Rune Factory 3/Headscratchers

• When your wife gets pregnant, the pregnancy doesn't even last a month. The kid, in one year and one day, grows up to look about 4 or 5. And no one else looks older. Magical rapid aging that affects your child? Half-monster DNA screwed them up?
  • Yeah, must be the half-monster DNA.
  • More true for Micah X Raven pair thay anyone else.
• Micah's attitude. His snarkiness is pretty hilarious, but there are times when he crosses the line. He tells Sofia to her face that her family has genetic defects. Not to mention other times when he makes rather cruel jokes or insults to/about people right in front of them.
  • Those... are cruel already? o_o
    • No matter how mean he gets, he's still better than Marian.
• I like how you don't lose an item if you drop it. But my wife made me ice cream and she put in on the floor (we were outside at the time, and she dropped it on the stairs.) She then proceeds to go into labor. We get a year and a day in a Time Skip. The ice cream is still there. Gross!
  • And then you can ship it.
    • And I did!
  • I shipped it with Donchachos/Sherman.
• Your children are mere decorations. You can't give them gifts and they can't be taken to battle (though that would be insane.) The only fun I had with them was continually bouncing the large table off his head. My monsters would make better children.
  • That can always be improved in the next game. Alternatively, your children really are zombies.
    • This is unfortunately the way children have been handled in most Harvest Moon games, so the it seems more likely that children will continue to be little more than lawn ornaments.
  • Or maybe they ran out of space to program in favorite gifts and stuff.
• Why does/do your son(s) have the same haircut as Rusk? It makes the child look like a mini-him.
  • Of course, it could mean that your wife had an affair...
    • Because you kept flirting with the other girls, like in the WMG below.
    • Hey, they flirted with me, ignoring the fact that after the marriage, I started making engagement rings and proposing to anyone I saw walking outside.
    • Note: Society always think it's the guy's fault.
• Even if you get married, the bachelorettes still openly flirt with you. What's up with that?
  • JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE.
  • Doubly creepy/funny when they do in in front of your wife.
    • Triply so when your wife plays along.
      • Quadrupaly so when you can still take them on dates, give them random gifts, and finish relationship requests for them.
  • It's your fault for making them like you anyway. :P
  • Maybe they like Shotacon? Like, it's a big fetish there, similar to many cultures liking fat people. Your character fits the mold.
  • There's at least one case where this is averted. If you go on a date with Kuruna after you're married and choose one of the more romantic dialogue options, she'll chastise you for hitting on her.
• Why are the humans okay with a friggin' MERMAID walking (er, hopping) around whenever it rains (which is fairly often), but the idea of speaking to a human with a horn, or a dwarf (who looks JUST LIKE all other humans) is NOT okay?
  • They've seen Persia/Pia in a bathing suit. They have no beef with her.
    • Alternatively, because she's too busy hating on squids, they know she's too much of a ditz to be a threat. Also, notice Raven's boss (what's his name) is a dwarf.
  • Note that she says you discovered her secret. Whether or not the townspeople know about it, she thinks it's a secret.
  • (Original Troper) Oh, yeah, I forgot about Gaius. And it's not really a secret. In one of Sofia's early quests, she off-handly mentions that a mermaid works at the bathhouse when you walk by it. I assumed that she was joking at the time... So, it seems to be common knowledge.
  • Least among the girls. Considering they seem to bathe in large groups and Pia probably spends a lot of time in the baths, it probably went something like this:

• Girls are taking bath. Pia is cleaning.*
  

Pia: La la la. *Slips and falls into bath. Gets tail.*
Someone: What, you've got a tail?
Pia: Oh, yeah, I'm a mermaid.
Someone: Eh, that explains the fish obsession. And the gills. And the love of baths.

• • This troper can't actually seem to remember anyone having a problem with the main character being part monster. At most it seemed to raise trust issues with Sakuya, but do any of the characters besides Kuruna (for all her ranting about racist Hornless) actually have a problem with Micah being part monster?
