Rune Factory 5 Official Discussion Thread v1

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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nongo
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I prefer Ryuka over Luka.
I doubt xseed will keep his original japanese translated name but I think it suits him well. It's got a more magical and mysterious feel to it.
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Going with the issue of variety re: bachelorettes, do you think it's less of a "no MILFs / onee-sans" allowed as much as it is just Iwasaki's style playing up the guys more? Like imagine if we had character designs by the Lord of Magna artist instead but he's too busy swimming in Fate / FGO money right now.
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Daisuke Tsubasa wrote:Going with the issue of variety re: bachelorettes, do you think it's less of a "no MILFs / onee-sans" allowed as much as it is just Iwasaki's style playing up the guys more? Like imagine if we had character designs by the Lord of Magna artist instead but he's too busy swimming in Fate / FGO money right now.
I will admit the first reason I got LoM was for the artwork on the maidens. The second was the 'bowling' combat, which I thought was original enough to give it a try. Unfortunately the combat got old, the maps repetitive, and the story was ... well not good. I never ended up finishing the game. Game had an excellent gallery feature though to review prior artwork and movie clips, etc.

I get RF is made for 'kids', but is it really? I would love to know the average age of the RF players. Are they actually 14 years old and relate better to characters that look like they are in their early teens? I guess for now we just have to accept it as the 'art style' and move on since in game the characters are obviously old enough to marry and have kids.

But like I said before I'm playing RF4 now and the idea of Amber being the mother of my child ... just seems wrong since she both looks and acts like a 12 year old.
Last edited by LeBurns on Dec 01, 2020 5:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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nongo wrote:I prefer Ryuka over Luka.
I doubt xseed will keep his original japanese translated name but I think it suits him well. It's got a more magical and mysterious feel to it.
I don't know what Xseed'll do with the names, with them sometimes being okay with leaving them as Japanese, and other times changing them. Like when they were going to change Lisette to Carolina because they heard it meant something rude in another language, and Inari to Vixie because they wanted all three deity names to end in 'ie'. It was fan feedback that got them to change their minds in both cases. I don't feel like I can predict what they'll do at all. I just hope it isn't Lucas and Luka...and both of them long grey-haired bachelors, too. Anything that makes the names even a little bit more distinct from each other would suit me better.

Not that I'll throw a hissy fit if they DO render them as Lucas and Luka. It'd just be my preference that they were more distinctly different.
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I get RF is made for 'kids', but is it really? I would love to know the average age of the RF players. Are they actually 14 years old and relate better to characters that look like they are in their early teens? I guess for now we just have to accept it as the 'art style' and move on since in game the characters are obviously old enough to marry and have kids.

But like I said before I'm playing RF4 now and the idea of Amber being the mother of my child ... just seems wrong since she both looks and acts like a 12 year old.
For kids...what? Hell no.

Where was it ever confirmed that RF was aimed at "kids"? Idk if you meant young adults if so then probably but it definitely isn't aimed at kids, especially how raunchy some of the jokes / innuendos get. RFF gave Raguna the option to peep in the changing rooms, RF4's bed dialogue gets super racy, SP's Newly Wed mode upped the game to a T rating and so on.

At youngest, I'd say teens but definitely not kids. For the record, Bokujo / SoS in Japan is aimed at women in their 20s and at actual kids. RF when it started out was aimed at middle school boys / otaku but it expanded to an otome / women's demographic down the line. RF2 had a ton of shoujo fans in Japan and most of the series' official manga are done by shoujo artists.

Also hot take but I feel like people going "younger looking candidates are there for the younger players" is just some kind of fringe rationalization because the alternative explanation is so much creepier. A lot of my fictional childhood crushes were usually older, prettier ladies but again we're built different *shrug*
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Daisuke Tsubasa wrote:For kids...what? Hell no.

SNIPPED to save space
Oddly enough the 3DS version of RF4 is rated E (10+), while the Switch Special version is rated T (Teen). But having played both I'm not sure what changed in game to require the change so I suppose it was a change in what's considered Teen rated.

