Rune Factory 3

An Adventure That Will Transform You

The third installment in the main Rune Factory series, this game was released by Natsume in North American on November 9th 2010. It also makes significant improvements to combat, stats, and farming systems, as well as expanding on the message board requests introduced in Rune Factory 2.

One night during a storm, a mysterious golden-fleeced wooly collapses in front of a young girl, Shara's, house; and yet, against her grandfather's wishes, she takes in the wooly for the night. However, when morning comes around, the wooly transforms into a young man, Micah. With no memory of who he is or what he's supposed to be doing here, he escapes Shara's house, only to run into her - and a silent young woman named Raven - again not long thereafter. At the pair's suggestion, Micah decides to stay at the local farm, which happens to be housed in an enchanted tree. From there on, the story's up to the player to discover.

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Tropes used in Rune Factory 3 include:

• Acquired Poison Immunity: Your "Poison" skill goes up every time you get poisoned (or inflict poison on the enemy). Aside from the same stat-boosts most skills give, it makes it harder for you to get hit with poison. This also goes for sleeping, paralysis and sealing status effects.
  • Shino apparently developed this as well, as she gladly accepts poisonous mushrooms as gifts.
• Action Mom: Shino, and Hazel to a certain degree.Also, your spouse.
• Adorkable: Kuruna around chocolate and cake.
• An Interior Designer Is You: You can buy various decorations for your home from the Evelyn. If you decide you don't want them, you get rid of them by whacking them with your weapon, which turns them into wood.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Monica. She gets better later on, thankfully.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Transform, Teleport, and Cure Seal all work while you are sealed, so you can still avoid getting killed knocked out if things go sour and you get sealed.
  • Poison also doesn't knock you completely out, so you can wait until you get some RP-recovering items (to cast a curing spell), an antidote herb or antidote, or until one of the two witches decide to work to take care of the poison. Just don't do something stupid like go exploring a dungeon...
• Antidote Effect: Healing Potion type items made with alchemy restore set amounts of HP, with the best ones going up to 2000 hit points' worth. However, most food restores via percentage of your maximum HP/RP, and considering your base HP cap is 65535...
• Apologetic Attacker: Raven and Shara routinely apologise to the monsters they're beating up. The former does it only in the Japanese version, though.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Quite well-done for a DS game. Villagers will go about their usual daily business according to who they are; it's not uncommon to find Carmen or Carlos fishing, for example, Raven writing in her diary, Rusk and Collette serving in the restaurant, or Marian at her cauldron. Other more generic actions include going for walks in the safe areas of the dungeons, having conversations with other villagers (although you fill in the blanks) and greeting you when you walk by.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: With some of the bonus bosses, sometimes the best strategy is to defeat them before they can use their best attacks, which are nigh-impossible to dodge.
• Attack Drone: Most of the active seeds are essentially this, only they're plants.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Skelefang takes no damage from attacks until you completely destroy its body, exposing the core for a few moments while its body regenerates. (And making it perform its Limit Break)
• Awesome but Impractical: The boss abilities of the last few bosses you can collect consume too much RP to be used often, although, to their credit, they can clear the screen of all non-boss enemies. And by the time you have enough RP to overcome useage issues, slow charge time becomes a bigger one (You're slowed to walking speed while charging, even while wearing Rocket Shoes, though you can still dash). Though the charge time issue can be mitigated with a Magic Ring (halves charge time).
• Awesome but Practical: The longsword, axe and hammer weapons. Slower than the shortsword or dual blades (But faster than they've been in the previous games). Until you pair them up with a good skill seal. And unlike RF2, you can mix and match seal types with different weapons (at an additional RP cost). Pairing an axe or hammer with a multi-hit seal like Millionstrike and the Lucky Strike accessory^[1] gives you Game Breaker attack power.
• Badass Adorable: Micah is this both in wooly form and in human form.
• Beach Event: Happens every summer.
• Big Breasts, Big Deal: Pia. Especially in her swimsuit. It doesn't help that it's cut so low as to show off her...assets...
• Big Brother Instinct: Carlos.
• Big Eater: Sherman, Collette.
• Bishonen/CuteShotaroBoy: Micah
• Blade on a Stick: Weapons like this fall under the category of spears in-game.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Pia and Sakuya have one to attract customers.
• Bonus Boss: Naturally, all the bosses in the Bonus Dungeon.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Sharance Maze under your home. As a bonus, it changes every time you enter.
