Wishlists for RF5

Covering Innocent Life (PsP/Ps2), Rune Factory 1 (DS), Rune Factory 2 (DS), Rune Factory 3 (DS/Switch), Rune Factory Frontier (Wii), Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (Wii/Ps3), Rune Factory 4 (3DS/Switch/Steam), and Rune Factory 5 (Switch/Steam).
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Blue Rose
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Hopes/dreams/fantasies for Rune Factory 5. I'll start.

Mine:
1. I like the diverse race of the cast of RF4, and would like to see something like that again. Doesn't have to be guardians per se, but something akin to that for both players would be nice.
2. S/S romance!!!! Please. Pretty please. Doesn't have to be the whole cast.
3. More dark skin characters, and not necessarily as servants.
4. A male elf bachelor, period. Would be nice.
5. No recurring characters, but the occasional in-text shoutout would be fine. Just don't want to waste character slots for old faves. It's nice in theory, but I'd rather have new characters in exchange.
6. Keep fanservice to a minimum. Bathing suits and alt clothes are fine. Certain low-key adult jokes are fine too. Just...nothing too extreme, please. The way the series has been is just right.
7. Character customization. Even if just means changing clothes again or just maybe changing hairstyles. Nothing too time consuming but enough that we can change up a little something if we aren't crazy about certain details of the default.
8. DSC bachelor, for once.
9. Rival romance, whether occurs after you get married or a matchmaking feature, idc. Tired of being one of the few young people to get hooked.
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Kikki
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I want...
  • -Gorgeous graphics/beautiful art style, that will look equally good handheld or docked.
    -Lots of variety in both bachelors and bachelorettes, in terms of personalities, back-stories, facial features, body types, ages and races (or even species). Though yeah, I also like that this is a family-friendly title. :)
    -The great characterization we got in RF4 with everyone having distinct personalities and usually meaningful backstories/backgrounds.
    -A town or region to improve. Rebuild houses/etc, or maybe revive nature. I love doing that...
    -Smooth combat with a good weakness system to exploit.
    -A crafting system that doesn't hit too many sticky parts where it becomes difficult to level your skill up. With so many skills to level up to 99, I don't want to get stuck on them all the time.
    -Loads of changing daily dialogue like RF4 had.
    -A great story...better than RF4's. That one wasn't bad, but since I don't remember a lot of details, it can't have been that great, either...I feel like the story of RF4 was held together by character stories, which were great, but I'd like an even stronger over-arching story.
    -Maybe a little more importance placed on being an Earthmate?
    -Event system not randomized.
    -More festivals that I can actually win.
    -Lots of customization. I like playing as a specific character like Frey (or Lest) who has a set face of their own, but I'd like to be able to change her hairstyle and so on.
I basically want another RF4 with an even stronger story, no random events, and easier festival competitions since I could never win anything after year 1, except the one that required you to answer questions. The bean tossing and ones like that...impossible. Maybe have difficulty levels or something in case there are others who LIKE having to struggle to win. There isn't a lot I would change. And I love the whole 'Earthmate' thing but it wasn't very important in RF4, at least not the way I feel about it. I'd also prefer not to be a princess, even a pretend one, but that's a very minor issue, lol. I did like the 'orders', though.

I think a great thing about this is that the hiatus has been so long, and RF4 was so loved, RF5 so yearned for...Hashimoto has had loads of time to reflect on what worked and didn't work and I'm hopeful that he'll turn out something as good or, if possible, even better than RF4.
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Shortybread
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Post  Posted:

Lots of good points made already!!
In addition to some of the stuff above, and my own 2 cents --
  • - Diverse Bachelors & Bachelorettes. Both in terms of fantasy races, and general characteristics. It's true that most RF marriage candidates have been of a fair skin tone, so it'd be nice to see more variation there.
    - I'd prefer portraits to 3D models, personally.
    - If outfits do return, I'd love if they were reflected on the portraits! Not top priority though, because this wouldn't make or break my enjoyment of the game obviously.
    - More places to explore! RF4 had a beautiful setting, and I was so excited to explore the town when I first started. More pretty places to look around would be awesome.
    - I love the town events, but would prefer that any events important for gameplay are less random. Having some guaranteed way to trigger them would be helpful.
    - The return of Univir and Mermaids would be really cool! I didn't play RF3, so I never got to meet Pia or the Univir characters, but I love their designs.
    - Full character customization would be awesome, but I'm not really holding my breath for this one.
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Mikodesu
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Post  Posted:

Oh boy this is a tough one. I've been thinking since I've read everyone's responses though...

