Rune Factory 5

Genre: Action-RPG / Management Sim

Players: 1

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Review:

Rune Factory 5, like prior games in the series, is a game that combines the “Farming RPG” genre of game (best known for games like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, and Story of Seasons) with more traditional Action-RPG elements, placing a greater focus on fighting through dungeons filled with enemies. Rune Factory 5 is something of a landmark for the series, bringing the typically Top-Down 2D franchise fully into the realm of 3D. Originally released in Japan until 2021, the game was heavily criticized for performance issues, and so it seemed that this was why it took the game nearly a full year to be brought over to the West, with the game releasing here in 2022 on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Having not played the Japanese version of the game, I can only guess why it took so long to bring the game to the West, but what we ultimately ended up receiving in the West does not feel like a product that has benefitted from the sort of care and polish that a full year would bring. This game’s 3D visuals seem about on par with mid-range PlayStation 2-3 era games, and yet despite this you have lots of pop-in, unimpressive animations, blurry textures, and a whole heck of a lot of slowdown, particularly every time you first enter a new area, when the game will absolutely chug for a few seconds until it gets back up to speed.

I suppose I should note that the character models here are actually very nice, with a beautifully-detailed cel-shaded style that does an excellent job mirroring the game’s lovely anime-style artwork. However, this one strong element doesn’t make up for all the others where this game is sorely lacking.

Sadly, the other elements of the presentation aren’t great here either. While the character designs are great, the world itself seems depressingly unimaginative after the beautiful, colorful world of Rune Factory 4. Worse still, while the characters look great, they are almost all poorly-written, with stilted and unnatural dialogue, delivered with generally pretty poor voice acting. This is a far, far cry from the delightfully creative characters and plot of Rune Factory 4. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that save for the character designs, everything about this game screams “generic”.

Yet despite the flaws in its presentation, Rune Factory 4 is still a highly enjoyable game, thanks to the mostly good transition of Rune Factory’s excellent gameplay to 3D. It’s not a completely smooth transition – placing objects is extremely fiddly here, and something as simple as lining up your character with the patch of land they’re farming is somewhat awkward. However, the game provides players with an absolute wealth of things to do, and gives them a great deal of freedom to go about doing things however they want.

As with most farming games, you can of course focus on growing and selling crops, gradually improving your tools and farming skills. You can perform tasks for villagers, and try to court them (with this game being the first in the series to allow same-sex relationships). And of course, you can explore the world and plumb the depths of dungeons, fighting enemies and getting loot.

Combat in Rune Factory 5 is decent but not spectacular. Players can get a number of different weapons and skills, and there are some dodge mechanics players can exploit to gain an advantage, but there’s nothing that feels especially strategic or fluid about the combat.

Despite the steps into 3D, Rune Factory 5 in many ways feels like a step backwards for the series, abandoning the wonderfully unique spirit and personality that Rune Factory 4 had. What’s more, the journey into 3D has resulted in some pretty ugly technical issues that, while far from game-breaking, still nevertheless affect the overall experience. Yet despite all its flaws and the many ways the game’s charm has been scrubbed clean out of the game, Rune Factory 5 nevertheless remains a delightfully fun mix of Farming RPG and Action-RPG. If you’re a fan of the genre, this is worth a look.

tl;dr – Like its predecessors, Rune Factory 5 combines the “Farming RPG” genre with more traditional Action-RPG elements, with this game bringing the series into 3D. The trip to 3D has resulted in some unfortunate performance issues, and worse, much of the charm and personality of the series has been wiped clean, leaving this game feeling somewhat generic. However, the core gameplay is still excellent, giving players tons of stuff to do. If you’re a fan of Farming RPGs, this game is well worth a look.

Grade: B-

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