I want to like Rune Factory 5 so much more than I do. I've gone back to it time and time again, after playing and enjoying plenty of other games that run poorly, thinking "if I just give it a little more time, everything will click!". It never did. As much as it hurts for me to say, this game sucks.

I adore the other RF games I've played (1,2, 4, and ToD). I thought there would never be another RF after 4 since Neverland died. I bought the special edition of this game. I listened to all the voice actor interviews and I could feel how excited they were for the project. Then I played the game and was incredibly disappointed. The core of the game is still Rune Factory, so it's not unplayable, but everything is a step back from previous games. The writing was fine I guess and I liked some of the characters, but the story was weirdly paced and Marvelous thought it would be a great idea to take away the game's new gimmick mechanic for a big chunk of the second act. The fully 3D world is nice on paper, but it looks awful, runs terribly on Switch despite the fact that the game was released as an exclusive, and just feels empty. I get that they were going for a more rural feel by spacing everything out so much, but without a quicker way to move around, exploring just feels like a chore. Combat feels sluggish despite the fact that it was actually pretty cool in Tides of Destiny and serviceable in every other game. Magic is still designed like you're playing a top down title (forward beams, short range magic shields, etc.) but the space between you and your enemies makes it nearly unusable, and the abysmally slow cast rate means that even if you find a spell that works, going and hitting the monster with anything else would always be more efficient.

I want to forgive the developers for a lot of these faults. The previous RF game was released over 10 years ago. The studio that made it went under and Marvelous stepped in to put an entirely new team together to revive the franchise, so they were definitely getting back into the swing of things with the series. The thing is there was a little less than a year between the Japanese and Western releases. Now I'm not going to rant about how the localization team forced the developers to spend that time adding in same sex marriage or anything (it's a little odd that everyone overtly flirts with you now even if you're not anywhere close to being in a relationship with them but that's a minor nitpick and there are probably plenty of people who don't mind that), but that shows the development team was still working on the game after its release. Maybe the actual team moved on to the two upcoming RF games after 5's original release, and a skeleton crew of just writers and basic programmers was left to implement the changes for the worldwide release so they couldn't really fix anything, I don't know. I also get that there's a large enough subset of the game's audience that actually cares about things like same sex marriage and appreciates the fact that it's in the game now, so it wasn't like they completely wasted their time by implementing that feature. But they had from May 2021 to March 2022 to improve the game, and the only difference performance wise is that in the version we got, the load times are shorter. Because the game puts you into an area when things are still half loaded and you have to wander around for 10 seconds before the UI even shows up. It's one of the worst games I've ever played on a technical level, and I'm an ardent defender of both modern Falcom and modern Pokemon titles, so I'd say I have a very high tolerance for jank and games that are barely held together. There's just something about how shitty RF5 really is that pushed me over the edge into not being able to enjoy it. I'm aware this is an unhinged rant about a low budget farming game, but there's just so much wasted potential here that it hurts. 3D Rune Factory has worked before, and it could have worked here. The team behind the game, or at least the voice actors, were clearly passionate about the project, and that passion just went to waste. Hopefully this is just a bump in the road for Rune Factory, and 6 and Project Dragon turn out to be much better games than this.

pretty much binged all the old RF games but cant even get around to finishing this one because of how disappointing it is. probably one of the roughest transitions to 3d I've ever seen in a videogame series

characters have almost no dialogue compared to previous entries where they would have new conversations EVERY. SINGLE. DAY for at least two ingame years, the game looks ugly, the town's design is a mess, the game has heavy performance issues and everything takes too long compared to how quickly days went by in 4

Hoooo boy. This game is going to be impossible to review.

Never before have I seen a sequel so simultaneously better and worse than its precursors. In every single aspect, RF5 changed from previous entries in bizarre ways.

RF5 introduced many new quality-of-life features like picking up items automatically. But only some of them? And other quality-of-life features were removed. In fact, RF5 is one of the clunkiest in the series, especially since you are juggling so many more different things.

A lot more effort was put into the dating mechanics and the unique dialogue with each marriageable candidate. Also, there are no restrictions on gender (hooray)! However, this additional effort only goes to reveal how generic most of the characters are. The most interesting characters are locked behind other story content. Dating is incredibly slow, tedious, and sometimes obtuse.

The jump to 3D graphics was a complete failure. The game looks utterly bland. There is barely even foliage to break up long stretches of ground. The town is weirdly huge and undetailed. For some reason, the later game areas look much better. Similarly, the main story is extremely confusing and poorly written at the beginning, but it picks up later. The ending villains are genuinely awesome. I would love to know what production shenanigans happened to cause the early game to be so shoddy.