-Character customization. (The amnesia trope is RIPE for it, come on! I'd be happy to have the MC have no character portrait - I feel like the character models can be expressive enough.)
-Diverse cast [including bachelor(ette)s] that look like they belong in the same world
-More than one town...maybe even a city AND a town
-A couple new dungeon types
-A better magic system. (I enjoy hack and slash combat, but I'd like a reason to use magic.)
-Better integrated crafting system. (Good lord I hate grinding...and there was so much of it in RF4. Grinding and menu hell.)
- A quest system. (I can't honestly remember if there was ever much of this...I enjoyed the town events in RF4 that took you out of town but there could be more things like that, and maybe at least a few quests that add depth to the world.)

I think I'd be happy if it had similar strengths and weaknesses to RF4...but that game still has a lot of room to grow...fingers crossed. :)
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I honestly just want some s/s marriage options even though I know that's not going to happen.

Also would be nice to see some darker skinned characters with dark hair? I haven't played all the games and I know there's an issue with the darker skinned characters always being a servant of some kind so that needs to be fixed moreso, but I've always noticed they tend to give them white or oddly colored hair. I'd just like to see once a darker skinned character with black or brown hair in either a RF or HM/SoS game.

Character customization as mostly everyone else has stated

Easier crafting system

An all new cast. Maybe what they did with RF4 with a couple old characters popping in but not really serving a purpose, but thats about it. If not just a text reference would be nice, but I want all new characters to fall in love with.

The same amount of dialogue as RF4 or more. I loved being able to talk to someone every day and get something new to hear from them.
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

I think Tabatha was a darker skinned character with black hair. Though she, too, was a maid. The whole maid thing for any dark-skinned elf really needs to go.
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Post  Posted:

Her hair is blue to me
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Kikki
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Ah...when I see that very dark blue hair on a character, I always see it as being black...just representing a cool-toned black. (Like black hair that has that slight blue tone when shown under light, that can even occur naturally.) But I suppose it might really be meant to be blue hair. Some images show her with what might be called dark grey hair, too.
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Re: the context of Tabatha and Maerwen.

Tabatha is the Queen of the Elf Nation in Rune Factory. Her reasons for serving Bianca are more personal and based on her philosophy with nature if I remember correctly. Which is why she forfeited her birthright to become queen over to Minerva. Maerwen from Tides, I recall, came to Fenneth Island in order to follow Tabatha's example as somebody the elf nation looks up to. However, Electra does more of the actual chores in the mansion so if anything Maerwen's less of a maid and more like the former's live-in best friend.

I don't think these were meant to be intentionally racist. Yet due to the implications when it comes to real life race issues, I can see why this could be seen as negative stereotype by people. Although in context of the Rune Factory lore, I think it might be more of a fantasy racism trope in terms of stereotypes e.g. elves are maids or dwarves are blacksmiths. Cecilia was an elf (light skinned although) and became a maid to follow Tabatha's footsteps too. Collette kinda shows shades of elf stereotyping in 3 too, saying that she always assumed that elves eat rocks and twigs. Considering what Ethelberd did to Doug's settlement, the Kuruna's distrust towards humans in 3 and the fact Micah and Raven hid their monster forms out of fear of being persecuted - the implications are there. I'd like to see this dynamic built up on more in 5.

Marvelous has thankfully made strides involving darker skinned characters e.g. Carlos and Carmen from RF3 who are fishers in Sharance and Leon from 4 who was a high priest in his era. I agree, I want to see a maid bachelorette who isn't an elf or dark skinned. Although that aside I'm always welcome to seeing more bachelors/bachelorettes with darker skin tones.

