Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

[GenDenelith]

Been playing this game a bunch since it came out and surprisingly this may be my favourite Rune Factory game ever made, though it's also... a terrible farming game.  That's because it does a lot of shit super well, good characters, solid English voice acting, combat is fun, and tons of stuff to do.  But the farming is... extremely basic.  This is fine, however, since it's not a numbered Rune Factory.  So much like Oceans, it's a bit more experimental than usual.

For context, I've been playing Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games since the SNES original got a western release and was a huge fan.  But I've had many complaints recently about their modern stuff.  Mostly about being really lazy games, and especially how terrible the game engines were (Rune Factory 5 in particular was borderline unplayable on Switch).  So I basically swore off the games.  But after seeing some of the new one I gave it a shot.

Glad I did because I've been having a blast.  Not done yet, but I've got 26 hours in the game and I'm still not out of Spring of Year 1.  Surprisingly large world, lots of characters, and all the characters are entertaining.  Took a bit to decide on who to date, which is unusual.

It does have some "scummy" type stuff in my opinion.  Two characters are in the game, but aren't marriage candidates unless you buy the Deluxe version (or the Deluxe upgrade).  That's $13 CAD to be able to marry Pilika or Cuilang.  Plus some swimsuits.  Terrible price, especially as they are clearly in the game, just can't date them unless you pay up.  It's crap and I refuse to pay for it.  Pilika is pretty cute though.

So overall game feels like a solid 8/10 if you ignore the questionable DLC practice.