Description:

Rune Factory may have started life as a Harvest Moon spin-off, but the franchise is fast taking on a life of its own. Rune Factory: Frontier marks the first time the series has made its way onto a home console, bringing with it the strange mixture of farming and RPG gameplay with a great big splash of souped-up graphics.

You play as Raguna, the star of previous outings in the Rune Factory series. While you should expect a couple of returning faces, however, the story is largely self-contained. You arrive in a new town - one that's struggling from a social and economic standpoint. What can you do to rectify this? Fans of previous games from Rising Star will know - get grafting on the farm!

Players gather a few tools from around town so they can get down to the serious work of planting, gathering food and supplies, making new items, learning to mix medicine, leveling up skills, befriending monsters and doing all the other things necessary to get things going.

If you want to focus on the familiar farming side of things, you can. You'll also find a dungeon crawling campaign in there of the type more familiar to RPG fans, however. While there's still a spot of agriculture to be engaged in, there are also monsters to be killed.

There's also, of course, the social aspect of getting about town, making friends and, if you choose, making an honest woman of someone.

This game is huge. You'd best be prepared to do what any good farmer will - put in the hours, put your back into it and reap the rewards of honest labour.

Information:

• Number of players: 1
• Development Company: Marvelous Interactive
• Software House: Marvelous Interactive
• Video Dimensions: 3D
• Publisher: Rising Star
• Point Of View: Third person, into the screen