Rune Factory 4 vs Fantasy Life vs Story of Seasons

I'm looking for a game that has a lot to do and will last me a long time. From what I can tell these games are kind of similar, [although Story of Seasons is more of a simulator and no combat]. I'm just having a hard time deciding which one to go with. I've never played games like this before, they never appealed to me. But I want to try now, any recs?
They seem to basically cost the same price so at least that shouldn't play a factor.
Any advice on which game is the better option would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

okay but what's with the lumpy asian

I played the absolute shit out of Fantasy Life. It offers a nice balance of content and variety so you can keep playing it without feeling stuck or forced into a single activity for too long. Only downside is the autism-driven plot, but you don't have to pay too much attention to that.

i like asians

I'm leaning towards FL cause the art style and world look so nice, and it seems more relaxed

Have you tried Ever Oasis?

I have played fantasy life, rune factory 4 and am currently trying story of seasons.
Fantasy Life is ok but repetitive and with an annoying story. Lots of replayability in the form of a ton of somewhat menial chores to do.
Rune Factory 4 is really good if you're ok with anime bullshit. It will last you a long time because it's a fucking long ass game and the post-game dungeon (which I might be remembering wrong) will require that you take every advantage the game offers you to beat it (on top of level grinding).
Haven't played enough of story of seasons to actually have an opinion on it.

RF4 is really good. One of the best games on 3DS, probably. SoS is ok from the little I played. The sequel was better though not as good as RF4. Never played FL. If you just want one I would suggest RF4, since it's a really good game in general and has both a decent dungeon/combat aspect and a farming aspect that is just as deep as the one in SoS2. It also has really nice convenience changes like allowing you to teleport home at any time or letting you go from any airship sign to another. Since the world is much larger than in other farming games it's a necessity, but it's also a huge convenience.

Sadly no, all I know about that game is the lizard waifubait.

FL is very relaxed though, it only gets stressful if you get that island DLC since all the combat starts getting balanced towards having a multiplayer party rather than soloing shit.

...

I'm playing FL and SoS, haven't tried RF4 yet, but I've heard and read a lot about it.

FL is a fun game with a simple happy story. There isn't much character development or personal struggle or anything like that, it's pretty much on the same tier as Kirby story telling (excluding the whole grimdark shit)
The mechanics are simple but fun, gathering materials, crafting shit and traveling around is pretty neat. It has it's own ideas and the whole schtick of the game is about being an errant [class]. By this I mean that you don't have a farm to tend or a kingdom you always go back to, you'll be traveling a lot all the time. Even as a cook, you're gonna head up a mountain to get some eggs from a legendary bird so you can cook an amazing omolette.
Get the expansion they added, it has a fuckload of extra content and you can give gifts to people for relationship points.

Story of Seasons is an odd one. Frankly, I'd recommend that you check out Trio of Towns instead since it's sorta the same but with more stuff.
It's harvest moon, a lot of planting stuff and selling, talking with people and doing festivals. However they went with some new ideas regarding renting fields to plant stuff and traveling shops instead of a shipping bin. It's different and that might not be good for some people until they adjust to it.
The waifus are top tier though.

Rune Factory 4 I haven't tried but here's what I can tell you. An user in another thread said that he was about 600 hours in and there was still shit to do.
If longevity is what matters the most for you, go with it. There's farming, there's taming, there's combat, there's exploring, there's waifus and there's story.
All 3 games are great but RF4 is the most feature-complete out of them all and you can't go wrong with it.

Rune Factory is best as a life-sim, you can get married, have pets, care for a farm and the combat isn't target based.
Play it on hard mode to ensure you have reasons to grind for materials and grind better equip, otherwise you will just breeze through it with starter shit,

I'd say RF4 is the weakest of them. They're all great games, but RF4 has a bigger focus on waifus with a farming sim added on.

It would be best if I could actually marry Lin Fa

I haven't played fantasy life, but I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Is there any game where I can play an actual alchemist class (that isn't the atelier series) rather than it being a side addon?

what about EVER OASIS? It's kind of similar. But doesn't seem too long tbh. Seems like a 30-40hr game main story.

In Fantasy Life you cant marry anyone and the combat is MMO-esque target based. I agree that RF4 fucked up on the waifus though, 3 is much better on that regard.


Ragnarok Online had a full fledged alchemist class that did just that, you missed on it.
There's new official and private servers, but it is not the same thing. Mostly bots ruined the game.

Rune Factory 4 and Fantasy Life are both great, though if you go for the latter make sure to get the Link version instead of the vanilla one.

is the DLC for Fantasy Life worth getting early on or later near the end?

Link has the DLC built in, so it's a moot point. Either way, most of the DLC stuff doesn't kick in until the post-game anyway, though having it early does let you get more upgrades like pack space and such early on.

