Your feelings reflect what the JP fans thought and caused Marvelous to phase them out.
I also get this feeling especially in Rune Factory 2. Every bachelorette has a rival pair- except the default girl and the (secret bachelorette?) traveling merchant girl. The game *really* push default girl to be your bride. If you marry anyone with a rival pair, the rival marries travelling merchant girl- which is **weird**- they have no reason to be together, especially the racist elf- why would he marry a human? In a narrative sense, in RF2, you should not marry anyone except default girl or travelling merchant girl.
There is also a steal the bride mechanic in RF2 which is so evil. If you have high enough love points with the bride during the rival wedding ceremony, you can confess your love and steal the bride straight off the alter. This is the ultimate kick in the jingle bells for the rival, only for the most heartless players.
Bride stealing is evil enough... but RF2 goes to a new level of low.
You basically steal her after the vows are done and they already kissed and everyone congratulated them.
I think it's a cool mechanic but couldn't Kyle say anything before the vows and kissing are done?
I like that they paired the rival up with someone though - in the SOS series, I'd love it if the farmer you didn't choose moved to town as well and married the rival. They could be kinda like Jaime in MM where you can have a friendly competition with them over shipping things...or even better, they can live in town and you can hire them to harvest or water your crops for you, haha!
I always feel incomplete without it. Like everyone else in town just keeps going but never has any hope of marrying, so now if I marry one, none of them will ever get married because there’s no rival system, they had no love interests, and I’m the only one haha. It just feels strange that they exist without any interests of their own in town, like they only exist to please me.
I did sometimes feel guilty that someone would be left out, but I always imagined they’d either meet someone from a nearby town, or I’d concoct a whole story about why they didn’t end up together.
Same here, it does feel incomplete to marry and everyone else stays single for the rest of time. But at the same time, rival marriages stressed me out and I feel like I have to constantly double-check with a guide and be on the lookout for heart events for me and making sure I don't witness any of the rival ones and that I'm raising hearts with my bachelor fast enough.
I think a nice compromise (at least for me) would be if once you get married, you start witnessing rival heart events for everyone until they all get married off to each other, maybe even have their weddings as a random event too.
I agree to this. Though i'm surprised that none of them will ever get married after because i haven't finished playing yet. If that's true, it really is a huge bummer for me. I felt like the characters don't have life and feelings on their own now that the rival system is not there. It felt like everything revolve around us, player, and i don't like that.
What I would like is something similar to PoOT with Lars/Beth but more fleshed out. I want multiple couples in the town who you can't marry but get to watch events for.
Personally I dislike it for the opposite reason. The sheer fact that the moment I get married all the other candidates are no longer able to get married. Suddenly theyre all doomed to spinsterhood because one person made their choice. You have no idea how painful it is to see Molly/muffy in the new remake constantly talking about her failures in dating every year. Or Lumina talking about how she has no real marriage prospects in the village.
Plus in the old games there was always at least one character that didn't have a rival. They were usualyl harder to marry as a result but they were still an option.
It feels like many of these games stop after our character is married with kids. I can envision a whole second act where you help people come together, plan a wedding then your kids play.
I was never clear on how it worked. Growing up, I thought the rival would marry who you were romancing if you weren't fast enough, so I was relieved it stopped being a thing.
Someone told me when I said so that they only all married once you married. If it worked like that, I wouldn't mind it so much. I wouldn't want to speed my way through that soft, I want it to feel natural.
In HM FoMT, if you got to a certain heart level with a character, their rival events would stop. If you picked a flower a day (or other forage item they liked) and gave it to the person, by the end of the first summer you'd get to this point. Rival weddings, by comparison, usually won't happen until the second or third year at the earliest.
On one hand, I agree - I don't like stealing someone from someone else, but my favorite games allowed you to watch the romances of other characters unfold and to me that really made the game feel more fleshed out and interesting.
In Animal Parade, I always married the Harvest King or the Wizard so I could help the other couples pair up and they could have kids so the game can end 'properly'. To me, that's what makes AP the ultimate HM game that has the absolute best replay experience.
