Rune Factory 5 Was Really Dissapointing

April 20, 2022

I'm mad! I'm mad at Rune Factory 5 and the current state of the franchise!

The Yesterweb zine I submitted an article to just came out and I'm supposed to make a post about that + my NaNoRenO 2022 entry but I have just finished Rune Factory 5 and I have to tell everyone on the internet that I didn't like it. Completely unscripted and un-proofread post today, I might even delete it later, I'm just super frustrated.

It's also gonna be incomprehensible if you haven't played at least Rune Factory 4.

4's ending had huge lore implications that don't get addressed at all here. Sechs Empire, the super evil kingdom, finally crashing down, should have been the focus of this game. The premise makes use of it: the SEED organization was created as a sort of police force to try and prevent the chaos that ensued, but it's never mentioned again.

It was also implied that Norad was not doing well for some reason since they sent Beatrice to the village in the middle of nowhere that is RF5's setting. On the final ending, the NPC says something like, "the truth is... Norad was also plunged into anarchy with the fall of the Sechs" and then dies so the devs don't have to elaborate. If you do Beatrice's marriage event — and by GOD I tried but confessing your love to start dating is a random chance mechanic for some fucking reason — it's revealed that the war left Norad economically debilitated (but not completely in anarchy) and that there's some corruption going on in the royal family or whatever. Maybe they hid it behind a marriage event because it was underwhelming? Yeah.

I don't even know how long this was in development for. The original company, Neverland, went bankrupt after Rune Factory 4 and the team that made this and RF4 Special were hired into Marvelous after the fact. I don't know if the game was rushed, or if they weren't granted any budget by Marvelous aside from the RF4S earnings, or what problem plagued the development exactly, but it's clear SOMETHING has to have happened.

That is, on top of the issues everyone always talks about. Frequent FPS drops, empty environments, combat that tends to get boring, no additions to farming mechanics, etc etc etc ad nauseum. And the issues people don't talk about enough, such as how you can date ACTUAL CHILDREN IN ALMOST EVERY GAME, or how they've handled their characters of color like Tabatha and now Fuuka. They added gay marriage to the western version on release and to the japanese version in a patch, that's the only new thing I can praise this game for (the localization team did a fantastic work, from what I've seen in the XSEED localization blogs).

For me, this game was a solid 6.5/10 before the final reveal that they couldn't give less of a shit about the lore. Right now giving it a 2 would feel too generous, but when I'm calmer I'll probably settle or a 5. They could have had changed all Rune Factory terms and enemy designs to generic ones and this wouldn't be a Rune Factory game anymore. This game feels like Rune Factory the same way Super Mario 2 (USA) feels like a Mario game.

Go play Rune Factory 4 Special if you want to play a Rune Factory. It's on Steam now. Go play Rune Factory 3 if you want a DS Rune Factory. Go play Rune Factory Frontier if you have patience and want to know how their first venture into 3D was compared to this. This is not the worst game in the world, but you have to know what you're getting into. I hope this game makes enough money so that RF6 can be decent, but I don't have much hope anymore.

Good evening.