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

my opinion on this game would be a lot better if this was my first experience with bravely default. for some reason this game removes a lot of quality of life features, the random battles aren't hard but they do feel unnecessarily time consuming in comparison to bravely default and bravely second. not being able to turn the encounter rate up (or down) felt very strange.

the boss fights were fun, but they made me feel like there was a specific winning strategy the developers had in mind while making it, which doesnt have to be a bad thing but it left me feeling like i couldnt play the job or pick the abilities purely based on what i thought was fun and interesting like i could in the last games. the emphasis on how every team comp was theoretically viable in every fight was a big reason of why bravely default and bravely second are some of my favourite games, so just that was enough for bravely default ii to lose a lot of points with me.

continuing the topic of boss battles, the countering system was something i was a bit excited about at first but i felt that as it went on, the game relied on it too much to make the boss more challenging. the further into the game i got, the more it felt like artificial difficulty inflation, which was especially disappointing because bravely default ii easily had the most thematic and engaging bosses of the series. their fights, both visually and mechanically, were very creative and unique as they drew upon the characters story.

as always, the art, character design, and music were all gorgeous. the aesthetic of the towns you visit made them all have such a great feeling to them, and there was great use of camera angles and zooming in and out which made them feel bigger than they were. the design of each area was pretty, though the bigger feeling they had did make them feel more empty despite the visible enemy encounters.

as for the characters and storyline, i didnt finish this game (for context, i stopped halfway through chapter 4) so i don't feel like i can really speak on them, but from what i played:

the main characters didn't feel as interesting to me as the cast from either bravely default or bravely second, in general their personalities felt much less passionate and it felt like the plot was happening to them rather than the main characters driving the plot. because of this the characters felt more realistic, while they didnt have much depth they also didnt feel as trope-y as the previous main characters. there was a feeling of the whole group having their own relationships with each other that were missing for me in the other casts too, but i also felt less engaged in their personal stories and motivations. there wasnt a single main party member i didnt like, they all brought something to the table and had very friendly chemistry as a group.

for antagonists, despite having an early introduction the main villain felt very distant and removed from the game. in general each chapter feels self-contained, which they individually benefit from since the story of each chapter was very well written and interesting (apart from the first two or so), but did make the overarching story feel less important and the main villain less threatening.

the antagonists of each chapter were usually interesting in some way but none of them seemed to have the depth that was present in boss characters from the earlier games.

most of the problems i have with the story and characters could also be said about bravely default or bravely second, which have always had characters that are pretty basic or one note and a hammy story, but the presentation of this game made it feel very different. bravely default was a game that wasn't afraid to take itself seriously, no matter how ridiculous it was, or poke fun of itself. bravely second took poking fun at itself to the next level and let itself be all over the place. bravely default ii feels more grounded and realistic, which to me just doesnt work with the story and character writing being so unadventurous. it makes you realize how bland it all is without that extra flair.

it felt like there were a lot more side quests in this game and that so many of them were completely pointless, but the few that triggered character interactions were, while simple, very charming.

overall, if you like the previous bravely games or just bravely default then you will probably like this one, but you might be disappointed.

i love this game so much. i would absolutely not recommend anyone play this game without looking at the content warnings first.

dead wishes takes an interesting concept and absolutely delivers on it, theres some routes that feel underdeveloped but there wasnt a single one that didnt capture my interest in terms of both the overall story as well as the characters. theres a generous amount of routes and endings, more than youd usually expect for sure. the tone can vary quite a bit between routes and its written in a way that makes that a strength to the game and not a weakness, though it does mean youll probably find some routes less compelling than others. the player character makes choices that make sense for each route and you can see their personality adapt to their circumstances. the art and the music are both good, the amount of choices you can make and how much they affect the story feels very satisfying and immersive. the writing itself is what saves this from feeling like 'misery porn' and makes it so enjoyable that youll want to experience every route.

for negatives, the ending felt a bit weak to me, like it couldve been expanded on in some way but i did still really like it, and as i mentioned above it does have a feeling or 2 or so routes having less attention paid to them than to the others.

if you dont like feeling miserable this game isnt for you, 5/5