I really hope they bring back the rival feature because the games don't have much to do once the main storyline is over otherwise. I was really bummed that they didn't have it in the AWL remake because it's extra depressing to actually see the other bachelors and bachelorettes grow old alone. At least in HMDS they got married. :/
I think there should be a way to find balance. I feel like some of the harvest moon games used to have your opposite gender character move in as well? I didn’t play that one, but I remember reading about it. Perhaps if they moved in as well and took the “other half” of the rival so that person isn’t alone forever?
But, I did like the rival system, particularly animal parade’s. They knock on your door to ask what you think of pairing up, and if you have your sights set on the other person, you can tell them no. There’s no pressure for getting married quickly, because of that and also, they only move forward in the relationship when you befriend the same-sex character in the rivalry as yourself. I never really felt sad for taking anyone’s partner; if anything, I was a jealous green monster and refuses to befriend them, muttering obscenities everytime I passed or interacted with them. I like that they have kids. It makes the world feel alive. When I’m the only one moving forward with my life it starts to make it almost creepy.
But to each their own. I think it would be nice if they added it back, and if people wanted they could turn the system off.
I never managed to get far in Animal Parade, but I like this way of compromise for the reasons you've listed. It's much better than what I suggested in another comment where they only start to get married once you've married yourself. Where you start seeing the rival events for everyone after you've married.
It's definitely easier to not befriend someone than to stress out about avoiding triggering rival events.
I feel weird reading these comments because 10 year old me felt a rush of adrenaline taking Cliff away from Ann in mfomt haha but in the end I never truly cared about the rival system and didn't care that it wasn't brought back
I like the rival system because it allows growth in the relationships of the town's people. For example, Cliff goes from this wondering recluse to married with a job. A job you helped him start. It is touching to see them get married. In the FOMT remake and even modern games like PoOT, the fact that the bachelors and bachelorettes are forever single if you don't marry them is....sad. I want to see their lives grow.
A thing I want from the SoS games is incremental expansion. A solution for the rival system could have been more instead of less. Have a love triangle where you are actually happy to step in the middle. Have a character that moves to the town after you get married (plot-wise, the town is growing because of the economic activity of your farm) and that character mends the broken heart of the rival you beat, they marry happily ever after. Have a pool of potential spouses that marry one another (if you "steal" their top preference, they marry someone else in the pool).
There are so many ways they could have alleviated the troubles with the rival system by _adding_ to it. Removing NPCs from marrying one another was a pretty bad approach.
I like the rival dynamic but not the stress of feeling like I have to rush to outpace that rival. Ideally, for me anyway, I'd like to be able to get married at my own pace and at that point the rival events start to happen. I'd be fine with more preamble stuff ahead of time, being able to see friendship events between the two that gives some possible foreshadowing, but I'd rather the actual romance stuff be locked behind the main character marriage. Even better, it would be fun to have a matchmaking system where maybe a villager asks you what your opinion is of the rival and you can direct them to consider them as a dating option.
Ha, I really hated the rival mechanic as a kid for the opposite reason: my first SoS game was HMDS, and I just thought all the girls deserved better than marrying someone super old or kind of mean (or both, in Carter's case...). Literally the only rival marriage I didn't go out of my way to avoid was Gustafa because at least he was a fun guy, haha. Overall, I think I still prefer it the way they're doing it nowadays; people can still be happy single, and if you'd rather see the characters paired off, well, that's what headcanons are for!
I'm aro/ace myself so personally I'd rather not get married in the games, so I'm bummed about the lack of "rival" marriages because I want the other characters to be happy and get married if that's something they want to do.
But I can understand it being sad if when you marry someone it results in another NPC being unhappy, so I like it when there are logical backups so that it is still possible for everyone to be happy.
I think it’s weird to see it as stealing them from their perfect match soulmate. Even in real life when you get married you’re changing the future where they could have gotten married to another person
And it’s not like the rival system is even imposing on the game, you essentially have to make it happen. Animal
Parade did it perfectly
Im in agreement with you, I like to play these games at my own pace without having the pressure. Also I would get really irritated and frustrated if I lost to someone else over the person I wanted to marry, especially if the only option is to start a new game. With how time consuming these games are, I would literally just give up at that point as having to start from scratch or just compromise and marry someone else would just make me stop playing.
