Rune Factory Frontier vs. Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (Comparison)

During Christmas of 2011, I had bought both Rune Factory Frontier and Rune Factory Tides of Destiny for my husband, who really wanted to try out the two games. Ironically enough, he never plays them, and I play them all the time now. :P For those of you who aren't familiar with the Rune Factory series, it's a spin-off of the Harvest Moon series. It allows you to do farm work, take care of animals, mine, upgrade your barn and home as well as your farm tools, and best of all... You can fight monsters and level up!  

Anyways, just recently,  I had beaten the main story of Frontier and got married (to Selphy), and had a child with her, and now I've moved on to Tides of Destiny. While I haven't gotten very far in ToD, I've already discovered things about the game that I like and dislike.

First, I will start with the positives:

* I really like the fact that in this one, you have the option to play as a male or female character

* It's great that it got rid of the complicated runey system

* I love that there are more weapon choices (especially the dual blade option! x3)

* I like how the movement feels more free, especially now that you can jump around places

* The anime cutscenes are seem cleaner, sharper, and all around much prettier than in Frontier

* The overall graphics just look better

* I like that they added different colored monster portals to signify different elements

* I like how the villagers greet you when they see you running around town

* I love that they kept all/most of the sound effects and music tracks from Frontier

*The characters are more animated (for lack of a better word) and seem more lively when talking to them (you can see their expressions, movements, and reactions during conversations)

*I like how it doesn't take forever to load different locations

Now, onto the negatives:

* I don't care for the new character profiles much... I liked the look of the anime profiles they had for Frontier much better

* The character cast in general seems dull and less quirky compared to Frontier (or maybe I'm just biased since I've grown so attached to all of the characters in Frontier xD)

* I hate how they have more suitors to choose from for the male character and not enough for the girl

* Speaking of main characters, I much prefer Raguna's personality over Aden's

* So far, I find the whole "I somehow got stuck in my best friend's body thing" kind of dumb (maybe it'll make more sense to me when I progress in the story more....?)

* It's annoying that you get skill ups just from running around, jumping, greeting people, and for a bunch of other unnecessary things other than the ones that I actually care about, such as cooking, crafting, magic, forging, and weapons

That's all I have for the time being. So far, I don't understand why more people seem to enjoy Tides of Destiny more than Frontier. I mean, sure Frontier has it's flaws and the runey system can be a bit tedious, but once you get it down, it really isn't all that bothersome. Maybe I just haven't invested enough time in ToD yet, but right now, it just isn't doing as much for me and much prefer Frontier over it. We'll see how things play out later on, though.