I'd say if you have all (except 1) in prosperity, and you get them to a point of 60-60-60-60, that technically gives you about 9-10 days to totally ignore the whole runey system (with the loss of 2 grass a day) couple that with the first 7 days in the month when they don't eat each other and you can really have long runs of neglect towards it

True, but then I have to build up my supply of Grass Runeys to reseed other areas

yup, you'll immediately need 16 when the grass runeys reach 35, which you can get in in one day with the grass factory...and then work your way back up from there to the 60-60-60-60 and so the cycle continues :)

Do you raise monsters in this game?
I'm guessing it has 100+ hours playtime. How is the music?

Yup; any monster (save for bosses) can be captured and put to work for you in one capacity or another.

The Nintendo Channel says I've put 146 hours into this game so far.

The music's pretty good. Don't go looking to rip the OST or anything, as there's nothing particularly memorable about it, but it's pleasant background music, and no song ever gets on your nerves.

I've said this like 5 times before, but this game really reminds me of Azure Dreams for the Playstation 1. In that game, you enter a tower. Within that tower was a host of monsters and items that you would fight and collect. However, once it came time to leave the tower, your main characters attributes would return to 0, but your monsters would be leveled up and your money collected would be there too. 

The town of (Monsaiyba?) was simple at the beginning, but then as you interacted with the people and started completing all the sidequests, it got updated with casinos and town pools, etc. You could customize your own house and build an addition to your home for monsters. Monsters could be fused and each one had special abilities.

I would give many things to be able to play that game again, or at least something like it. So, when I hear these details about Rune Factory Frontier, it takes me back 6-8 years ago when I played probably my #5 favorite game EVER. If RFF has a similar experience, I need it right now.

Unfortunately, Frontier's not quite as elaborate: your town does grow (and occasionally shrink) according to your actions, but not quite as elaborately (think Harvest Moon); you can capture monsters and store them in your ever-growing barn; and there's some customization of your place involved, but that's where the similarities end. You keep your levels at all times, you only take one monster with you into dungeons, and the emphasis is equally on the village as it is on the dungeons, if not more so.

But now you've made me want to look into this game of yours...

OK, so I bought the game a few days ago, and here are my impressions:

When I first played RFF, I was a little disappointed. I got excited for this game but it started off really slow. As I went to bed that night, I was hoping it would get better after the 2 hours I already invested in it.

IT GOT WAY BETTER

After those first two hours, things really started picking up, and my sister and I are fighting over who gets to play next! I mean, getting all the weapons, forging, and the time-management really makes things fast-paced, and I always have to find the next thing to do. The little things that occur in the background (girl giving your mail, girl who collects your things at 5pm) are a nice touch. The music is repetitive, but I lowered the volume of the BGM to about ~16 so it turns into nice ambient music.

The graphics are perfect to me. It goes to show that Wii games don't need to look like 360 ones at all if enough attention is paid and the art is good enough. It really looks great. Also, the real-time 'armor' equipment is sweet, and I hope there a lot more things I can equip.

So far, my sister and I have played for 17 hours....in the past 2 days alone. I have my file, and she has one of her own. Like the blog post earlier in the thread, I wouldn't show this game to my Gears of War friends, but this is one hell of a guilty pleasure.

Overall, I'd give it an 8.5/10. It is not perfect, but it does not have enough flaws to not justify buying it, especially at the $20 I got it for.

The only reason I made this post instead of playing it now is because I had the controller ripped from me lol

Rune Factory Frontier is the first of two games I really fell in love with since Skies of Arcadia (the other being DQ5), which was about 10 years ago. So I am REALLY happy this one got released. Really sad to see it not seeing the success it deserves.

Glad you're loving it! According to the Nintendo Channel, this remains my second-most played game, and that's for a good reason. Just remember to plant those late-game flowers early on, or you'll never harvest them!

And I'm delighted that Europe finally has their chance to try this game, even if it is over a year later.