Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

I haven't had as much fun with a farming/life sim game as I've had with Guardians of Azuma in a long while! If you're a fan of games like Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons with combat mechanics, this game should be a good one to try. I also really like how in depth the social interaction mechanics are in this game. They've deviated from the typical and tedious "chat and gift every day to level up hearts" system that you'd usually see in other farming/life sim titles. I literally haven't gifted a single villager, yet I've got two girlfriends. This makes getting to know villagers and interacting with them everyday an actually enjoyable experience in which each character clearly has their own unique personality. The only con that's sticking out like a sore thumb to me is how absolutely terrible the soundtrack is. I had to lower the music volume in the settings menu due to how bad the background music is, especially in the Spring village. It's not even music. It's cheap "this is what we stereotypically think of when we think of classical Japanese worlds lol" ambient sounds. Absolutely horrifically bad.

33 Hours in and I completed the "First Major Arc". Unlocked all four villages, and have all my crops and villagers making money. Still working on the main storyline, but from what I've seen so far this is definitely a good version of the Rune Factory games. I know it is not "Rune Factory 6" but I'm happy with the direction this took. I hope the primary series builds on top of this.

As a stand-alone game that just happens to be set in the Rune Factory universe: this game is boring and generic. Combat is just button mashing. Bosses are a find-the-weakness-element minigame. Also it feels short, its not short, it took 60+ hours to beat, but it feels short. Finished the whole game and got married in about 65 days in game. The city building / town management stuff could've been cool, but its actually just a hoarding minigame where you cram building and decorations next to each other as tightly as possible to max out stat bonuses. the villager specializations just tell you exactly what job the person should be in, and there's no penalty for just kicking them out and re-rolling if you get somebody bad. As a Rune Factory sequel, this game is awful. Everything is gone. Soil levels, forging combos, experimental cooking and chemistry, status effects, and most of the skills are all gone. The skills that remain aren't particularly useful, most skill "levels" are just base stat increases, which translates to feeling like every level up is a combat level up. Everything is super simplified, so much so that everything just feels boring. The only thing I can say that has been improved is the romance stuff, but its a little too quick now imo. You can go from first meting to married in like 5-10 weeks. Don't even get me started on locking romance options behind DLC.... Just wait for RF6 and hope they don't reuse the mechanics from this game.

I would need catastrophic brain damage to enjoy this.

as a rune factory game 5.5/10 they ruined most of the rune factory formula.... as a a stand alone game 7.5/10 got about 94 hours so far, all offline a lot of this game feels watered down and empty or they just strait up tossed it out the window. - instead of each person gets there own thing it the same scenes with a different model when you hand out. + story + most of the voice acting would grab on DEEP sale, at least 60% off + no problems on steam deck so far - cant yeet ♥♥♥♥ at people and monsters....this is a core rune factory gameplay mechanic - combat is bad. for a full boss fight cutscene dragon VS dragon i just went pew pew pew with my bow the entire time not aiming once and won. i have not reached end game content yet, but i am planning on 100%ing this that means making 1 save and marrying every single person you can both rune factory games on WII are better than this, bring those to steam i want to be able to sumo wrestle with my island of people agian!!!!!!! - cant marry the person i want to cause i didnt pay extra $$$ for the DLC, on a 60$ game.... - playing on steam deck and at least 9 achievements that didnt trigger and now i cant get. the two highest% achievements i dont have. - ruined the crafting system - ruined the upgrade item system - ruined fishing, boring and broken now - ruined the festivals, only two types now. go fish and bring me that thing you made. no minigame modes at all. no defluffing, no turnip toss, no bean dodge, no bean get hit, no eat food race, no quiz, no seasonal harvests, no buddy battle, no handcrafted contest, no white day, no Valentine's Day, no flea market, no dance festival, no adventure Contest. some of these would have been really easy to put in - farming is a mixed bag, a few things i like that they added but mostly ruined it - ruined the food organization system and you cant sort by spelling of the food. takes ages to search every time for what i need - no way to improve villagers stats at all you can only evict them from there homes and replace them. you cant even choose who comes. a person shows up and lives in village A. you can kick them out or move them to village b c or d - no infinite dungeon....

Nah. Close, but definitely no cigar. Too linear. Not enough to do. Farming is pretty pointless as you get staff at the start. There's just nothing to do. WAY too much dialogue, and it's annoying too. Life sim / JRPG-lite where you go to bed at 3pm because it doesn't keep you busy except with combat quests.

Changing screen resolution freezes the game. 60€ game btw

I was very adamant about this game at first. "It's a spin off, it doesn't follow the traditional Rune Factory rules!" "Why don't items have attributes? Why can't I use them in crafting freely?" Despite these and other nitpicks I had, I couldn't stop playing. Even though I complained about it, I kept playing it. Without realizing it, I was still enjoying this game. The characters have animations unlike previous RF games, which makes it even more amusing and cute to see their shenanigans. The gameplay loop is simple but rewarding, and all of the characters are really interesting. I built a bond with all of them just to learn more about their stories and how they connect with each other. Even comparing it to Rune Factory 5, this game is a MASSIVE improvement. The 3D movement doesn't feel as clunky as slow as it did in RF5, and the farming is actually tolerable and fun compared to that game. I really enjoyed this Rune Factory game, and I'm really excited for RF6 even more after playing this spin-off.