Rune Factory: Frontier is a tough nut to crack. You're literally just given a small homestead, a plot of land, and is forced to work on your own on a farm. I really don't know where to start with this game, but I guess I'm just gonna pick a spot.
Rune Factory: Frontier begins with Raguna searching for a missing girl. The missing girl turns out to be Mist (from the original Rune Factory), who has moved to a new town because something is calling to her in her dreams. Raguna moves into the town as well, living in the house next to her with a field. But he soon finds out that the Whale Island in the sky is in danger of falling on the town. Somehow, Mist's and another girl named Iris's fates are tied with the Whale's.
The core gameplay is relatively simple. The player can grow a farm. There are 4 distinct seasons, 3 of which you can grow different types of crops. Examples include: Strawberries and turnips in the spring, tomatoes and pineapples in the summer, and yams in the fall. There are many other crops, and you can grow flowers, which can all be sold for gold (the game's currency.) Farming is only half of the game. The other half is dungeon crawling. There are four very different dungeons, three of which represent the four different seasons (the third dungeon represents both autumn and winter). In these dungeons, crops of that dungeon's seasonal affiliation can be grown. The fourth dungeon, Whale Island, is omni-seasonal, and all crops can be grown there at any time.
Another feature is the concept of Runey distribution. Runeys come in four different variations: water, rock, tree and grass. Runeys represent the ecosystem of Trampoli; when Runeys are in perfect harmony, the area that they occupy reaches a state of Prosperity, and crops in that area will grow much faster than normal. However, should even one area of Trampoli become devoid of Runeys, the ecosystem suffers, and crops grow much slower than normal. Runeys can be re-distributed from area to area using a tool called the Harvester, and the game itself distributes Runeys randomly across Trampoli daily. Every nine ripe crops in the field in front of the character's house also spawns one Runey daily. This feature, although creative, is somewhat confusing at the start and takes a while to get used to.
Overall, Rune Factory: Frontier is great at trying to mix the Harvest Moon formula with J-RPG elements but it misses out because of how unintuitive it is, making it hard for newcomers to really get into the game. Patience is needed as well, because it will take a couple of months to complete the game and even then, the game is still left open-ended. As with all Harvest Moon Wii games, loading times can be relatively annoying and the overall pace of the game is very slow. If you overlook all these flaws, Rune Factory: Frontier is definitely a great life sim game for the Wii and it does a decent job as a J-RPG as well. But, those of you new to the genre, I would suggest something a little more intuitive like the Animal Crossing series.