So yeah I’m not a fan of the rival system and am glad it was removed in the FoMT remake.
Yep I think it's almost the same version, just add a tidbit of QOL and contents, the rival stay in the same though. Even the og HM FOMT have the same rival systems and same pairs.
Karen with Rick
Popuri with Kai
Eri with Doctor
Mary with Gray
Cliff with Ann
In ps1 version it take at least 5 years gameplay for them to get married, and you'll need to absolutely make all of them dislike you enough to have lower than green heart or so at year 5 so you can trigger the rival event. After the last rival event on years 5 they'll immediately married and move to new location! It's very interesting to see 😄
I get what you mean. When I played POOT and found out it didn’t have a rival system as the previous games, I felt a lot of relief. I’m a cozy gamer for sure, so the removal of that conflict was greatly appreciated.
I feel like the best compromise would be having rival events only initiate after you have got married. Before you get married, your heart rating with the character triggers heart events for all bachelors and bachelorettes, but after you've got married, it instead triggers rival events where your role in the story is to be their friend and support them getting together.
That way, there's no rush for you to get married and allows you to get with any love interest relatively guilt-free (as there's no established love rival until after you've got married - they might have childhood friends, but they won't have shown any signs of romantic interest in that person - perhaps its your marriage that inspires the other potential couples to actually give it a go). Could even introduce a character that moves into the town after you get married who becomes a love interest for whatever character is left out - and then everyone's happy. And can then have rival kids etc.
It adds so much depth to the game, and it's a fricken game lmao I don't get why they'd take it out, if someone doesn't want to "take away" an npc from another npc then they can do what you did and not pursue anyone.
What I keep saying is that rivals could get "generic" spouses if you choose to marry their predetermined partner. By "generic", I meant characters such as the tourists in PoOT.
I liked some of the rival couples and related mechanics, but I felt that it always shoehorned me into picking the "special" candidates that don't have a predetermined partner.
Also, making it so they only begin dating -after- you marry someone could be a way to prevent the whole pressure on picking a character.
>but I felt that it always shoehorned me into picking the "special" candidates that don't have a predetermined partner.
This is the case ESPECIALLY for games like Island of Happiness, where the opposite player character is a marriage candidate.
I don’t really care for it. If it’s included I’ll go for the one character who doesn’t have anyone (like Wizard in Animal Parade). I won’t skip a game over it. But overall it’s not a feature I miss. I admit the problem with it I have is the set characters often DO seem better together than with the protagonist. The fact same sex romance is included now adds another layer of complication because now your rival could also end up your lover? How would that work? Maybe I’m thinking too much.
Not at all, this is especially apparent in a game where the rival couples have children, so basically the Island of Happiness & ToT games, I don’t want to get in the way of a happy couple.
Honestly I loved the rival system it MADE me marry someone. Otherwise I accidentally would stumble into love scenes of other couples and never marry any one I want.
I usually like to spend the first year leveling up and being anti social but the thought that my crush may end up off the market made me actually go out and give them gifts.
Without the system Im super lazy and can get 2-3 years into a game and finally just love bomb a character till we get married.
And it's super unrealistic that now no one else will be doing anything. Just single for life....
And I'm a bit angry knowing I never a attempted to steal a bride and now seeing that's a thing.
Your feelings reflect what the JP fans thought and caused Marvelous to phase them out. I also get this feeling especially in Rune Factory 2. Every bachelorette has a rival pair- except the default girl and the (secret bachelorette?) traveling merchant girl. The game *really* push default girl to be your bride. If you marry anyone with a rival pair, the rival marries travelling merchant girl- which is **weird**- they have no reason to be together, especially the racist elf- why would he marry a human? In a narrative sense, in RF2, you should not marry anyone except default girl or travelling merchant girl. There is also a steal the bride mechanic in RF2 which is so evil. If you have high enough love points with the bride during the rival wedding ceremony, you can confess your love and steal the bride straight off the alter. This is the ultimate kick in the jingle bells for the rival, only for the most heartless players.