• Boss Arena Urgency: If you don't defeat Death Wall fast enough, it will eventually crush you.
• Bottomless Bladder: Partially averted. While you don't have to do these things, there are skills that reward you for making your character live a healthy life: eating well, getting lots of exercise, sleeping early, so on and so forth.
• But Thou Must!: You can't refuse Shara when she wants to show you around your new home. Or explain the bulletin board.
  • One of Sofia's requests ends up with a decision where both options quite literally mean the same thing.
  • Similarly, if you're going after Sakuya, you are going to get shaved for your golden wool, and no amount of arguing will deter her.

[Micah]: "It's gonna be a cold night tonight..."

• • If you accept Daria's mission to find the Golden Wooly, you're given two choices: Trying to make a random distraction or revealing your secret. The first one never works, no matter how many times you try.
• Bragging Rights Reward: You can collect a number of trophies in the trophy room for completing certain achievements. Most are useless, but some serve as in-game options, such as to view the end credits again.
  • Hard Mode: The monsters are tougher, but you get the same rewards for defeating them (same XP, same monster drops)
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Daria does this in one of her conversations. She will exclaim "My art is calling me!", prompting two choices. Choosing the second will make her say something along the lines of, "Please choose the first one, next time..."
  • Daria actually seems quite fond of this, doing it on more than one occasion. Maybe that's what her hammer's actually for...
  • And then there's one conversation, where she tells you her new name, which is so long that it goes off the edge of the text box. Micah's response? "It doesn't even fit..." Dang Daria, you're like a Fourth Wall Sledgehammer
  • The wall is broken during the farming tutorial too - Shara runs up to the upper-left corner and jumps to indicate where your HP and RP gauges are, to which Micah responds with "I can't see them." Shara's response to that? "You can't see them when you're talking to people."
  • Seriously, whenever someone tells you how to do something by pressing the buttons on your DS, they're pretty much demolishing the wall.
• Broken Bird: Raven, quite literally.
• Cast from Hit Points: Averted. While this was possible in the earlier games, trying to do anything without RP now makes you faint in short order, especially physical actions.
• Catch Phrase: Daria's RAINBOW!
• Character Customization: Taken to obscene lengths. While the first two games had "fight monsters to gain EXP to raise stats," and skills weren't that important, what you do in this game will seriously impact how your character turns out. While skills only decreased RP consumption in the other games, in this one every skill is tied to at least one stat, and levelling has a limited ability to impact your stats. Oh, and did I mention there are an obscene number of skills, even one for walking and another that represents how well-fed you are? Add that to an enormous number of effects your equipment can have on you and your enemies, and you're set. Then there're your companions to consider...
• Charged Attack: More important for staves than other weapons, since that's how you use the spells you've imbued into it by way of monster drops.
• Chef of Iron: Blaise, if you level him up enough.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Pia.
  • And the case can be made for Daria, Sofia, Sherman, Evelyn... Honestly, it feels kind of like a cast full of Cloudcuckooland.
• Collision Damage: Largely averted. Running into certain monsters that are obviously trying to stomp you still causes damage.
• Combos: Bosses have these as well now.
• Com Mons: Most of the monsters you can tame early on fall into this trope.
• Continuity Nod: Talk to the travellers passing through town, and they'll make references to the earlier games.
  • As a nod to the tradition of the first Harvest Moon game of peeking at girls' diaries to find out how they feel about you, Raven keeps a diary on her dresser that has its contents change as you up her Relationship Values. Attempting to read it while she's around makes her really, really mad. As a joke, Gaius has one too, but he never writes anything in it.
    • Karina also keeps a diary in her room, however due to her extreme laziness, she stops writing in it after the first paragraph.
    • Sherman has one, too, but you can't make any sense of the words in it.
  • Yue from the previous game makes an appearance as well. And she's more useful than before since she sells pretty rare items like boss drops and changes her stock every day.
  • Mei is there, too! She's the way you can change your name.
• Counter Attack: One of the skill seals does this.
• Critical Existence Failure: Your character starts to pant and look tired when low on HP/RP, but this is only cosmetic.
• Critical Hit: There are some skills which guarantee this, and various ways to up your chances of getting one. Different weapon types have different base critical chances, and magic can now score these as well. You can also critically heal.
• Curtains Match the Window: Collette, Sofia, Monica, and Evelyn, if the official artwork has anything to say about it. Also, Pia sorta counts, too.
