Rune Factory is a fantasy farming sim series with combat and dungeon crawling. You tame monsters and then put them to work on your farm or ride them around town and into battle. Rune Factory 5 is the series first foray into 3D and it is a downgrade from its predecessor - almost a clone of Rune Factory 4 - in the best and worst ways possible.
Fundamentally RF5 is the same game - dungeons, fighting, farming, socializing, dating, and learning new recipes are all here and mostly unchanged, but the mechanics are more awkward in 3D. The camera auto-sets to a top-down perspective when farming, which wouldn't have been so bad if I could use the D-pad to move the farmer. Instead I am forced to use the analogue stick, which causes the player character to slide a short distance forwards rather than coming to an immediate halt; I lost so many valuable crops to this.
I still had a reasonably good time despite the bugs and unfinished state of the game.
Time moves much slower in RF5 than is typical for the genre, presumably to make it a more relaxed experience. This left me with so much excess time each day that after checking in with the shops, conversing/gifting, and tending to five different farms I was still finishing most days at around noon. Leveling is less grindy than in RF4, to where I rarely upgraded my gear and could finish an entire dungeon in a single day with time to spare; not necessarily a bad thing as RF5 doesn't have a New Game+ feature, so the relaxed combat makes replaying the game easier.
Menus are easier to navigate now, and there are a lot of cool weapons to pick up and different combat styles to try out. The color temperature of the whole game and the way it shifts as the day progresses is also very well done. The night skies in particular are gorgeous.
Gameplay
Alice/Ares (the protagonist) is an "Earthmate" - someone with a strong connection to nature; essentially a farmer. Your job as an Earthmate and member of SEED (a group of rangers) is to cultivate a farm, build relationships with the townsfolk, and undertake missions for Livia (your boss). The game operates on a four month, 30-day calendar cycle, with the player free to decide what activities they engage in each day; limited only by the amount of in-game time and stamina (RP) the farmer has to spend on physical labors.
Farming:
The player is given a field in Rigbarth that has to be maintained by hand. Later, living "Farm Dragons" will be unlocked with expandable barns that can be filled with monsters who will help with tending to the crops, freeing up more of the player's time. These special fields are eternally stuck in one season, so the player can efficiently grow crops outside of whatever season Rigbarth is currently experiencing.
It doesn't matter if you partake in the farming aspects or not, but it generates a lot of revenue and resources. Monsters can do the work for you, but when monsters work a field they lose a percentage of their HP each day. Eventually they will become too tired to work and stop. Giving them potions/food or rotating beasts every few days will keep them working.
The 3d environments can look "off" at times due to some objects being too smooth and colors being too uniform, especially in the grass.
Dungeon Crawling/Taming:
Nearly all of the dungeons are tied to the main storyline and you can no longer grow your own dungeon for special loot like in Rune Factory 4. Nearly every monster in a dungeon, including the boss ones, can still be tamed by the player using friendly pats and food. As an added bonus they drop loot periodically that can be used in crafting or cooking. They can even be taken along as companions or ridden.
Social:
The player's relationship status with each person in Rigbarth is tracked using Love Points (LP). LP is increased by talking to people, handing out liked/loved gifts, or winning festivals. There is the option to date, marry, and raise a family with any of the bachelors or bachelorettes. Starting around LP level 7 the player can ask the townsfolk to be their boy/girlfriend, however, there's only a small chance they'll say yes. Around LP level 9 they are more likely to agree.
Story
Alice/Ares arrives at the seaside town of Rigbarth with no memories of their past due to amnesia. They are quickly recruited into SEED, a group of rangers that keeps dangerous monsters at bay and operates as a pseudo-police force. Not long after, a dark dragon with a vendetta against Earthmates arrives to disturb the natural balance of nature and SEED's founder may have had a hand in it.
The new cast of characters were all well written and varied. I really like how they kept some of the character backstories, such as Beatrice's reason for being in town or what Ryker gets up to at night, locked behind their romance events. The townsfolk do not play as active a role in the narrative like RF4's Guardians or even interact with one another all that much, so I constantly forgot that Lucy was the daughter of Simone and that Cecil and Martin were brothers. There is also not nearly as much unique dialogue as RF4, and the cast oftentimes felt too similar to the ones from RF4:
- Reinhard = Vishnal
- Beatrice = Arthur
- Scarlet = Forte
- Elsje = Clorica
- Cecil = Illuminata.
Conclusion
Despite my gripes, I still had a blast with this one. Rune Factory 5 isn't the best game in the series, but it's far from the worst. The rough transition to 3D and releasing after what is generally regarded as the best game in the series just doesn't make it look good. There are also a lot of technical issues that really drag this release down, like furniture always leaving a large gap from the wall or the frame rate dropping every time you enter or exit a building. For the first few hours of gameplay the erratic frame-rates actually made me physically ill. Eventually I adjusted to it, but I wouldn't recommend picking this one up on the Switch.
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