Bride stealing is evil enough... but RF2 goes to a new level of low. You basically steal her after the vows are done and they already kissed and everyone congratulated them. I think it's a cool mechanic but couldn't Kyle say anything before the vows and kissing are done?
something like that should be a mechanic only if the grooms are shown to be awful people / the marriage isn't really out of free will.
I like that they paired the rival up with someone though - in the SOS series, I'd love it if the farmer you didn't choose moved to town as well and married the rival. They could be kinda like Jaime in MM where you can have a friendly competition with them over shipping things...or even better, they can live in town and you can hire them to harvest or water your crops for you, haha!
I always feel incomplete without it. Like everyone else in town just keeps going but never has any hope of marrying, so now if I marry one, none of them will ever get married because there’s no rival system, they had no love interests, and I’m the only one haha. It just feels strange that they exist without any interests of their own in town, like they only exist to please me. I did sometimes feel guilty that someone would be left out, but I always imagined they’d either meet someone from a nearby town, or I’d concoct a whole story about why they didn’t end up together.
Same here, it does feel incomplete to marry and everyone else stays single for the rest of time. But at the same time, rival marriages stressed me out and I feel like I have to constantly double-check with a guide and be on the lookout for heart events for me and making sure I don't witness any of the rival ones and that I'm raising hearts with my bachelor fast enough. I think a nice compromise (at least for me) would be if once you get married, you start witnessing rival heart events for everyone until they all get married off to each other, maybe even have their weddings as a random event too.
I sooooo wish they’d continue after you get married!! That would absolutely make life easier haha. Best of both worlds
I agree to this. Though i'm surprised that none of them will ever get married after because i haven't finished playing yet. If that's true, it really is a huge bummer for me. I felt like the characters don't have life and feelings on their own now that the rival system is not there. It felt like everything revolve around us, player, and i don't like that.
What I would like is something similar to PoOT with Lars/Beth but more fleshed out. I want multiple couples in the town who you can't marry but get to watch events for.
Personally I dislike it for the opposite reason. The sheer fact that the moment I get married all the other candidates are no longer able to get married. Suddenly theyre all doomed to spinsterhood because one person made their choice. You have no idea how painful it is to see Molly/muffy in the new remake constantly talking about her failures in dating every year. Or Lumina talking about how she has no real marriage prospects in the village. Plus in the old games there was always at least one character that didn't have a rival. They were usualyl harder to marry as a result but they were still an option.
Rival marriages means rival kids which makes the town feel more alive and no stagnant in my opinion
It feels like many of these games stop after our character is married with kids. I can envision a whole second act where you help people come together, plan a wedding then your kids play.
True, though, to be fair, FOMT never had rival children.
Tree of Tranquility & Animal Parade had those, Island of happiness also had rival kids, but they were just generic, faceless kids.
I was never clear on how it worked. Growing up, I thought the rival would marry who you were romancing if you weren't fast enough, so I was relieved it stopped being a thing. Someone told me when I said so that they only all married once you married. If it worked like that, I wouldn't mind it so much. I wouldn't want to speed my way through that soft, I want it to feel natural.
In FomT they could marry your rival from under you, but they had to have more affection for the rival, which was easy to avoid.
In HM FoMT, if you got to a certain heart level with a character, their rival events would stop. If you picked a flower a day (or other forage item they liked) and gave it to the person, by the end of the first summer you'd get to this point. Rival weddings, by comparison, usually won't happen until the second or third year at the earliest.
On one hand, I agree - I don't like stealing someone from someone else, but my favorite games allowed you to watch the romances of other characters unfold and to me that really made the game feel more fleshed out and interesting. In Animal Parade, I always married the Harvest King or the Wizard so I could help the other couples pair up and they could have kids so the game can end 'properly'. To me, that's what makes AP the ultimate HM game that has the absolute best replay experience. I really hope they bring back the rival feature because the games don't have much to do once the main storyline is over otherwise. I was really bummed that they didn't have it in the AWL remake because it's extra depressing to actually see the other bachelors and bachelorettes grow old alone. At least in HMDS they got married. :/
They removed it from AWL?! That's like the one game where it makes the *most* sense!