• Cute Witch: Marian.
• Dating Sim: Although the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games have always included elements of this, now you can take your love interests on actual dates.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Compared to the previous games, which would net you a game over if you fainted in a dungeon, losing all your money seems a reasonable alternative.
• Deadpan Snarker: Micah. Then again, given that he's, arguably, one of the only sane individuals in the game, this is inevitable. And quite entertaining.
• Demonic Spider: Arguably, the spirit family of monsters, which spam the screen with projectiles and can only be hurt while they attack.
• Detached Sleeves: Daria and Collette have these.
  • As does Micah.
• Different As Night and Day: Collette and Rusk. Collette eats all the time and just about anything, but especially rice and vegetables. Rusk, on the other hand, is an incredibly picky eater, only liking certain sweets. The only thing they have in common is that they use the same hiding spot ( That tree in the plaza. Collette hides in it during one of Marian's requests, and Rusk hides in it during one of Collette's requests.)
• Die, Chair, Die!: You can chop up your furniture, signs, shipment boxes, save points, and even the orbs you acquire throughout the storyline.Oh,and if you so much as sneeze on a treasure chest, it and its contents are destroyed.Pretty annoying if you have a weapon with a large range or have a dumb AI companion...
• Difficulty Spike: The difference between the penultimate and final areas of the Sharance Maze.
• Does Not Understand Sarcasm: Pia.
• Dronejam: Averted. You can push by NPCs and even most small monsters by running against them.
• Dual Boss: The Twin strike:Manticores lions.
• Dual-Wielding: Introduced in this game. Effectiveness does remain in question, though. While dual swords are the fastest weapon, using them means you get no benefit from a shield, whereas using even a two-handed weapon only halves the stats you gain from a shield.
• Dub Name Change: There are quite a few, actually, but perhaps the most peculiar are Zeze's, Persia's, and Donchacos', who have become Zaid, Pia, and Sherman respectively. Other examples include Karin, who has become Karina, and Elisa, who has become Evelyn. Conversely, Rusk was left alone, despite his family's dessert naming trend being broken with Chocolat becoming Collette, and Gluten becoming Blaise.
  • Monster Village has also undergone a drastic name change, now becoming Univir instead. Additionally, Sialens has become Sharance.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The difficulty of the last area in the Sialens Maze scales with your level and stats.
• Edible Theme Naming: All in the same family, we have Chocolat (French for chocolate), Rusk (a dry, hard biscut), and Gluten (a composite of two proteins found in grain, often used in breads and the like). Mais (which resembles "maize," or the term for corn in some countries, like Italy) can also count too. All of these were Lost in Translation except for Rusk; see Dub Name Change above.
• Elite Mook: The guardians at the end of every non-boss level of the Sialens Maze.
• Engagement Challenge: Akhnabet (Aquaticus from the US translations of the earlier games), Dragon God of Water, challenges you to a duel to prove your love for your fiancee.
• Even the Guys Want Him: The protagonist of the story, Micah (or whatever you name him) absolutely matches the trope. Just look at him!
  • Which carry on to his sons, who look rather Bishonen.
  • If you give Carlos his favourite gift on his birthday, he asks if he can kiss you.
  • Gaius also hints at this when you give him something he likes.
• Evolving Attack: Leveling your fighting skills increases the length of your weapon combo and can add associated effects.
• Express Delivery: It takes a matter of days from your wife discovering she's pregnant to the actual birth. And this happens THREE times, a year apart each occurrence. Ouch.
• Fantastic Racism: The main plotline is about trying to bring humans and the Univir together. To the storyline's credit, the Univir are just as bad as the humans themselves.
• Fan Service: Almost all the villagers have their own swimsuits. Even those who live in the desert. Seems Neverland and Marvelous didn't forget the ladies this time round. Carlos, anyone?
• Freaky Is Cool: Some of the fanbase apparently like Sofia for her tendency to say the opposite of what she means.
• Food as Bribe: You have to use a fried/grilled char to lure out the twin manticores to fight. It happens to be their favourite food, so much so that they've been attacking the villagers to get at it.
• Forgets to Eat: Gaius sometimes spends days at the forge. It takes until he runs out of materials or get distracted by Raven for him to just pass out just so Raven can get him to sleep. To a lesser extent, one of Daria's requests has you get her food because she's so hungry from working on her art that she can't get any herself.
