After checking out a new store in my area similar to Gamestop and EB games, I picked up an old DS game called Rune Factory 2.
The game revolves around a boy with amnesia and gets a free farm to take care of in a little town. You spend the majority of the game growing crops in each season while performing little fetch quests for your neighbors, a lot like Animal Crossing, except this game adds in a possible romance and marriage option with any of the townsfolk as well as some "dungeons" to kill enemies. One of the coolest features you don't see to often in games these days is you get to play as your second generation, so when you marry and have a kid, 7 years pass and you get to play the game fresh as your son/daughter in what seems to be a slightly harder version of the game where you can upgrade your tools, weapons, abilities, and fight harder monsters in the dungeons.
The game is top down perspective as you run around slaying monsters and plotting your crops for money. There is no core feature that really grabs my attention, but the whole package itself of what you can do is a breath of fresh air among today's games. I played Animal Crossing for so long before realizing that I didn't even know why it was so addicting or fun, and I think Rune Factory is also worthy of the Animal Crossing addiction.
The graphics are old but consistent, they use the 8 bit sprites and cut out images of each character like most games from Japan. Unlike Animal Crossing each day goes by in a matter of 24 minutes, and you can only do so much in a day, there are certain days like holidays or character birthdays where you get to take part in special events which is nice, but the main thing you do is talk with everyone in town each day raising their friendship and love points.
It's a fairly old game with the recent announcement of Rune Factory 4 for the 3ds in Japan already, but if you ever want to sit back and break free from the hollywood style of today's gaming industry then I would suggest picking up one of the Rune Factory Games.
~Djr7