• This is similar to the one above about other girls flirting with you after you're married. In the middle of the whole thing with Aquaticus near the end of the game, while waiting for Cucumbers to grow, I did a quest for Kuruna, in which she asked that I take her to talk to Wells. Wells then comments that the Sharance flowers have yet to grow, and suggests that the "bond between the races" might be love. So he recommends that I DATE KURUNA. DUDE, that is NOT something that you say to a guy whose fiance has just been kidnapped!
  • Guess this is a bad time to mention that you can buy all the items you need from Hazel, negating the need for waiting , if the RandGods are kind.
• And another thing about the only-sometimes-racism. How does Aquaticus manage to justify kidnapping Raven, if she's your fiance, with the argument that a half-monster freak like you shouldn't be allowed to marry a human? Last I checked, Raven was half-monster, too! She even says to you after you beat Aquaticus that SHE thought that YOU wouldn't love her because SHE'S a "Half"!
  • I'm assuming it's just a Secret Test of Character. He says after you beat him that he engineered all this to get the Sharance flowers to bloom, and the fact that you can't faint in that final attack (though that might just be Rule Of Cool/Micah being a Determinator) suggests he's going easy on you. Keep in mind, there's pedestals for the memory orbs and statues of the five other bosses. This indicates prophecy or planning or both.
    • If you go by the theory that the Aquaticus you face in the final Sharance Maze is the "real" Aquaticus, yeah, he's going easy on you.
  • Note what Aquaticus actually says: "Humans and monsters were never meant to be together. She would only be unhappy with a halfbreed like yourself." He's probably saying that you shouldn't exist, because you are human and monster together. He isn't saying that Raven isn't, just that you'd make her even more unhappy. Remember that she hated her "cursed" half until you showed her that you were one, too.
  • I'm not sure Aquaticus cares about justification. Based on what he said after you battle him he already kidnapped the main character and erased his memories. From the memories recovered from the orbs he had duties he was pulled away from allowing the boss monsters to continue their rampage, probably including the death of people the main character once cared about. In one memory he's in contact with his father, so that's at least one family member and probably other family and friends devastated by Micah's sudden disappearance. And for what? To save a land that he's a stranger in. Can you say "end justifies the means"?
• Did it bother anyone else that, once you show everyone in town your big secret, they're all just "Oh, that's okay, as long as your just a cute little Wooly." Isn't the point of the story to get rid of the racism altogether? What if, say, Raven had made The Reveal instead? You know what I mean. How would they have reacted to that?
  • Then again, the bird is really colorful and pretty-like.
  • On all the on-again off-again racism, here's my two cents: Try going in Wooly form around town before the secret is revealed and talking to people. Almost everyone goes "CUUTE!" and tries to hug/shave you. The problem seems mostly one that Kuruna, Marjorie and Wells have. Sakuya's scared of them, but only because they interfere with business, and Shino's one scene seemed more like she was worried what customers would think, not her own prejudices (At least, that's why I haven't added it here yet). Most of the town just seems afraid the monsters'll attack. Same problem applies to the travellers, and you can't exactly blame the univir for thinking the townspeople'll attack them if they get too close. Once you've established you're friendly, no reason to be afraid. The Unity Festival can basically be described as the entire non-Micah cast going "Hey, these univir/Hornless DON'T want to kill us! Let's be friends!" Once you've established you're intelligent, no reason to keep you as a pet. This'd be why there's never a problem with Gaius, Pia and Daria, and why Raven'd be accepted, too.
• ...why are all of Pia's mermaid Tropes spoilered out? If it rains on the second day of the game, you can figure it out.
• The whole layout of Sharance bugs me. First, there's a desert a few steps away from an ice land (okay, it's magic, whatever). Second, there doesn't seem to be a way out of it. Where do the travelers who stay in Shino's inn come from? The only road that you see is in the distance when you're in the Privera Flower Field, but you can't get to it. Another thing about that road: It should go right into the desert, based on the map. And the desert, which "stretches out forever" according to you and Raven, would cross right over Vale. Even if Vale wasn't there, how can there be a sea to the north of town if the desert continues northward?