Meanwhile, the combat and crafting are the best in the series! More mechanics, crafting ingredients, and enemies. There are obscure ways to make overpowered gear and post-game that requires it. NPCs are also genuinely useful in battle and you can take multiple with you at a time. Dungeons are mazelike, but there are plenty of them. The open-world segments are good. There's a lot to explore!

I stuck through RF5 all the way to the end, but I'm not totally sure if I'm glad for it. This entry has the most to offer, but it's marred by clunky controls, bad writing, and a pivot to 3D that was entirely unnecessary.

Yes it is a buggy mess, yes it is graphically challenged. But if you disregard these things, this game has some of the most charming characters, fun combat, and an endless plethora of things to do which will keep you busy for hundreds of hours. But that’s like any Rune Factory game, and that’s what I love about not only this game but this series in general, for the most part.

In other words, if “Switch graphics” and some bugs every now and then don’t bother you too much, and you enjoy games of this genre or something similar, than this is a must-have.

Its junk. A farming game with no real reward system. Making buff foods is useless when the combat is so simple. Furniture is pointless when you LITERALLY LIVE in an attic the entire game. Yes, you, your wife or husband have sex right above where your boss sleeps.

It's a dogshit action game and a very middling farming game. Aside from the obvious Stardew, Rune Factory 4 and even Story of Seasons Mineral Town have this beat.

Oh yeah, it's also hideous and runs God awful despite looking worse than PS2 games. Devil May Cry 3, Persona 4 and Killzone in 480p literally look better than this.

i wish this game had a little more time to bake. it's not bad by any means, and i had a lot of fun with it, but it's just a little disappointing that it feels so close to something, but never quite reaches it. i found that after i finished the main story, i didn't really open the game again afterwards, because i didn't really feel compelled to. i felt like i had seen pretty much everything the game had to offer me. (and i hadn't even been married, because i realized far too late the "only one romance chance per heart lv" thing and by that point i was at a high enough heart lv it was just tiring to try and get to the next just so i could reload and try again however many times.) it lacked what it was about rf4 that kept me coming back to it, over and over for years on different playthroughs, making it my most played 3ds game.

however. However. like i said, it's not bad by any means. i found myself extremely grateful for some improvements, and very disappointed by others. in other words, this feels like a title that has the seemingly natural clunky-ness of a series' first foray into 3d (despite not technically being so.) while i may be disappointed, i don't dislike it whatsoever, and i actually found myself very hopeful for what rf6 may look like - if it ever comes. i feel that this game provided much-needed experience, and that, hopefully, the lessons learned will transfer over into a much more refined game in the future.

why'd they lock important story/character development elements behind marriage :(

keeping in the player character's super slidey movement even though they upgraded to 3d and then implementing the most drift-sensitive controls i've ever experienced was,,, a choice

it pains me to say that though i didn't particularly hate my time on this game, i didn't find it all that enjoyable either. i think my problem is the leap to 3d in and of itself, especially with how undercooked it all is. there's something snappier and faster paced about the 2d format of the previous entries (in the main series, anyway - sadly i've not played any of the side games so i have no reference for how well the 3d mechanics work in those), which allows for shorter days than rf5, and consequently, a more engaging and addictive time playing. it was so easy to get swept away and forget all about the concept of time with the previous games, whereas with rf5, the longer days often felt like a slog and the routine of it all felt so much more noticeable, and not in a good way. you could say the wonky, unrefined controls added a bit of spice, but, uh. the wrong ones. the wrong spices. so the game remains v unseasoned and this metaphor is a disaster. ultimately, i can't help but wonder if simply sticking to 2d would've made for a better overall experience.

i will say that what i played of the plot was intriguing, and the characters were vaguely interesting and thankfully still held some of that quintessential rune factory charm, and also WOO YEAH a win for the gays!!! ryker is a delightful weirdo and maybe one day i'll pick up the game again and actually date him and figure out what the hell he's all about, but for the most part, my attempts to get to know him mostly just made me miss leon :c

Watering time

Grow big and strong ok?

Maybe you disagree with my ranking so lemme just say I've not played a rf before. I found this easy to jump into but tbf ive played a lot of Stardew valley. I'm currently having rough days recovering from ankle surgery and in a lot of pain and this game is getting me through the pain spikes.

Also idk if it's just I'm an adult but a lot of the adults that aren't romancable are the ones I wanna kiss on the mouth with tongue. But I get that would be weird in canon cause the main character is young.

I think maybe it's a bit much for the switch, mine seemed to chug a bit. Idk about like technical stuff but something's up cause it would be noticable during long gaming sessions maybe someone else who knows what's up can talk more about that.