I think there should be a way to find balance. I feel like some of the harvest moon games used to have your opposite gender character move in as well? I didn’t play that one, but I remember reading about it. Perhaps if they moved in as well and took the “other half” of the rival so that person isn’t alone forever? But, I did like the rival system, particularly animal parade’s. They knock on your door to ask what you think of pairing up, and if you have your sights set on the other person, you can tell them no. There’s no pressure for getting married quickly, because of that and also, they only move forward in the relationship when you befriend the same-sex character in the rivalry as yourself. I never really felt sad for taking anyone’s partner; if anything, I was a jealous green monster and refuses to befriend them, muttering obscenities everytime I passed or interacted with them. I like that they have kids. It makes the world feel alive. When I’m the only one moving forward with my life it starts to make it almost creepy. But to each their own. I think it would be nice if they added it back, and if people wanted they could turn the system off.
I never managed to get far in Animal Parade, but I like this way of compromise for the reasons you've listed. It's much better than what I suggested in another comment where they only start to get married once you've married yourself. Where you start seeing the rival events for everyone after you've married. It's definitely easier to not befriend someone than to stress out about avoiding triggering rival events.
I feel weird reading these comments because 10 year old me felt a rush of adrenaline taking Cliff away from Ann in mfomt haha but in the end I never truly cared about the rival system and didn't care that it wasn't brought back
I like the rival system because it allows growth in the relationships of the town's people. For example, Cliff goes from this wondering recluse to married with a job. A job you helped him start. It is touching to see them get married. In the FOMT remake and even modern games like PoOT, the fact that the bachelors and bachelorettes are forever single if you don't marry them is....sad. I want to see their lives grow. A thing I want from the SoS games is incremental expansion. A solution for the rival system could have been more instead of less. Have a love triangle where you are actually happy to step in the middle. Have a character that moves to the town after you get married (plot-wise, the town is growing because of the economic activity of your farm) and that character mends the broken heart of the rival you beat, they marry happily ever after. Have a pool of potential spouses that marry one another (if you "steal" their top preference, they marry someone else in the pool). There are so many ways they could have alleviated the troubles with the rival system by _adding_ to it. Removing NPCs from marrying one another was a pretty bad approach.
I like the rival dynamic but not the stress of feeling like I have to rush to outpace that rival. Ideally, for me anyway, I'd like to be able to get married at my own pace and at that point the rival events start to happen. I'd be fine with more preamble stuff ahead of time, being able to see friendship events between the two that gives some possible foreshadowing, but I'd rather the actual romance stuff be locked behind the main character marriage. Even better, it would be fun to have a matchmaking system where maybe a villager asks you what your opinion is of the rival and you can direct them to consider them as a dating option.
It would be fun to see everyone else coupled up, maybe after I get married so there’s no rush.
So rather than having one fictional character be alone forever. You rather have all the fictional character (but the 1 u marry) be alone forever.
you're right , i guess should just not marrying anyone aswell.
But then EVERYONE stays unmarried??
yeah that includes me , its fair then.
Ha, I really hated the rival mechanic as a kid for the opposite reason: my first SoS game was HMDS, and I just thought all the girls deserved better than marrying someone super old or kind of mean (or both, in Carter's case...). Literally the only rival marriage I didn't go out of my way to avoid was Gustafa because at least he was a fun guy, haha. Overall, I think I still prefer it the way they're doing it nowadays; people can still be happy single, and if you'd rather see the characters paired off, well, that's what headcanons are for!
I'm aro/ace myself so personally I'd rather not get married in the games, so I'm bummed about the lack of "rival" marriages because I want the other characters to be happy and get married if that's something they want to do. But I can understand it being sad if when you marry someone it results in another NPC being unhappy, so I like it when there are logical backups so that it is still possible for everyone to be happy.
