PREVIEW: Rune Factory 5

Fan-favorite cult-hit Rune Factory 4 was only just recently ported to PC, but Marvelous and XSeed don't want fans to dawdle in the past for too long. This March sees the release of Rune Factory 5, the newest entry into the famed spin-off of the StoRy of Seasons series, on the Nintendo Switch. Anime News Network was fortunate enough to be given a first glimpse at this much-anticipated title.

Taking place in the kingdom of Norad, you play as an amnesiac man or woman who stumbles upon the town of Ringbarth. In exchange for a place to stay, you're recruited as a ranger for the local group of guards, SEED. In addition to your duties helping the townspeople, you are also expected to handle the gardening for SEED. In other words, you've got your StoRy of Seasons-styled farmtending mixed in with basic action-RPG framing. Every day, you wake up and are given an allotment of Rune Points, which act as your stamina. These not only allow you to carry out your actions (tilling the earth, watering plants, fishing, chopping stumps or breaking rocks that appear in your farmland), but also act as your energy for special attacks. Once your Rune Points run out, your actions start draining health instead, forcing players to be economical with how they carry out their daily chores. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to restore Rune Points that tie into playing the game: in addition to taking a bath at the local bathhouse (which costs in-game money), you can also collect Rune orbs from fully-grown crops. But with crops taking a few days to grow, you'll most likely recover Rune Points from leveling up your skills; as it turns out, many of your actions (even sleeping!) are tabulated as Skills. Raising your skill level not only decreases the amount of Rune Points the actions take but also modify your stats and Rune Points to some degree. Put simply: the more you do your chores, the more your stats improve, allowing you to have an easier time doing your chores in the future.

It's important to diligently raise your stats and tend to your crops, because the town of Rigbarth has a lot of very demanding villagers. The local message board will regularly fill up with requests from villagers, demanding you bring them items, give them crops, or any other number of odd tasks. In addition to useful items or crop seeds, requests also grant you points you can use to issue Directives at SEED. While these sound very official, they're basically another upgrade system through which you can expand your inventory or unlock special events in town. This is also the only way to unlock the Crafting and Blacksmithing systems.

Also clamoring for your attention are the villagers. All villagers have a friendship rating with your main character, while some bachelors and bachelorettes can be wooed into marrying you. While we weren't able to delve too deeply into the relationship system, we were pleased to see that Rune Factory 5 continues the series' standard for memorable villagers, from Simone the town doctor who likes experimenting on people perhaps a bit too much, to Murakumo the local werewolf who runs the local bathhouse. It's also possible to enlist the aid of the townspeople as party members when you delve into dungeons, but we weren't able to experiment much with this feature—all of our exploration of the dungeons were on our lonesome.

Dungeons function the same as the other Rune Factory games; there are a series of rooms populated by monsters summoned by gates. While attacking with your weapons (or farming equipment, if you have a death wish), you must clear out rooms of monsters in order to destroy the gates summoning them in order to proceed. It is possible to tame monsters if you have a kennel for them, which opens the doors to obtaining unique items like wool from the cute sheep-like Woolies and so on, but for now the monsters are just experience fodder. Combat felt quick and responsive, although the new evasive dash felt a bit stiff. It's possible to enter a bullet-time-esque slowdown mode if you dash through an enemy attack at just the right moment, allowing you to use unique attacks depending on the kind of weapon you're wielding. In our playtime, the dungeon was capped off with a battle against a nine-tailed fox. The fight was fairly straightforward, with the summoning of other monsters being the sole wrinkle in the formula.

All throughout, Rune Factory's aesthetic continues to be cozy and appealing. Monsters look almost too cute to be threatening, and plants and greenery are vibrant and vivid. The game was set to spring for our playtime, and the trees were heavy with eye-catching pink cherry blossoms. All in all, Rune Factory 5 is shaping up to be another satisfying entry into the venerated farming sim/RPG series. Anyone with an itch for farming and monster fighting can look forward to Rune Factory 5's release on the Nintendo Switch this 22nd of March. Interested collectors can also look forward to the Earthmates set, including an artbook and a collection of the game's soundtrack. There are dual language tracks for both Japanese and English, and it's also possible to unlock commentary from the English voice acting cast. In addition, there will be DLC featuring alternate outfits based off of the protagonists from Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny.