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.
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.
BlazingWaters
10 months ago
At least Margaret and Doug make cameo appearances here, they were my favorite companions from 4.