntarily shift into her Phoenix form.
• Wallet of Holding: Your money cap is 9,999,999 G. It's been upped to 99,999,999G in the US release.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: 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 teaches you to not rely on party members and that dodging attacks is important.
• Warm-Up Boss: Raccoon/Tanuking from Privera Forest. All of its attacks hit pretty hard, but are telegraphed and you can easily beat it with very little preparation if you're good at dodging.
• Warp Whistle: Teleport, by now a staple of the series. It can't be used in the Sharance Maze or certain scripted sequences, though.
• Wax On, Wax Off: What would become a staple for the series. Mundane work like farming, mining, chopping lumber will grant a small boost in statuses and gradually increase your RP, your stamina, so you can do more work.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Fainting, even when all your party members are fine, sends you back to the hospital sans your cash.
• We Sell Everything: Yue, who randomly visits Sharance and stays at Miyako Inn, has a random item stock for sale that includes items you can craft, magic and rune abilities and even Super Fail/Disastrous Dish and Rare Cans.
• Weird World, Weird Food: Apparently eating flowers is the norm in Sharance (and later games). Micah is taken aback by it especially since it's Shara, out of fall people, that informs him of it.
• Welcome to Corneria: It's less noticeable than before, most characters have a lot more unique day-to-day dialogue compared to previous games.
• What the Hell, Player?: After you marry, you can still do requests for the other bachelorettes. However, after a while your wife will complain that you've been "spending a lot of time with someone else."
• Wide-Open Sandbox: From the first day proper you can travel across the dungeons and places surrounding Sharance. A few of them, like Sol Terrano Desert, has parts of them locked until you progress further in the story, though.
• World of Badass: You can count on one hand who can't be invited to your party and fight alongside you. With enough time you can turn almost every citizen of Sharance into boss-slaying badasses.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Micah's Wooly form can pick up enemies who he's just smacked and perform a number of body slams on them. Who knew Woolies were so into wrestling?
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Failing to notice your dwindling RP when fighting a lot or crafting stuff and knocking yourself out because of that can and might happen.
• The Yoshi: Compared to the first games, pretty much any monster bigger than yourself can be ridden on. From a goofy Buffamoo, to the Humongous Mecha Little Golem, to the fire-breathing Claw Dragon.

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