I could see someone who finds the technical issues unforgivable and distracting. I lost about a day or twos in game time cause the game just kind of froze up. Which given the nature of the gameplay being grindy/repetitive (which I enjoy deeply, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea) is frustrating

That being said I am deeply enjoying this game. I don't know if I'd go back and play older rf games but if another comes out I'll have my eye on it. Not sure though but I might read up on which older games people enjoyed and why.

EDIT: original review below. i played it on pc with lightning-fast loadtimes and no performance issues, and guess what? this game still kinda sucks. it made the game playable, but it didn't make it good. my kingdom for another good fuckin rune factory game.

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oof, this is a tough one to write. rune factory 4 is one of my favorite games, ever.

i knew rf5 wouldn't live up to rf4. the only way to do that would be to make a game that is rf4 with a different story/characters/setting/etc. a huge reason rf4 works so well is because everything is very quick. you can knock out an entire day's tasks in five minutes if you want to.

this game, on the other hand, suffers from long load times and really intense performance issues on the switch. i'd love a buttery-smooth pc port, and i don't normally mind jank, but it really hurts this game's pace given the repetitive nature of farming sims.

i will pick this back up, i love rune factory too much to ignore it forever, but the switch to 3d environments was something i was dreading after the ps3 game, and i was right to feel that way. the combat is sloppy and also hurt by the framerate issues. the environments are huuuuge for no reason whatsoever.

here are a couple nice things about it: i have decent first impressions of the characters. i think i will be able to grow to like them once i get to know them more. also, the intro cinematic is clearly going for a persona vibe and it totally succeeds, i watch it every single time i boot up the game. and lastly, the north american release marked the addition of actual same-sex marriage in this series. no more having to switch your character sprite and being stuck with the wrong pronouns or whatever. wooooo

that said, you still select your gender at the beginning by answering a question either masculinely or femininely, lol. baby steps i guess.

6/10.

Mehhhhhhhhhhh, é bacana.
Esperava mais vindo de RF 4.

A performance da versão de switch é uma bem ruim, incomodou algumas vezes.
Tirando isso é um rune factory bem fraco em quesito fazenda, medíocre em parte rpg e esforçodamamente fraco no slice of life.

rating this 3.5/5 feels kind of awful, because i had a lot of fun with this game, and i'm definitely going to keep playing it even with the main story being over. it has so many charm points and as always the core gameplay of rune factory is super satisfying, but there were also a lot of things i didn't like about rf5 or things that i thought could be done better.

to get it out of the way: the optimization is so so so bad. even as someone who usually doesn't mind load times, i thought it was too much. there was a loading screen during the ending cutscene that took so long that i thought the game had crashed. it's laggy and slow and stuttery, especially on festival days when confetti is raining. sometimes it takes a weirdly long time for anything to load when you exit your 'house' to the point where you walk up to your field and have to actually wait for it to load in before you can start farming. these should seriously not be issues. alongside that, the game crashes way more often than i've ever experienced with any other switch game.

as for other complaints:

the story was sweet but felt bare bones and hardly fleshed out, though the pacing was fine. it had some strong moments and i wouldn't say it was bad at all, but there was no 'pull' there for me or any actual emotional investment overall.

the characters are all likeable, but no one really stands out. while i don’t want to compare the two much, compared to rune factory 4 i didn't feel nearly as attached to any of the characters, especially ones you can have a romance with, and i didn't feel any kind of love towards them. i enjoyed them as characters and i think the main character has really nice organic relationships with everyone, but in a similar way to the story, there was no actual hook, there was nothing that would inspire especially strong feelings.

additionally, while i did like the designs for the characters, there was a strange disconnect between the portraits and the 3d models. i understand that the sprites are done in the typical rune factory artstyle, but some characters i felt looked surprisingly different, or that i would be able to greatly prefer the look of someones 3d model over their sprite or vice versa, which felt strange.

while i touched on the story pacing, i think the pacing of the actual game itself was pretty weird. for example some recipes you would get for crafting would have much higher stats than other recipes of a higher level that you get later on, which makes no sense. you can get strangely advanced requests early such as having level 5 friendship with everyone, which for some reason includes the rf4 npcs and i think even npcs you haven’t gotten yet? i'm not sure if this is true of every request, but for at least some, it doesn't track the objective if you haven't picked the request up yet, so you can end up having to redo something you've already done without realizing there would be a quest about it. it seems like it can't track multiple objectives at once, such as a request of x amount of three different vegetables, so you won't know how many of which vegetable you're missing. the repeatable requests are the exact same 3 quests cycled through, which i thought would expand after a certain period in the story which put emphasis on the nature of those requests, but i guess was just unrelated to the actual gameplay at all. the rewards for these requests are also the same few items, just an infinite amount of potions and roundoffs.

