Rune Factory 5 [Game Review]
TL;DR
This game isn’t the worst or the best farming sim game. This is the most graphically polished and pretty I’ve seen for a farming sim, but it lacks a good balance of actual meaningful content.
There isn’t a lot of story content in this game, however there is lots of activities to do, skills to raise up, and there’s lots of grinding – so if that is not your style of game, I do not recommend the Rune Factory titles.
[Played on a Nintendo Switch Lite]
This game was my initiation to the Rune Factory games. I’m familiar and played a lot of the Harvest Moon titles, and I’m also a huge fan of Stardew Valley [see my review here], but I would say that Rune Factory does add a little bit of new to the conversation. Rune Factory does have a strong emphasis on combat and dungeon crawling. Unfortunately, this title does not have meaningful content or story content past around 40 hours of play. You can take your time doing the main story, but at different parts some characters are unavailable or other features may not be accessible, so there is also a demand to get it done and over with. I thought that after maybe clearing the credits and being done with the main story that I’d have more content to keep me busy, however I was wrong.
This title has lots of different skills to raise, whether its combat in a lot of cool weapon types or the typical fishing, mining, and of course: farming. There’s not a lot of break in between the monotony though. I don’t like how the days can be so long, so there’s a lot of time where I’m just running around aimlessly or I can get careless but not punished for that. A game with no real stakes or penalties is not very interesting to me. There’s lots of save points too, and that makes it so you can either re-load instead of paying the penalty to the infirmary if you’re character dies. I think Stardew Valley and even the earlier Harvest Moon games set the bar so much higher. Rune Factory has great combat and pretty dungeons and puzzles, but it lacks any meaning to want to grind your skills past the credits. There is some post-credits content, like a maze dungeon, but I really have no desire to fish or cook meals for healing when I have no places to really go anymore that I need those items for. At that point, you are just leveling up skills to 100% a game that has no real rewards for doing such.
The place where Rune Factory does excel is as a dating sim. If you like dating sim games and are willing to put in the time to get items/gifts for the character(s) you prefer to court, then that is some of the purpose of playing past the credits. I think that if I were to ever play Rune Factory 5, I would take my time in doing the main story content and focus on just farming and trying to give all the other skills a chance, but I’d be really inclined to want to unlock more areas to use my items at. A farming game that emphasizes combat before farming isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when there is no more content or areas left to really use combat anymore, there is just a place where you can do farming for no real good reason. If the main story content required more actual farming or gathering of materials, it would give real meaning to all the different skills in the game including farming. Instead, farming, gathering skills, etc are used primarily to prepare and stock up for a dungeon run. When the dungeons are over, there is not a lot of reward or enjoyment left.
Rune Factory 5 is visually pretty and has an intriguing cast, but it is all style with no substance. I recommend to those that do wish to play this title, that they take their time, enjoy the game for what it is, and be very patient. There’s lots of hours you can pour into Rune Factory 5, and if you are looking for an endless endeavor: then look no further and check out this title. To me, this is like playing Stardew Valley on JRPG crack, and while I love Stardew and JRPGs... I can’t say I find crack to be of worth.