The Classic 77 Metacritic Farming Sim That Let You Steal a Man’s Bride at the Altar
Rune Factory is an institution among cozy games. It’s a direct spinoff of Stardew Valley’s biggest inspiration, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. Long before Stardew Valley, Rune Factory took a look at the mainline Harvest Moon games and dared to ask: but what if I could stab things too? And so, the “fantasy Harvest Moon” was born. But beyond a fantasy setting and action-RPG combat, Rune Factory actually experimented with many mechanics over the years to differentiate itself from its older brother. Somehow, the most surprising thing you can do in this series isn’t defeating the final boss with a watering can. It’s homewrecking in Rune Factory 2.
Whether it be crashing a wedding The Graduate-style or proposing to another woman while married with a child, Rune Factory had a weird few years when the player could be quite the Lothario. And while cheating on your wife in Rune Factory Frontier crosses a line, there’s an argument for keeping the ability to steal a lady at the last possible second if Rune Factory 2 is ever remade: it’d be really, really funny.
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Ruining Weddings in Rune Factory 2
Rune Factory 2 is the only game in the series with what Harvest Moon fans call the “rival marriage” system: where if the player doesn’t marry their chosen spouse fast enough, they risk losing them to one of the other singles in town. In this game, this means wooing and proposing to an eligible lady before a certain date passes. If that date does come to pass and the player hasn’t already married that girl, one of the many young men in Alvarna will invite you to his wedding with one of the town’s eligible bachelorettes.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
In most other Harvest Moon games, this would mean that the player has officially lost their chance to marry the girl. This is not the case in Rune Factory 2. If they’ve fulfilled the right requirements, the player can march right up to the happy couple and choose whether to congratulate the pair…or to confess his love for the bachelorette. The player doesn’t even take the typical rom-com route of interrupting the wedding when the minister asks if anyone objects to the union – he does this after they’ve said their vows and kissed!
Because the player character has the power of being a typical JRPG harem protagonist, the girl won’t bat an eye at this and will happily accept his confession. The two of them then leave the church together, with the girl’s now ex-husband wondering what just happened. The only real consequences of this are that the groom’s FP will go down to 0 and that the player won’t get to see the normal wedding sequence that would play if they married a girl the normal way. The game will then shift to the next morning, where the player and his new wife act like lovey-dovey newlyweds who didn’t just humiliate a man in front of the entire town. Besides the understandable FP loss from the rival, nobody comments at all on the events of the wedding after it has happened.
Has Wedding Crashing in Rune Factory 2 Aged Poorly? Does it Even Matter?
When first hearing about the bride-stealing mechanic in Rune Factory 2, many people’s first reaction is understandably something like “That’s horrible!” And, to be fair, it is horrible. The only consequence is losing FP from the rival, who the player clearly didn’t think highly of anyway if they bothered pulling this stunt. So why would the game let the player get away with something so awful, and why would they ever bring it back?
It’s all in the execution. Part of what made bride-stealing so surprising was that it clashed so much with the overall tone of the game. Sure, Rune Factory has combat, but it was still very lighthearted combat — it’s actually canon that the player isn’t killing monsters, but is using charmed weapons to warp them back to the world they came from. So this sweet-natured farmer who doesn’t even actually hurt the monsters he fights suddenly has the gall to convince a woman to leave her husband for him. And the ex is the only person who shows any problem with this; even the minister tells him to simply roll with the punches and be happy for the girl!
The fact that the scene is so short and never mentioned again helps emphasize that this mechanic is strictly for comedy. The developers aren’t endorsing it, and they’re very aware that it’s out of character for the player character to do. But that’s exactly why a potential Rune Factory 2 remake should keep it. It’s not meant to be taken seriously – it’s more of an Easter egg than anything else. And honestly, at least it’s not as cruel as divorcing your spouse and turning your children into birds in Stardew Valley.
- Released
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November 18, 2008
- ESRB
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E For Everyone Due To Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol
- Franchise
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Rune Factory