the pacing of combat is typical to a rune factory game so i won't criticize it for that even though i'm not a fan of several aspects, but there were other parts of the combat i didn't like. there should straight up not be insta-kill enemies in a story required dungeon, even if you can make food/upgrade weapons to ward against it. i don't know who thought putting a cinematic intro to every boss you can repeatedly fight against was a good idea, you can skip them but it's baffling that it even plays after your first story-based encounter. the bosses going immune sometimes is fine, but the immunity period is too long and feels obnoxious. the amount of time that stuns take to wear off is straight up the worst thing about the combat, it needs to be cut down to at least a third of the time it takes, and i mean that for the enemies as well as the player. it's such a ridiculously long time.

moving on from that, i have some smaller complaints like: npc dialogue expanding as you gain hearts with them is good, but the pool feels too small to start off with- the dialogue immediately repeating a lot does not feel like a good start to the game. even if you go to shops during their opening hours sometimes the characters just aren't there, so you can't do anything. the farm dragons was a really, really weird choice which feels completely divorced from anything that's happening in the game and i don't even understand the point of them since they don't mimic seasons (why are there no season specific fields...). the 'farm camera' being on by default nearly made me stop playing until i realized it was something you can toggle off, it's awful. i didn't like the design of the town itself, it felt too big for your default run speed, while also feeling very barren because of its size, and the shops and services section of the town is organized really strangely to me- you have three shops grouped together in a row and then all the other buildings are thrown around wherever, it doesn’t feel right. the flower shop being locked behind a character that only comes to your town late into the game (i think the 7th or 8th dungeon?) is stupid, sorry to say that so plainly, but i don’t understand how that was an intentional choice they made. the placement of furniture is frustrating and clunky and you can never get things to line up well because all the furniture is like allergic to even the idea of being placed somewhat close together. it would be more convenient if you had a choice in activating the side quests you can see on your map, if you have several you can do at once and want to do one about a specific character, you can get thrown into another characters event on the way there because it immediately triggers as soon as you’re near it. dialogue lines repeat to much- what the shopkeep does when you’re shopping for example, but the main character especially just talks all the time despite having three lines of dialogue any time you’re farming or fishing, i really don’t like that. the item limit on the floor hasn’t been increased at all and the auto-pickup only works when you run over the items, so grinding out lumber + stone is still a massive pain for no reason.

obviously this is a huge amount of complaints and i'm sure a bunch of them seem really petty, but that's just how off-putting they are in the context of the game. despite all of that, it is genuinely a good game:

there is definitely depth to the characters you interact with and they feel like they were written as real people who exist outside of the main character, they have their own tropes but still manage to feel like organic people that you (or the main character) can have an actual connection to. while there are a lot of story moments where the main character has to handle everything, there are moments outside of that (especially with scarlett which was a pleasant surprise), and a small arc that attempts to give the main character time to exist as their own entity rather than just a plot-pusher, which i liked a lot.

as i said before the character designs are nice, even for characters i don't find appealing or eye catching, i can still appreciate the idea around their design. i spent the first few hours of the game feeling amazed at the 3d character models and how lively and intricate the outfits were.

in general every part of the game i didn't complain about is very solid, which is why i would love to rate it higher, and is why i would still recommend the game to anyone who enjoys farming sims. it's such a shame that some weird faults that shouldn't exist can make such an impact, but they're not at all game-ruining and it's still a very 'feel good' kind of game that you can see the earnestness of while you play it, so it gives a very sweet and comfortable feeling- that would be the sum of my feelings towards it.

BTW LET ME DATE MISASAGI

oh no :(

You know, I never actually got far into the game. And I don't think I ever will. There seems to be little point playing it when there are... better experiences in the same genre. The impression I had is that it feels very souless compared to RF4, and actually other games in the series as well. Something so cool about RF is that even the games with simpler writing such as Frontier and RF3 still manage to brim with charisma and character. Now, granted, I'm judging this having played very little of it. But the comforting atmosphere of RF is something felt early on by all of its good titles. This game's art direction has no character, and it's a pretty big downgrade from RF4 for the villagers to have the same conversations everyday. Also, the combat seems to have downgraded from the last 3d game in the series (TOD, which had pretty nice combat).

I must also mention it's disappointing because RF4 is one of my absolute favorite games, if not my number 1. And obviously I was out of myself when this one was announced. Nevertheless I'm VERY glad the series seems to have been reborn, and I genuinely hope it keeps getting better.

