I've played most Rune Factory games and I think this is the best one. While this fixes many of my issues with the prior games, it introduces new ones. Mainly, the plot and combat are barely integrated with the farming and community.

I beat all dungeons, including the post game, by Autumn of year 1. I still hadn't dated anyone, despite talking and gifting every day to the character I wanted to date, and I had barely done any farming because money isn't that useful. You can easily beat all the combat challenges by just using what you find in dungeons, either by using dropped weapons or crafting. Ally monsters are so powerful that you don't need your party to be community members, so their affinity doesn't matter either.

If you want a game where you farm in the morning, talk to villages in the afternoon, and go to dungeons in the evening, this isn't it. You're encouraged to just go to dungeons non-stop for two in game months, and after that you're left with a regular Story of Seasons game with no combat challenges left. I still like Story of Seasons game so I still enjoy farming for the sake of it. Otherwise, while issues from 4 are fixed, like the random heart event system being fixed, or the re-balancing of enemies to have less sudden difficultly spikes, you'll overall just be done with the game much sooner than other games in its genre. This was short and sweet. Barely any reason to play into year two, but what's here is fun.