I've clocked almost 300 hours in Rune Factory Frontier and I've been eagerly awaiting this title.

After reading reviews I'm a bit disappointed to learn about the oversimplied farming.

It was the main draw for me in Frontier, farming. Tilling, watering, seasons, etc. Do you even get to pick want you want to plant?

Have ya'll played it? What do you think?

bump.

this sucks i was hoping to see more post. check out the site review. i think it got an 8.7 or 8.9 which are very good scores.

I played it for a couple of hours, in a friend house. I never played a rune factory yet (I'm planning to get Frontier first) but I'm a harvest moon veteran so the farming is important to me.
For I could see the farming is extremely simplified, you only plants crops with a staff/wand and you don't need to even water them, so it's kinda disappointing.
But that aside, the game is SO addictive, even when you virtually spent no time in farming, the day is short with the MANY things you can do. The battles are so quick and fluid, although it's only button smashing but it's rewarding. You can raise monsters and form a party to go to different islands/dungeons which take an important amount of in game time , you can do quests but they are simple and kinda boring (and it has an exploit xD)
Maybe this game is so addictive to me because it my first RF game.

Also there a couple of crops that grows on one day only and yes you can harvest your crops and also (optional) using harvesting monsters to do this.
In conclusion, the game may be overly simple in farming but it has a lot more to do than other harvest moons and it becomes really addictive.

Farming is simplified down to the point that you don't have to do anything that you used to. And personally I don't think the rest of the game is good enough to justify taking out farming as it was.

Rune Factory Frontier to me was a Harvest Moon where you could also adventure, where as this is an adventure game where one of the side activities is farming.  They definitely improved the battle mechanics but it isn't good enough to stand on its own.

@MARCUSDJACKSON
Gamespot's 6.5 threw me off a bit.

@MRKs
thanks for the info. Seems to be an ok game but I'm not sure if the aspects outside of farming will be able to hold me!

@Torillian
I had a feeling it may have been like that. I was hoping that I missed something.