well this is late, but I'd say no, a lot of what makes Rune Factory games unique and fun was taken out in Tides of Destiny while the battle system was sped up but not made particularly more fun.

Was trying to play it through for a review but I got bored and couldn't get myself to slog through to the end in order to write something up.

In my opinion the only really great and unique part about the Rune Factory series is the time management between farming and battling and the farming itself. Take that out and you have a mediocre battle system, mediocre storyline, and in this case in particular some below mediocre graphics. I've enjoyed games that are pretty mediocre from an objective view point, so it's not saying that you won't like it, you definitely could, but I'd say that the odds are against you and if you want a cheap Rune Factory that's still great I'd go with Rune Factory: Frontier.

Well there are better RPG options on the PS3, but I guess if you really want the farming part there aren't many other options if any. So go for it and let me know what you think of it since I'm curious.

Atelier games are great, but you have to go in with the right expectations. More about Alchemy and time management than the usual RPG tropes. At their best, right when things are really moving along in the item crafting, there's really no other game series that gets me so addicted. If you want to try out the series I'd suggest skipping to Totori. Rorona was annoyingly stringent in its time limits and Totori was just a lot more fun because it allowed so much freedom. That said if you really want to play them all you're better served starting out with the first or you'll have a hard time going back to it.