• Foregone Victory: Aquiticus' last attack seems like a Hopeless Boss Fight at first, until you realise you can't faint while you waddle up and smack him. If you rematch him, he can use this attack normally. Better have a water ring ready.
• Gambit Roulette: The entire plot of the game turns out to be an elaborate plot by the Dragon God Aquaticus to tear down the racial barriers between Humans and Monsters.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Villagers can faint, but leave the map you're on and they'll revive themselves with one HP. Healing them via magic also revives them. Sadly, this doesn't apply elsewhere--fainted monsters will be returned to your barn, and exhausted active seeds will revert to their seed form and have to be placed in your backpack overnight before they can be used again.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Even after the Unity Festival, Kurana still refers to humans as the "vile hornless" in certain quests that were available from before the festival. Also, you can still "reveal" your Wooly form to some characters even after revealing it to the entire town.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Wowee. Despite the game's cute, innocent appearance, this particular Rune Factory's dub is filled with hilarious innuendo. Much of it comes from Persia and her fascination with squid.

[Pia]: "[Micah] showed me his thing!"

• Giant Mook: Giant mushrooms. And ducks. And woollies. And trolls.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: Most of the repeatable message board quests are this, along with Twenty Bear Asses. Though to prove they're not so lazy, sometimes the villagers go out with you in search of what they want. And sometimes they want to give you their inventory items, so what goes around comes around.
• Glass Cannon: Some of the villager companions can be this. They are not so much fragile (since the bosses hit you just about as hard) but their AI is so much dumber than the player (hopefully) that they just stand there and get hit. Thanks to an accessory called the "Sun Pendant", though, some villagers can do insane damage (the pendent doubles their damage). The most prominent example is probably Raven/Toona, who can either die in 5 seconds by rushing into bosses or solo just about any "oiled" boss (even those with decent fire-resist) in less than 5 seconds by continuously spamming her fireball wing attack (This is considering that villagers tend to be quite a bit lower in level than the bosses).
  • It's been proven that Raven has abyssmal VIT and HP growth, but incredible STR and INT growth.
  • Micah himself becomes one when using dual blades.
• Guest Star Party Member: Almost every villager can be one, with a few exceptions.
• Guilt Based Gaming: The villagers will complain if you don't talk to them for a while, asking if you're busy, if you hate them, that you don't respect the elderly, etc, etc.
  • Some people were guilted into marrying Raven, because they were worried she would remain alone and miserable forever if you didn't.
    • Marry someone else and take a peek at Raven's diary. Even Micah feels it.
• Half-Human Hybrid: You, Raven, Pia, and all the horned people in Univir Village.
• Healing Spring: As with the earlier games, the baths.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Some spells and skill seals. The last move of your basic weapon combos tend to be this.
• Hey, It's That Voice!
  • In the Japanese version, Shara is Nia from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • In the Japanese version, Raven is Kagami from Lucky Star.
• Hot-Blooded: Carlos can come across as this.
• Hot Shounen Mom: Shinonome and Hazel.
• Hover Board: The leaf slider active seed, used for getting across water. It also goes on land.
• Hyperspace Mallet: Daria's default weapon.
• I Call It "Vera": Zaid calls his cutlass "Mr. Slice."
• Improbable Weapon User: Pia and Collette's default weapons are a giant fish and lollipop respectively.
  • There are joke weapons of every type, the giant fish is a greatsword and the lollipop is an axe. Gift them a different weapon of their chosen type and they will use it.
  • Shara and Carmen use a watering can and fishing rod as well.
  • Some of the player's options for weapons include a spoon, backscratchers, a carrot, a daikon radish, and a baseball bat. Not to mention the Twin Leeks.
• Improbable Accessory Effect: A lot of the accessories.
• Indestructible Edible: You can find food items in treasure chests, throw them on the ground, leave them there for days (even having a child afterwards), and they don't go bad. Fish found in treasure chests are still alive and skipping, as though freshly caught.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Made worse by the fact that they randomly appear, and vanish without a trace if you leave the map they're on.
• Innocent Flower Girl: Shara.
• Insecure Love Interest: Raven if you marry her.
• In-Universe Game Clock
• Invulnerable Attack: The finishing move of the shortsword's combo.
  • The finishing move of the dual sword as well and presumably of every other weapon type. It's a mixed blessing at best, though, since you are completely defenseless for around a second after the attack, which can often led to being one shotted by the hard mode bonus bosses.
