I would like to start off by saying that I am so glad that Rune Factory is back. I found Rune Factory 4 back in 2014 and I was somewhat upset at the time as it seemed like there would never be any new Rune Factory games again.
When Rune Factory 5 was official announced in February 2019, I was so excited to see my favorite series comeback. Lots of people, including myself, was hoping that this game would be bigger and better than Rune Factory 4. But… it wasn’t.
The main things that hinders this game is the performance issues. When I first load up my save file, many things take at least 5 seconds to load in properly. The games frames can drop when there’s lots of characters and enemies on screen.
I think the 3D models for the characters and monsters look rather nice, but the environments can look amateurish. Characters have a lot less dialogue than RF4 as well, so the dialogue can get repetitive.
This game also introduces farm dragons, but also take away the seasonal farms. This was confusing to me at first because I had assumed dragons like the fire dragon for example would be for summer crops, but nope, it’s just like your main farm. I feel that the voices are not the same volume resulting in some voices sounding louder or quieter than others despite changing the character volume.
This game did continue to do something that every RF game does. Make QOL changes. You can now automatically pick up most items besides grass, flowers, rocks, and branches. You can put all your lumber and material stone in the box with a click of a button. You can do the same with the fertilizer bin, except only with weeds. You can look through your storage box and then just press L or R to cycle to another storage unit (like a refrigerator for example) without actually having to walk over to the object. You can also teleport practically anywhere on the spot. You can even customize your little quick menu (L Pocket) by adding and removing categories that you’d like to see.
In short this game shines in it’s QOL updates. The game falls because of it’s performance. Even if performance wasn’t an issue, the dialogue is such a downgrade from RF4. The amount of dialogue in RF4 was crazy and you could probably go an in-game year before dialogue starts repeating. RF5’s dialogue can repeat probably within an in-game week of playing.
When Rune Factory 5 was official announced in February 2019, I was so excited to see my favorite series comeback. Lots of people, including myself, was hoping that this game would be bigger and better than Rune Factory 4. But… it wasn’t.
The main things that hinders this game is the performance issues. When I first load up my save file, many things take at least 5 seconds to load in properly. The games frames can drop when there’s lots of characters and enemies on screen.
I think the 3D models for the characters and monsters look rather nice, but the environments can look amateurish. Characters have a lot less dialogue than RF4 as well, so the dialogue can get repetitive.
This game also introduces farm dragons, but also take away the seasonal farms. This was confusing to me at first because I had assumed dragons like the fire dragon for example would be for summer crops, but nope, it’s just like your main farm. I feel that the voices are not the same volume resulting in some voices sounding louder or quieter than others despite changing the character volume.
This game did continue to do something that every RF game does. Make QOL changes. You can now automatically pick up most items besides grass, flowers, rocks, and branches. You can put all your lumber and material stone in the box with a click of a button. You can do the same with the fertilizer bin, except only with weeds. You can look through your storage box and then just press L or R to cycle to another storage unit (like a refrigerator for example) without actually having to walk over to the object. You can also teleport practically anywhere on the spot. You can even customize your little quick menu (L Pocket) by adding and removing categories that you’d like to see.
In short this game shines in it’s QOL updates. The game falls because of it’s performance. Even if performance wasn’t an issue, the dialogue is such a downgrade from RF4. The amount of dialogue in RF4 was crazy and you could probably go an in-game year before dialogue starts repeating. RF5’s dialogue can repeat probably within an in-game week of playing.