Fantasy Farming: Orange Season vs Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season is a relaxing farming game and is an amazing new addition to the growing popularity of farming games like Stardew Valley and other similar games, such as My Time at Portia. Grow various crops and earn tons of money, go out foraging and sell what you get, and build relationships with a colorful cast of characters in town by helping them with tasks, giving them gifts, and simply talking to them every day.Being essentially a farming simulation game, you can expect to spend most of your playtime planting, watering, and harvesting a variety of crops. The game starts you off with a handful of them, but as you progress, more crops are unlocked and you’ll then be able to buy their respective seeds at the store at a price. Some seeds even require specific conditions to grow.
Considering there that crops take some time to grow and mature, you’ll likely be spending most of the remainder of your time trying to earn cash by foraging. Foraging here means picking up stuff that is dropped on the ground like sticks, fruits, flowers, etc. Once you can go into the mines and start mining for stuff, you can harvest a variety of valuable ores and stones as well.
You’ll also want to head over to the town as soon as you can. Here, you’ll be able to interact with a variety of characters, some of which have quirky personalities. You’ll need to help them with their requests from time to time and you’ll get something nice in return. You can also gift them presents and depending on what they personally like, they may or may not appreciate said gift.
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season has a gameplay that’s somewhat similar to another indie farm game, My Time at Portia, albeit with cute pixel graphics similar to Stardew Valley. And if you love that game, you’ll definitely love this one. The grind here is real though, so if you find grinding for materials on MMOs to be fun and relaxing, you might be able to enjoy playing this game.
Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon is the first of a series of successful, Harvest Moon-like farm simulation/RPG with a unique fantasy theme. Awaken with absolutely no memory of who you are and how you got there, you've decided to set up a life for yourself by establishing a farm with the help of a young lady, Mist. Like most farm simulation games, you'll need to plant, grow and harvest a variety of crops; and raise animals but in this game, you can even fish and battle monsters and beasts. However, it might be best to simple befriend these monsters so they'd help you around the farm.Rune Factory also has a robust character progression system where you can improve your skills with the sword, spear or farm tools simply by using them. You can even make friends with some of the NPCs in the game and fall in love.
This game follows in the footsteps of the popular anime farm simulation game, Harvest Moon, and yet managed to bring its own flavor to the overall gameplay, making this game incredibly unique and addictive to fans of the genre. If you like what you've read so far, well, Rune Factory might just be the game you seek!