• Item Crafting: Greatly improved from the previous games. In addition, upgrading equipment with various items can improve stats, change elemental affinities and confer special abilities.
• Joke Character: Karina appears to be one of these at first, until you get her Relationship Values high enough and finish some of her message board requests.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: That levelizer you want to sell? 1,000G. They leveliser you want to buy? 150,000G.
  • Averted, when compared to previous games in the series; turning a profit on your crafting skills is laughably easy now. 1 of each iron and 2 of every other ore at forge skill 80 gives you an easy 45720G - more than any boss drop's value.
    • Even more than that, you can now use scrap ore to level any forged item. While it lowers attack and defense stats, it doesn't effect the gold value of the item upgraded. And since scrap ore carries a high difficulty for forging, it's a near-game breaking way to boost your forging and workshop skills quickly and cheaply (especially once you nab a Heart Pendant, which doubles all skill points gained.)
  • Elemental rings, invinciroids, tuna sashimi. 'Nuff said.
• Kuudere: Raven. Although she's faking the cold front as she's terrified of people learning her secret. Get her Relationship Values high enough or talk to her in wooly form, and she'll behave more kindly toward you. If you do marry her, the cold side of her vanishes completely, although she still doesn't like to share her feelings and still often wants you to reaffirm your love for her.
• Lampshade Hanging: Particularly, concerning how many characters can fit in a dialogue box:

[Daria]: "Did you know, [Micah], the longer an artist's name is, the better they are?"
[Micah]: "Is that true?"
[Daria]: "That's why I'm changing my name. Announcing: [Daria] Gorgeous Turnip Rainbow Nice Ambiti"
[Micah]: "It doesn't even fit..."

• • One of Pia's requests requires you to obtain a strong string and give it to her. The quest reward? The exact same strong string you just gave to her. This does not go without comment.
• Last Chance Hit Point: As with Acquired Poison Immunity, you can build up a resistance to being KO'ed or getting downed by One Hit KO blows. Can save your bacon when fighting the higher level Bonus Dungeon bosses.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Micah thinks that Karina and Hazel are a lot alike, the two of them both immediately yell at him that they aren't. Keep in mind Micah doesn't actually say this. Then again Hazel leans on the wall on multiple occasions and Karina has a second sentence (in a thought bubble) after every sentence or two.
• Lethal Chef: Sakuya. One of her quests involves her utter failure at even boiling an egg.
  • Then again, she does ask for a large egg, which requires a higher cooking level than a small or medium egg, which she rejects.
• Level Grinding: Largely averted, as levels have a reduced impact on your stats this time round. You can raise your stats and skills by collecting rune spirits and rune orbs that appear when you harvest crops. However, you must have gained a skill through actually performing the associated action (eg. swinging a hoe for farming) to be able to raise it through rune orbs.
• Level Up At Intimacy 5: Not directly, but the better your Relationship Values with the villagers, the longer you can ask them to go adventuring with you.
• Like Brother and Sister: Gaius and Raven's relationship is something between this and father/daughter.
• Limited Wardrobe: Largely averted. You can buy a large number of different outfits from Evelyn, and the other villagers change into their swimsuits when they go to the beach during summer. The minor characters, though, still suffer from this.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Almost every villager can be asked to go adventuring with you^[2], and almost every monster in the game can be tamed, save bosses, Elite Mooks and Giant Mooks.
• Lost Forever: Averted. Plot Coupon items will appear by your bed if you manage to lose them one way or another. (Giving, dropping them in water). Supposedly special equipment that happen to be quest rewards can still be crafted yourself.
• Luck-Based Mission: Catch the Most Squid Contest. Subverted in that the inn's pond has a higher-than-average squid population. Although good luck figuring that out.
• Mad Scientist: Marian appears to be this when it comes to medicines, having no ethical qualms about using you and Collette as test subjects. Evelyn seems to be similarly obsessed with her fashion designing.
  • Marian will give you "tea" in some of her requests that will turn you into her suddenly-effeminate willing servant. Things you'll then say will usually end with a star or a music note. Her madness goes up when you continue this quest and learn that she wants you to hold down villagers while she tests her newly-made medicine on them.
  • There's also the time she tries to force-feed Micah an experimental potion to change his gender...
• Magikarp Power: Your character starts off absurdly weak, but can get just as absurdly strong later on.
• Man-Eating Plant: One of the active seeds grows into this sort of plant. Thankfully, it eats enemy monsters.
