Rune Factory Oceans Has More Brides Than Grooms

The main characters appear to be a bit confused about the whole shared body thing early in the game.

Rune Factory Oceans lets players choose between Azel and Sonia, respectively male and female main characters. But this isn't your typical gender selection that precedes the start of the game. When Azel and Sonia are transported to the Rune Factory world, they end up occupying the same body. While the specifics of how you'll change between the two haven't been shared, you will be able to experience the game from both sides.

As with all Rune Factory and Harvest Moon games, Oceans has a marriage component. You can woo a spouse and at some point get married. Last week, we introduced some of the candidates.

In the latest post at the Oceans development blog, producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto commented about how the inclusion of a female main character will affect the marriage component and other areas of the game.

He first assured that there will not be a drop in the number of events or in the spouse candidate count. "For the male main character, we have a considerable number of bride candidates," said Hashimoto.

However, they're keeping Sonia's groom candidate count lower. This, explained Hashimoto, is because the selection of a female main character is new with Oceans, and they didn't want to reduce the number of bride candidates (to make up for the time required to make additional groom candidates).

Separate from the male/female split, Hashimoto also said that there will be more "chance encounter" events this time. Some events might happen if you take a stroll in the rain, for instance. "Just by walking around every day, you'll make a variety of discoveries."