• Isn't the canon couple girl supposed to be nice? Since I've married Shara, all she's done is complain about not being able to use the field (who said she couldn't?), compare me to a pet because I'm half-wooly, say that she can't believe I ever said something so insulting (what the heck did I say, anyway?), and she even gave me Ironleaf for my lunch, which killed me when I ate it.
  • Yeah, Shara's a lying bitch. She told me to eat flowers, but when I did, I nearly died! The dungeon boss then killed me.
  • She's manipulative, too. Her whole family is. In one of the dates she says that she wants to marry while her Grandpa's still alive, and then starts talking about how close you two are. And her sister and grandfather each have requests where they effectively guilttrip you into admitting love for her. If you don't say that you do to Wells, he frowns and says something like "you're not like most people". And Monica starts to tear up thinking about you marrying someone other than Shara. Come on!
    • Heck she does it in the first few minutes of the game. Shara: "You'll be living in the tree!" Micah: "I don't remember agreeing to that." Shara: "You're an amnesiac, there's a lot of things you don't remember."
  • Most types of flowers will heal you. I'm not sure which type you ate. And as for the not nice part, she did save your life over the objections of her grandfather, and she was the one who made the bouquet for Kuruna. And when you're married, she makes comments about how happy she is and how excited she is to be a mother.
• Why are there no couples in this entire game, beyond you and your wife? At least there's Gaius and Evelyn.
  • So they don't have to make more characters and stuff, I guess.
  • There Carlos and Carmen. *shutter*
• Shara is content to let a perfect stranger live in the town's sacred tree?
  • About that sacred tree: How can it be fireproof? Wells says it is. Come to think of it, how does he know that it's fireproof?
  • Obviously he tried to burn it down in his youth, when he got really blitzed.
• Is Ondorus really the only person in the area who has ever heard of the "bond beyond the races"? The Sharance Tree folklore seems pretty well-known in town...
  • Ondorus is very studious and likely has studied the legend of the Sharance Tree far more in-depth than any of the other citizens. The other citizens seem to know that the tree is special and know of the legend, but they don't even seem to know how it's special. They call it the guardian of the town, but Aquaticus mentions the entire land will wither and die if the Sharance Tree does not bloom, making it far more important than even those legends suggest.
• What's the point of a canon heroine, anyway? Especially in this game.
  • Just so people know which couple is canon, for those obsessive about continuity.
• Why do stumps suddenly pop up in the fields? It's not like someone could just grow a tree and then cut it down overnight.
  • Why do branches suddenly pop up in the fields? Is the Sharance Tree breaking apart from the inside?
  • Maybe the tree is a Genius Loci?
• Why does no one in Sharance have two living parents? As far as I can remember, none of the characters even mention a Disappeared Dad or a Missing Mom. It's enough to make you worry about what's going to happen to Micah or his wife.
• How can Marjorie pull you out of the dungeons when you get KO'ed, no matter which dungeon you're in?
  • Perhaps Teleport works automatically to bring you back to the Sharance Tree when you fall unconscious, and since you're unconscious there's an unseen cut-scene of you being dragged off to Marjorie. Since cut scenes stop time that would explain why no time passes when you are brought to Marjorie from inside a dungeon.
• Why isn't Evelyn marriageable? She doesn't seem much older than Sophia, and the only thing really holding her back is that she's a Official Couple with Gaius (which could be remedied by him simply being a rival, as in RF2). It's not really a big deal, but it just bugs me.
  • Possibly simply a mechanics thing, since you have to fulfill family member's requests as well as your beloved's to get married (Or Gaius, if your dating Raven), and having two beloveds within one family would mean having two of cutscenes where you show your secret wooly form to two people, as well as act more and more in love with them.
• So... do we ever get an explanation for what's up with Carlos's arms? I had thought those little fins on his biceps were some sort of decoration, but it became clear during the summer beach scenes that they're actually a part of his body. Was he supposed a merperson like Pia?