  • There are many of these in harder areas of the Sol Terrano desert that do damage the player and any partner upon contact.
• Marathon Level: The last area of the Sharance Maze, with twenty levels and ten bosses.
• Marshmallow Hell: Pia gives you one.And yet, afterwards you're the one who gets pictured as a pervert.
• Mascot Mook: The woolies.
• Mayfly-December Romance: If you marry Kuruna, who is hundreds of years old.
• Meaningful Name: Sialens, the original Japanese name for the town in which the game takes place, is the Welsh word for "challenge." How well this trope applies, however, is up for personal interpretation.
• Mercy Invincibility: Taken out for both you and your enemies. The only time you're invincible to enemy attacks as a result of being hit is when you've been knocked down and are recovering. Makes Spam Attack particularly dangerous.
  • The dual-sword, short sword, and wooly kung-fu are fast enough to make button smashing viable. Wooly throws do make you invincible during their animation but the recover time on some throws are so long that you are almost guaranteed to get hit if you are surrounded.
• Mega Manning: Upgrading staves with monster drops can allow you to use monster abilities. This works even for bosses, although boss abilities tend to cost large amounts of RP.
• Megane: Ondorus.
• Meganekko: Kuruna, the Elder of Univir Village. Gets fiercely protective if you try to touch them, too.
• Mermaid Problem: Pia gets around this by only gaining her fish tail when she comes into contact with water.
• Money for Nothing: Averted in this one. Yue can sell levelisers, which are a massive money sink. Considering that the level cap for both you and every villager is 10,000...
• Monster Allies: A staple of the series, only this time you befriend them by bribing them with food.
• Monster Town: Monster Village. Attempting to enter while in human form gets you evicted in short order.
• Mook Maker: The monster portals.
• Nerf Arm: Some weapons you can craft include backscratchers, vegetables and pitchforks. The game readily acknowledges this by having these weapons produce little turnips and a "pop" sound upon hitting an enemy, despite them being just as effective as other weapons.
• Nice Hat: Carmen's hat. She gets fussy about it.
  • Daria's hat is pretty spiffing, too.
• Non-Idle Rich: Evelyn is a clothier, while Sofia helps her father ship the local produce (including yours) out of town, and can be seen at the blacksmith's and general store.
• Noodle Incident: Just what exactly did happen when Blaise got drunk?
• Not a Morning Person: Karina. Side effect of her also being The Slacker.
• Not Good with People: Monica.
• Official Couple: Micah and Shara.
• Older Than They Look: The Univir.
• Only Sane Man: As a larger and larger percentage of the cast gets quirky with each game in the series, your character is probably going to end up being this.
  • Karina is this as well. Unlike Micah she seems to enjoy watching everyone else's quirks, rather than wonder at them.
• Opposite Day: Sofia and her father pepper their speech with red text that means the opposite of what it says. It gets very confusing since they don't reverse everything they say, just enough to screw with your mind. For added confusion, Sofia is the only person who loves (really!) to eat Failure Dishes and Super Failure Dishes.
• Our Dwarves Are Different: Gaius is supposedly a dwarf, but he looks more like the traditonal western elf.... He fits the crafter archetype to a degree, but is incredibly laid-back and friendly.
  • Then there's Zaid, a belligerent warrior dwarf -- looking similar to Gaius -- who complains that the "short, bearded man" bit is a racist stereotype.
• Our Elves Are Different: Daria is one.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Pia.
• Parental Abandonment: No one has both of their parents. In fact, most of the characters have no parents, with no explanation. Raven at least acknowledges the fact that she never had parents, and Micah gets a flashback involving his parents having one line of dialogue each, but that's it.
• Patchwork Map: When a half-frozen river is just a short walk away from a scorching desert, it certainly seems this way.
• Pettanko: Collette.
  • Karina and Marian as well.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: You can access the island on the right side of Privera as soon as you can afford to buy the Lily Pad.The bosses that spawn there can be pretty tough, but not only they can be easily beat with some preparations, but their loot can be used to beef up equipment for at least a couple levels.
  • Doubly so for the Bonus Dungeons - especially if you get lucky with the rare chests.
• Player Party: You can have up to one villager, one monster companion, and one active seed on your side at any one time.
  • However, you can't have a monster and a villager with you at the same time; if you try to add a monster while you're with a villager, the villager will leave, and if you try to add a villager with a monster the villager will say that you already have a member in your party.