You might want to try Reccetear. You still play with the heroes but you kinda influence what gear they used as well with your shop in several ways to the point that dungeon delving is the side activity. It's a fun game regardless, play it mang.


Ahahah, no. There's a lot more.
You recruit people to your town by completing objectives and exploring the world afterwhich they open shop.
Then you gotta deliver them shit they used to make the stuff they sell, and once they've been restocked enough (meaning, you gotta wait for them to sell first) they level-up their shop, every shop having 3 ranks.

This takes far longer than you'd expect but it's really fun the way the economy works. The first few products are easy to gather the ingredients for, the latter ones are really rare and tough to find. You have to barter with merchants and travel to rare areas or do dungeons for them.
You also have festivals once you've collected stamps granted by restocking people, festivals that help sell stuff like crazy when you want to fast-advance shops.

Then you have every character you can take along with you having their own level and experience for you to raise, several items to collect so you have at least one of each weapon, etc. There's a ton of content in the game if you're not just trying to rush the story.


The DLC adds a newer area for late-game so you might be interested only by then, however it also adds some previous content as well and you can start gifting shit to your friends right from the start.
If you're gonna get it anyway (which you will) might as well start with the DLC already bought. It's essentially an expansion like they used to do.

I've played reccetear. Several times in fact. But the closest you'll get to anything alchemy related is fusion in the guild house. I mean I guess you can open a alchemist themed shop, but it isn't the same if you're not making the stuff.

older atelier games your MC is basically useless and you have to constantly pay adventurers to carry your sorry ass to gather.

Aside from that, Fantasy life is weak, it's not that great l crafting is exactly the same, the combat classes are grindy as hell. The combat itself isn't that bad, it's just grindy in a way that makes it feel like a single player MMO. There's also not a farming aspect to it (as in plant farming, not item farming, there is a ton of item farming). There's no real characters to speak of other than like 20 throw aways you'll meet exactly one time and then forget about. The guilds are especially bad about this because they then act like these characters helped or influenced you. Didn't stop me from playing it through 6-7/10.

RF4 is the best of the batch, solid enough combat, grind can almost be completely negated if you understand how to abuse the crafting system which is stupidly in depth for how often you'll use it. Characters exist, but are pretty generic animu, marry one and then bring your wife and kid to fight to the death against monsters. There's a lot of cut content that you can see if you look a little harder, but it doesn't effect the game. Farming exists and that's about it, your fields have HP growing certain things lowers HP, if they hit 0 the crops will wither. Crops have a single attribute with the rest being in the field itself. The grind for crafting levels is outrageous though if you're aiming for super late-game equipment. Overall a solid 8-9/10 game.

Story of seasons is fine, good harvest moon game, grow crops (that have 4 attributes), harvest wood and other random shit to build machines to make your animal based goods/crops better, and get married. Except the characters are so atrociously bad, the MC is loved by everyone and always the best at everything ever and can do no wrong. I cannot express accurately how bad the MC is. Other than that the farming is better than the other games but you quickly run out of new content to do and end up reduced to a slog until you grind your town rank enough to get to a task. 6-7/10 if it wasn't for the MC it'd be a 8/10

That reminds me: Kamidori Alchemy Master.
I dunno how closely it is to what you're looking for, but it sounds just up your alley. It's an h-game that's said to be so good you end up playing for the RPG, the lewd stuff is just a bonus.

The crafting is really barebones in Kamidori though. It's just "get item" "throw item in magic pot" "TAADAAAH" mixed with a SRPG

Runefactory 4 is best game.
Fantasy life is good too, but not AS good, and Story of Seasons' gameplay is just too 2dimensional and samey.

source on the girl

Play Rune Factory 3.

The RF curse.

I've played all three since life sims are one of my favorite genres and I wanted to get the most mileage out of my 3DS. As most people have said, Rune Factory 4 is the best out of those, followed by Fantasy Life, then Story of Seasons.

RF4 isn't as good as RF3 in terms of waifus, the main appeal for most, but I feel like that's primarily because 3 had 11 marriage candidates to choose from and 4 only has 6 (technically 12, but half those are husbandos). RF4 does have the gothic lolita package deal, which is one of my favorites, and the actual gameplay is improved.

Fantasy Life is fairly childish and simplistic, not a lot of depth to the gameplay, and no dating or marriage. It's still fun but I found myself getting bored quickly.

Story of Seasons broke my heart since it's the true successor to Harvest Moon, and it's just not that good. The characters are as interesting as stale bread, which makes it hard to get involved in the game. Normally when you have trouble deciding who to marry in these games it's because there's so many good choices to pick from. In this case it's the opposite.

Also the true curse of Rune Factory 4 isn't any of the milfs. It's the DRAGON LOLI.

Seruza should've been a full on MILF instead of a loli, especially with the whole "warawa" shit going on.

More like the JRPG curse.