I’ve always been interested in the Rune Factory series, but I’ve never actually played any of them. I always wondered if the farming would be too much of a hassle or if I would like the dungeon crawling, so when I got a chance to check out a preview of the upcoming Rune Factory 3 Special, I jumped on it. Let’s see how my first Rune Factory experience went.

The game begins as a young girl is dragging a collapsed monster into the village. Her grandfather is very upset the girl has brought a monster into their home, but she is very keen on helping the poor creature out. The next morning, the monster transformed into a young man. He has amnesia, and has no idea how he got there nor any idea he was a monster the night before. He rushes out of the house and runs into a red haired girl that is very quiet and named Raven. She is in front of a huge tree they refer to as the Sharance Tree. He attempts to talk to Raven but to no avail when suddenly, the girl from last night appears. Her name is Shara. They take him to the heart of the tree where he is told he will be living with Shara for the time being. When they arrive at the field below the house, they are attacked by monsters, and our protagonist fends them off. He is told when monsters are killed they don’t perish, they are simply returned to The Forest of Beginnings. After learning more about the people of the town, you accept a quest to fight off a Raccoon monster that has been stealing food. After completing this quest you find a memory orb, this helps him remember a bit about his past, allowing him to transform into a monster once more. You soon discover a settlement of other monsters outside of town, and the mystery of this young man only thickens from there.

I’m pretty interested to see where the story goes from here. It’s been a while since I got invested in a world so quickly, but I think all of the amazing characters helped this along. Almost of all them have very unique personalities and quirks that make you want to learn more about them. The lazy store clerk, Karina, is a very cute girl, but don’t expect her to do much in the way of physical activity. I think this girl works harder at getting out of work. The bathhouse girl, Pia, is very innocent, and takes whatever anyone tells her to heart. I was pretty shocked when it turned out she was a mermaid when I saw her out in the rain one day, and I really wanted to learn more about this girl going forward. I could go on and on about each girl and the other residents with what little I’ve learned in my time with the game so far, but I want to experience more of this before I go into great detail.

I got sucked into the gameplay of Rune Factory 3 Special very quickly. I can see why players of this series say it’s so addicting. You start each day with a number of Rune Points. You consume these points as you do farming activities and combat. At first, I thought this was very limiting, but the amount of points used will go down as you level up in each respective area. So, after a little while, I felt like I could get a lot more done in a single day. The combat here is your standard top down action game style. Fans of old school Zelda games will feel right at home here. There are a variety of different weapons, and each one has different skills you can learn to make you more effective at slaying your foes. You can even get different skills in your monster form that add even more depth to this fun combat.

I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of everything you can do and see in Rune Factory 3 Special. I’m very much looking forward to learning more about all of the game’s amazing characters, and finding out more about our protagonist and all the other great features here. The game will be releasing September 5th for PC via Steam and on Nintendo Switch.

Preview build provided by the publisher.