• Playing with Syringes: You've visited Marian? She'll be wanting to give you a shot. You pass by? She'll want to give you a shot. You leave the game while she's your companion and return? She'll want to give you a shot so you won't forget. You do other girl's requests while you're married to her? A shot is in order. Take note: that ridiculously large musical instrument in her hand IS HER SYRINGE.
  • Although, looking like a musical instrument lessens the fear factor. She has, however, back-up syringes that are...actual syringes and ARE ridiculously large. They aren't calibrated, though, thank God.
  • One of the official artworks has her on beach day with a float in the shape of a syringe.
• Pointy Ears: Raven, Kuruna, Daria, Ondorus, Zaid, and Gaius all have these.
• Poison Mushroom: Some food items such as wine, oil and failed dishes can decrease your HP/RP and cause status effects. Since you can throw food to monsters in this game, it's clear they were meant to be used as attack items.
  • Also, there are literal mushrooms that will restore HP and RP, but may have side effects, including poisoning.
• Power-Up Food: The main purpose of cooking. While HP/RP restoration via Hyperactive Metabolism is nice, the stat buffs that come along with it are the kicker, not to mention eating once a day ups your "well-fed" skill, which in turn permanently increases a number of your stats.
• Powerup Mount: You can now ride a large variety of monsters, all with their own attacks. Humanoid monsters like orcs and goblins may do the same.
• Pregnant Badass: You can take your pregnant wife adventuring with you, and she still kicks as much ass.
• Rainbow Speak: A godsend for the players who don't speak Japanese, as key items and requests are highlighted in blue. Sofia's opposite-meaning words are highlighted in red, too.
• Randomly Drops: Still around, although much, much better than the last two games.
• Rare Candy: Various alchemy products serve this purpose, as well as strike:runeys rune spirits and rune orbs. This is also how you learn new item crafting abilities: eating recipe bread.
• Recurring Boss Template: While most of the bonus bosses recycled from earlier games still have all their signature moves, they're a lot tougher this time around.
• Reduced Mana Cost: The handknit scarf has this ability, but it doesn't work all the time.
• Required Party Member: Some message board requests involve this.
• Runaway Fiance: Your chosen wife becomes this for a while just before the end of the game.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: When you first enter Sol Terrano Desert, there's a little sequence with a sign kindly informing you that it's called Sol Terrano Dessert. Unfortunately, it was dry and sandy tasting.
• Run, Don't Walk: Ever since the first game in the series. Why would you need to walk?
  • There is one request involving catching birds where you have to walk, as running to a bird makes them fly away.
    • Also, precision during farming. Wouldn't want to accidentally cut down or hammer in the wrong expensive crops...
• Scratch Damage
• Shout-Out: The twin leeks weapon is a direct reference to Vocaloid's Hatsune Miku.
  • Evelyn also makes a vague reference to Raguna and Kyle (protagonists of the first two installments) in the English version of the game: "Yeah, and I guess amnesiacs are a dime a dozen around these parts. You're not the first!"
  • Whenever Rusk comments on his dislike of vegetables, Micah responds with a random fact that gives Rusk second thoughts. When Rusk says he hates eggplants for being soft, Micah claims that there are wizards made of eggplants in far-off kingdoms.
  • During a conversation with Collette, she talks about a popular play from the city when she was a kid, about a disembodied head that recruited five teenagers "with attitudes" to fight monsters with oils and spices. The theme song of this show? "Go, go Radish Rangers!"
• Spell My Name with an "S": In the original Japanese, Mais has been variously Anglicized as Maisu, Mice, and, well, Mais. Sia is occasionally referred to as Shia, Toona is occasionally referred to as Touna, and Cururufa is occasionally referred to as Klurufa, Kururufa, or Clurufa. Then there's Gadzhi, who is at times referred to as Gaji. Finally, there's Elisa, who is often referred to as Eliza.
• Spoiled Sweet: Sofia, Evelyn.
• Sprint Shoes: The rocket wings, which double your speed.
• Stationary Boss: Terror Tree, until it Turns Red.
• Super Mode: One of the dual swords skill seals makes your basic attacks much, much faster.
• Sweet Tooth: Kuruna. Many of her requests involve you getting sweets for her, as they're hard to find in the desert. Also Chocolate is her favorite.
• Take Your Time: Fiancee missing? Last seen near that strange island with the ancient unopenable door? Doesn't matter, she's not going anywhere, is she?
