Marvelous' campy "simulators"

I've recently taken an interest getting immersed in the River/Sea King series and the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series, but the problem is that I can't figure out which ones to actually start with. The only one I've taken any "firm" interest in playing is the original Rune Factory, but I'd like to know what the status is for the (Well) rest of the games for both series.

Which of the titles would be the best ones to look into, and which ones should I avoid like the plague? Currently, the only sim game of theirs that I own is the original Reel Fishing/Fish Eyes.

Just go into any #gamergate thread
OOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO

Where's the joke?

Rune Factory is the fucking best. Get on that shit.

I think he's asking which Rune Factory in particular. I've only played the first DS game, it's enjoyable but I've heard the sequels are improvements.

Rune Factory starts off weak but gets better.
2 improves on most things but fucks up by separating the waifus (first gen) and the advanced crafting/dungeon crawling.
3 is a total improvement in every way. Great fucking game, playing it with Holla Forums back in the day was a blast.
4 has weaker characters than 3 but has insane amounts of bullshit you can pull off with crafting and a ton of content.
Frontier would be top tier but runies ruin everything, fortunately you can just hack them to be maxed pretty easily making it great.
Tides is okay, they really fucked up by all but removing farming.

Really if you like the first one you will like the rest. It's a damn shame the series died for no reason.

Pretty much. I know that some titles do have their little differences, so I'm curious about the differences between the different releases. And, the other reason I'm asking is because I'm a bit of an antist when it comes to playing games in order when they have a story.

This

Also you can safely skip 1/2 they're… a really long slog. 1's an obvious first foray into the series and has a ton of shit that was bad even for the time. 2's exactly as user said, the first half of the game is just about waifus (literally you can't even upgrade tools so I hope you like the slow ass hoeing animation) also one of the waifus require items that you can no longer get as they were part of this whole crazy gimmick involving linked multiplayer.

3 and 4 are fantastic games and I would recommend them to basically anybody who likes harvest moon, but also wants an RPG mixed in. The story in all 4 is hilariously awful though, but you don't play these games for an overarching plot

Olay, what about the rest of HM and the RK series?

My advice on harvest moon is don't buy the ones called harvest moon, they're rip offs made by Natsume who holds rights to the name. Story of Seasons are the real ones and from what i've heard the most recent one is pretty good. Haven't bought it yet as i'm still waiting for Xseed to finish localizing the dlc which adds a ton of content.

I've been playing it recently and it's good, but they simplified some things from the older HM games. If you can accept that, you'll probably like it.

The original Harvest Moon and the gameboy ones are extremely barebones. Dont bother with them.
HM2/HM64 is good, but far from perfect.
The worst problem with is that time passes absurdly fast, each day being only roughly 8 minutes long morning-to-night, making it near-impossible to both do town things and manage a bunch of farmwork. Also the translation is fucking abysmal.
Back to Nature is basically a better version of HM2/64, with a japan-only girl version as well.
Has a improved port for PSP called Harvest Moon:Boy & Girl, which includes both the original version and the formerly japan-only girl version.
fuck Save the Homeland
Friends of Mineral Town is the best in the series.
Also has a girl version called more friends of mineral town.
Wonderful life is a massive disappointment due to its tiny town and low amount of content.
HMDS would be great if not for the massive amount of gamebreaking bugs in the US version.

Havent played any of the others.

Does the "Marvelous" game for the Snes count?

If I had any idea how to modify how fast time flows in HM64, I would. It would be my favorite in the series if only I could have even the slightest chance to enjoy the comfy. I was fond of magical melody as a teenager since it wasn't as lacking in content as wonderful life/gbc3 (the only other HM mainline games I'd played) but wasn't the ballbusting race that HM64 was.
I started emulating FoMT on my phone and I have to agree it's the best one I've played.
I played the first rune factory and I was rather fond of it. I'll probably see about emulating the better entries sometime.

Has anyone played any of the River King games?

playing handhelds as emulators is weird and too tempting to savescum
also holyshit replaying stardewvalley after rf is like jumping out a bullet train and hitting a pole
i wanted a break from anxiety inducing piles of stuff to do but then it's 0.1mph

I've only played the GBC games

Anyone?

played the GBC one, once you get how to actually reel in fish (explained nowhere in game) it's great toilet break fun.

Play the rest of the rune factory games, rune factory 3 is one of my favorites. haven't played the wii one though Also if you haven't played harvest moon friends of mineral town although you probably have you really should.
Stardew valley is decent gameplay wise but has been infected with jew bullshit. the one interracial couple is a nigger and a qt 3.14 white ginger. And their daughter is a super genius because stronk wymyn, while the white son from the mom's first marriage is a faggot basement dweller. Also everything is gay

Yeah
They're pretty neat but the best games in the series never made it to States side.
Only the NES game has been fan translated IIRC.