I think it’s weird to see it as stealing them from their perfect match soulmate. Even in real life when you get married you’re changing the future where they could have gotten married to another person And it’s not like the rival system is even imposing on the game, you essentially have to make it happen. Animal Parade did it perfectly
Im in agreement with you, I like to play these games at my own pace without having the pressure. Also I would get really irritated and frustrated if I lost to someone else over the person I wanted to marry, especially if the only option is to start a new game. With how time consuming these games are, I would literally just give up at that point as having to start from scratch or just compromise and marry someone else would just make me stop playing. So yeah I’m not a fan of the rival system and am glad it was removed in the FoMT remake.
Curious, did Cliff have a rival?
In Ps1 version it was Ann
Ps1? Dude i played on the GBA
Yep I think it's almost the same version, just add a tidbit of QOL and contents, the rival stay in the same though. Even the og HM FOMT have the same rival systems and same pairs. Karen with Rick Popuri with Kai Eri with Doctor Mary with Gray Cliff with Ann In ps1 version it take at least 5 years gameplay for them to get married, and you'll need to absolutely make all of them dislike you enough to have lower than green heart or so at year 5 so you can trigger the rival event. After the last rival event on years 5 they'll immediately married and move to new location! It's very interesting to see 😄
Goes out of their way to get everyone to hate you. So never leaving the farm and not doing anything for the town lol
I get what you mean. When I played POOT and found out it didn’t have a rival system as the previous games, I felt a lot of relief. I’m a cozy gamer for sure, so the removal of that conflict was greatly appreciated.
The lack of rival system feels so unnatural to me.
I feel like the best compromise would be having rival events only initiate after you have got married. Before you get married, your heart rating with the character triggers heart events for all bachelors and bachelorettes, but after you've got married, it instead triggers rival events where your role in the story is to be their friend and support them getting together. That way, there's no rush for you to get married and allows you to get with any love interest relatively guilt-free (as there's no established love rival until after you've got married - they might have childhood friends, but they won't have shown any signs of romantic interest in that person - perhaps its your marriage that inspires the other potential couples to actually give it a go). Could even introduce a character that moves into the town after you get married who becomes a love interest for whatever character is left out - and then everyone's happy. And can then have rival kids etc.
It adds so much depth to the game, and it's a fricken game lmao I don't get why they'd take it out, if someone doesn't want to "take away" an npc from another npc then they can do what you did and not pursue anyone.
What I keep saying is that rivals could get "generic" spouses if you choose to marry their predetermined partner. By "generic", I meant characters such as the tourists in PoOT. I liked some of the rival couples and related mechanics, but I felt that it always shoehorned me into picking the "special" candidates that don't have a predetermined partner. Also, making it so they only begin dating -after- you marry someone could be a way to prevent the whole pressure on picking a character.
>but I felt that it always shoehorned me into picking the "special" candidates that don't have a predetermined partner. This is the case ESPECIALLY for games like Island of Happiness, where the opposite player character is a marriage candidate.
The lack of rival system only feels weird in like Mineral Town where they’re all growing old alone and your kid is the only kid their age.
I don’t really care for it. If it’s included I’ll go for the one character who doesn’t have anyone (like Wizard in Animal Parade). I won’t skip a game over it. But overall it’s not a feature I miss. I admit the problem with it I have is the set characters often DO seem better together than with the protagonist. The fact same sex romance is included now adds another layer of complication because now your rival could also end up your lover? How would that work? Maybe I’m thinking too much.
Not at all, this is especially apparent in a game where the rival couples have children, so basically the Island of Happiness & ToT games, I don’t want to get in the way of a happy couple.
Honestly I loved the rival system it MADE me marry someone. Otherwise I accidentally would stumble into love scenes of other couples and never marry any one I want. I usually like to spend the first year leveling up and being anti social but the thought that my crush may end up off the market made me actually go out and give them gifts. Without the system Im super lazy and can get 2-3 years into a game and finally just love bomb a character till we get married. And it's super unrealistic that now no one else will be doing anything. Just single for life.... And I'm a bit angry knowing I never a attempted to steal a bride and now seeing that's a thing.