I'll list my main wishes for 5 in another post. Sorry this turned into a mini essay. :lol:
Last edited by Daisuke Tsubasa on Feb 18, 2019 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
FoolishGhoul
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Kikki wrote:Ah...when I see that very dark blue hair on a character, I always see it as being black...just representing a cool-toned black. (Like black hair that has that slight blue tone when shown under light, that can even occur naturally.) But I suppose it might really be meant to be blue hair. Some images show her with what might be called dark grey hair, too.
They've made multiple black haired characters, there's zero reason now all of a sudden they would do "well this blue is technically supposed to be perceived as black"

Also I am aware of the lore behind her, but the game was made by people who are in our very real world that are aware of the context of dark-skinned characters being seen as nothing but servants or "less-thans" which they should have been aware of. Slapping a "well it was her choice!" doesn't fly with me still
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Also I am aware of the lore behind her, but the game was made by people who are in our very real world that are aware of the context of dark-skinned characters being seen as nothing but servants or "less-thans" which they should have been aware of. Slapping a "well it was her choice!" doesn't fly with me still
I wans't trying to downplay or marginalize that aspect, I apologize if it came off that way.

EDIT: I misread your post. I thought you were talking about in-story context. Sorry.

I'm not disagreeing with you either about the bad design choice of making Tabatha and Maerwen dark skinned maids. Like I said, I want to see a maid character who isn't just dark skinned or would give off any problematic implications.
Last edited by Daisuke Tsubasa on Feb 18, 2019 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

FoolishGhoul wrote:
Kikki wrote:Ah...when I see that very dark blue hair on a character, I always see it as being black...just representing a cool-toned black. (Like black hair that has that slight blue tone when shown under light, that can even occur naturally.) But I suppose it might really be meant to be blue hair. Some images show her with what might be called dark grey hair, too.
They've made multiple black haired characters, there's zero reason now all of a sudden they would do "well this blue is technically supposed to be perceived as black"

Also I am aware of the lore behind her, but the game was made by people who are in our very real world that are aware of the context of dark-skinned characters being seen as nothing but servants or "less-thans" which they should have been aware of. Slapping a "well it was her choice!" doesn't fly with me still
I just brought her up because when I look at her, I think of her hair as a soft blue-black. What the designers intended me to see it as, I don't know. But if she doesn't fit what you're wanting, then she doesn't. And even if she did, it's not like having one dark-haired dark-skinned character means there's no need for another to ever appear. Almost everyone is saying they want more variety anyway, so we all want to see more of what we see either none or very little of. I just wanted to point her out because to me she seemed to meet the criteria.

As for me, I definitely want more dark-skinned characters, but I don't particularly care if I see any more maid characters...I never really like the trope. If we're talking about professions, then I'd like to see artists most of all...musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, architects...etc. :)
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Yeah sorry if I came off harsh, I'm just at work and its early so I'm keeping things short and it comes across mean sometimes and I'm sorry lol

But yeah I could just go without the whole maid/butler trope at all tbh, though I did like Vishnal and Cloricia from RF4. But they were handled fine. I've just seen a lot of people defend certain discrimination by going "well they did it by choice!" or something along those lines, so I make sure I say something about it not being an excuse for the creators. I know you yourself weren't defending it at all, so I'm really sorry if I came across harshly!!

Anyways I said what I wanted to and it turned into a big thing so I'm sorry about that. Not trying to look like an angry tumblr sjw or anything like that, just wanted it point things out
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Kikki
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Well, speaking for just myself...don't worry about it, FoolishGhoul :) We all come across in ways we don't mean to at least some of the time. Text just has that weakness, as a medium for communication.

I like butlers a LOT, but for some reason I don't care for maids or any kind of typical female servant, it seems. I don't know why I like it if it's a guy. I was fine with Clorica as well, as she is also a butler rather than a maid, but (in theory) butlers are just so magnificent. That they are servants is almost a farce. They've got to be more elegant, more refined, and have even better judgement and foresight than the nobles or royals they serve. In a sense I always see them as the highest quality human being possible. They've got all these mad skillz that most mere humans shouldn't even aspire to, lol. It's just a trope I find really fun. (Though Vishnal and Clorica are very definitely the in training sort and have not yet become magnificent.) I mean, butlers make me giddy with silliness, I like them so much.
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Mikodesu
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Just want to say I appreciate the inclusion/discrimination discussion! It's so easy to write off in fantasy stories, since authors are free to design their world's history as they see fit, but there's no excuse not to have diverse fantasy worlds.

So yeah, anyway. Back on topic! I thought of one more.

I haven't played RF1 or 2 since they came out (and only 4 other than that) so I can't remember, but I don't think we've seen ranged combat other than some pretty boo-boo magic options.

I'd REALLY like to see more ranged combat. (My first thought was bows but I'm open to other ideas.) Give that option to people who don't like combat and to those of us who like a mix of ranged and close combat options. :)
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