• Talk to Everyone: Your very first message board request is for you to introduce yourself to everyone in town and then ship one item.
  • You're told to do this with Kuruna in the Unity Festival, although it doesn't matter if you do or not and you don't get anything for it.
• That Came Out Wrong: After Pia learns about your little secret, she tries to keep it a secret by refering to your transformed state as your "thing." So when she blurts out that your "thing was cute" around her mother figure after being asked asking how your date went, Shino not so subtly begins to threaten you while Pia remains oblivious.
• The Blacksmith: Gaius
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Swing around your sword inside the house will destroy the furniture you've purchased upon impact. Also your crops can be cut down as well.
  • Drinking wine makes you fall asleep. You can then feed the wine to enemies and hit them while they're asleep.
• The Phoenix: Raven's last quest reveals that she is one.
• There Are No Tents: Due to massive underusage in the earlier two games, the camping skill was taken out, along with sleeping bags.
• The Power of Friendship: In order for the Sharance Tree to bloom, humans and monsters must stop their Fantastic Racism and become friends.
• The Quiet One: Raven.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Dragon Cave.
• The Yoshi: Compared to the first games, pretty much any monster bigger than yourself can be ridden on.From a goofy Buffamoo, to the Humongous Mecha Little Golem, to the fire-breathing Claw Dragon.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Justified in Sharance; plenty of faceless NPCs pass through and can be seen patronising the shops in town, and Hazel presumably sells your shipped items to other places through the DSC family. Played straight with Univir Village, though.
  • Ondorus mentions that traveling merchants do stop by Univir Village, although you never see them.
    • However, there is a merchant that sells you Cooking Bread that occasionally shows up in the desert. Although he doesn't ever pass the entrance...
• Tomboy: Carmen.
• Tough Room: Pia and Sakuya's Boke and Tsukkomi Routine is quite a bit funnier than you and Shino make it out to be (though as always Your Mileage May Vary)
• Trademark Favourite Food: Most of the villagers have one; giving them food they like while they're in your party often buffs their stats beyond what it says on the label, or ignores negative effects the food would ordinarily have.
• Transformation Trinket: Your transformation belt. Although you have it at the beginning of the game, your character doesn't remember how to use it until you beat Tanuki.
• Turns Red: Or, more correctly, turns black.
• Universal Poison: Apparently, poisonous mushrooms and rainbow trout sashimi are equally poisonous.
• Unpredictable Results: Eating a wild mushroom can restore up to all of your HP/RP, cause status effects, or damage you. Thankfully, there are none that are instantly fatal.
• Useless Useful Spell: Most status afflictions such as sleep, paralyse, and the like don't work on bosses, and by the time you've managed to inflict them on normal enemies they're mostly dead already.
  • Although it must be said that some, like lifestealing, can be useful.
  • And that while bosses are mostly immune to negative food effects, it is still possible to lower their elemental resistances through food buffs.
• Unusual Ears: Pia has rather peculiar fin and external gill-like extensions in place of where "normal" ears might otherwise be. This is likely due to her being a mermaid, however.
• Visible Silence: You get a lot of this from Raven.
• Voice Grunting: Unfortunately, this appears to be the case. The number of incomplete responses and mismatched VA is staggering, possibly because the game was so large the cartidge was strapped for space.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: This.
• WAFF: Some dates can cause this.
• Wallet of Holding: Your money cap is 9,999,999 G. It's been upped to 99,999,999G in the US release.
• Warp Whistle: Teleport, by now a staple of the series. Still can't be used in the Sharance Maze or certain scripted sequences, though.
• We Cannot Go on Without You: Fainting, even when all your party members are fine, sends you back to the hospital sans your cash.
• Welcome to Corneria: Averted.
• What the Hell, Player?: After you marry, you can still do requests for the other bachelorettes. However, after a while your wife will complain that you've been "spending a lot of time with someone else."
• Wrestler in All of Us: Micah's Wooley form can pick up enemies who he's just smacked and perform a number of body slams on them. Who knew Woolies were so into wrestling?
• You Gotta Have Colorful Hair: There's Marian (light blue), Pia (pink), Sofia (light purple), Carmen (green), Raven (red), Evelyn (purple), Carlos (green), and, finally, Sherman (dark green). Karina (silvery-grey) might arguably count as well, all things taken into consideration.

1. ↑ massively raises critical hit rates
2. ↑ The exceptions are Wells, Sherman, Marjorie and Ondorous