I put a lot of time into this game and did enjoy it for the most part but felt very empty after beating the main story line. I didn't really like the story all that much and i generally felt that the writing was uninteresting. Lots of Anime stereotypes, unfortunately not in a good way. The combat was fairly fun, the gameplay loop was engaging enough and i did like the little events and romance quests, but after getting married, i was hit with this sense of emptiness. Somehow i felt like all that's worth experiencing I've seen already and whatever comes next is not really interesting enough to make myself continue playing. So i quit and if I'm completely honest, i doubt I'll ever play this game again.
i don't regret the time i spent on this game and it's definitely fun enough for a while but it had so much more potential and it's unfortunate that it didn't end up being a deeper experience.

I've beaten it on both computer and switch. It's super jank regardless of platform, but it doesn't stutter on PC at least.

It's even easier than 4, and you can blast through the entire story within a month. The character designs all feel kind of unappealing and off to me. All the music is forgettable, and the town is a bit on the ugly side.

For the event system, while it's great that you can see where to go, it's also super overwhelming to look at the map and see like ten events, some of which are where you want to go.

It's flawed, but it's still fun.

Poor performance isn't really something that bothers me in games, provided that the game isn't literally unplayable because of it, and so the minor frame rate issues and somewhat poor graphics never really got in the way of my enjoyment with this game. With another charming cast, combat that has been well-translated into 3D from Rune Factory 4, and a story that felt more engaging than the ones from the other Rune Factory games I've played, Rune Factory 5 continues to show how modern Rune Factory is some of the most fun that the farming sim genre has to offer. My only real complaint with this game is how, in removing a lot of the grinding present in the previous entry, the main gameplay loop becomes somewhat less satisfying, as it is no longer urgent to be constantly crafting better weapons and armor to progress with the story. Normally, I'm all for streamlining gameplay and cutting down on grinding, but the grinding is part of what made Rune Factory 4 so fun, so to see it be toned down here is somewhat bittersweet.

Goodness do people dislike this game. In the whole genre of Story of Seasons, and Harvest Moon, this iteration fits very well right above RF:F, and under RF4 for me. The fact that this game went through severe difficulties during development really shows in its graphics. While the main city avenue is beautiful, it all falls flat the moment you venture further. The frame rate is all over the place, the mechanics as breakable as ever. Yet I absolutely adore it.

The story, while not as impactful as RF4, kept me on my toes. It was nothing spectacular, but I appreciate how goofy the implementation of fields in this game has become. We went from a cosy cottage to a water giant to a noble courtyard to fucking dragons. The progression was a little to easy for my taste, and some more juice in the post-game would have been greatly appreciated. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the themes surrounding the Sechs aftermath, a flawed police institution, and how it ties into the established dragon lore. What I was missing was more information on the environment we were in. As much as I liked the setting, I barely got to understand what the history of Rigbarth is.

I loved the characters, and hope they will go even further with more mature characters to date, such as my beloved Lucas. Young characters like in past iterations have always been a major problem for me, and I hope that with the next two games coming up, the cast will become rich and mature. I did enjoy the character concepts, and the traditional gift loop that all the games have remains fun. I hope they improve on the gift-back mechanic, and make you genuinely think about what characters love. Gifting a smith ore is not getting more fun when it's in every game. The slow development of every character is intriguing, and the events are cool, but limited by the visual dissonance.

I think the mechanics are pure fun, and where the game shines the most. As ever, I feel like the game should tone it down with the many systems it tries to tie together.I enjoyed just choosing how I want to spend my time with the game. It's neat, and I never got a moment where I didn't know what to do. It felt way slower compared to RF4 where I got through my day pretty much until 8pm max. This may be a bad thing for some, but a good thing for me. I still believe that the soil mechanics are by far the strongest in the whole farming sim genre, which is why I wish it to be way more transparent and accessible. What I throughly disliked was the furniture system which is just such a shame because of how clunky and unappealing everything is. Where my home looked like an empty mess, I couldn't leave my eyes off of the monster and character models. Genuinely fun to look at, and exploring the drops of every boss and critter was very engaging to me. I went in very deep into the grind, and taming those bosses is a peak Rune Factory experience to me now. I do miss all of my monster living on an island like in ToD, though. There is so much to explore.

Genuinely fun game if you can brush over the terrible frame rate when you leave your house or when 10 mages cast a spell at the same time. The music is nice, the characters are delightful, the mechanics as rich as you want them to be. I hope that the studio can find footing with their two new releases, and really tune the experience they want to create.