I did see some interesting dialog this weekend from Forte. She was talking about her sword play and ended up saying something like she was 'quite the swinger'. I had to pause and laugh to myself on that one.

As far as this character type being what the artist may be attracted to ... well even so they should give others some options at least.
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LeBurns wrote:
Daisuke Tsubasa wrote:For kids...what? Hell no.

SNIPPED to save space
Oddly enough the 3DS version of RF4 is rated E (10+), while the Switch Special version is rated T (Teen). But having played both I'm not sure what changed in game to require the change so I suppose it was a change in what's considered Teen rated.
Only thing I can think of is the game originally came out in 2013 while the special edition came out earlier this year. It's a 7-year difference, a lot could have changed for the ESRB rating system.
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As Daisuke Tsubasa mentioned, it's the honeymoon segments they added to the game that upped the rating, I'm pretty sure. That's all new.
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Kikki wrote:As Daisuke Tsubasa mentioned, it's the honeymoon segments they added to the game that upped the rating, I'm pretty sure. That's all new.
Probably is. I haven't got hitched yet so I wouldn't know.

Curious if RF5 will lean strongly into the T (Teen) themes relationship-wise.
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I remember one of RF4’s editor being surprised that the game only got an E because they were sure it was going to be rated higher.
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I logged in after a long time to say that I love the bachelorettes this time around. I didn't like 4's selection since, aside from a few looks, their designs were pretty generic. Most of bachelors aren't my cup of tea, but I still appreciate their designs.

Murakamo tho. He ticks off a lot of boxes for me: older, masculine, facial hair, non-human, great design, owns a business, and has a great sense of fashion. He's perfect. Please tell me we can get gay-married in this game. I'm willing to marry with Fuka or Ludmilla if I can't, they're cute. But I have my eyes on the prize and my heart on the wolf-man.
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Hello, I’m not here, hope it’s okay if I join in the discussion. I’ve been a fogu lurker for decades but just decided to make an account a few days ago to interact :)
So far I really love all the character designs. I’ve been playing through RF4 again because I’ve been so excited from the RF5 news. I really wish they’d confirm if we can marry whichever gender we’d like this time around, I’m glad you can do the sprite swap in RF4 at least but it’s definitely not the same.
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Welcome MatchaEggSandwich!


An odd thing I thought about was I wonder if we’ll have a trophy room again. I never worked hard to earn those trophies but it was fun seeing them come in, and that little reel where you could rewatch the bachelor/bachelorette into’s n such.
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I think the general "young and cute" approach chosen for the series' character designs has less to do with Iwasaki's style and more with whoever is in charge of artistic direction. I have seen other works from Iwasaki and they are definitely capable of drawing older looking characters. In an interview featured in the Rune Factory Archival Book, Iwasaki was asked "Could you tell us what points you try to keep in mind to make Rune Factory's illustrations so unique?", and they answered "My first priority is always the head-to-body ratio, since they're a bit more of a deformed style compared to normal designs. [...]" Big head and tiny shoulders is a stylistic decision that was made for the series since the beginning; perhaps because they want the series' visuals to give off an innocent/light-hearted/joyful image (the downside being everyone looks much younger than they should, which is somehow exponentially more apparent on younger looking characters like Amber, Kiel and Fuka). I think this chibi-like approach to designing characters peaked in RF3, and since then they've toned down a bit and made the characters have slightly more realistic proportions.

That said, who knows why the bachelorettes are generally younger this time around; they might think younger candidates would appeal more to their (male Japanese) fanbase, or they really do want to make the players suffer by making all the pretty older ladies non-marriageable...

Anyways it was revealed over a year ago that two characters from RF4 would appear in RF5 if you have save data from RF4 Special, so I wonder if they're going to be revealed next week since they've already shown all the bachelors/ettes... I believe Kiel ranked first placed in a Japanese poll for favorite male character in RF4 so he might be one of the two? If so, I'm hoping he'll look older like Barret did in RF4!
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I think the general "young and cute" approach chosen for the series' character designs has less to do with Iwasaki's style and more with whoever is in charge of artistic direction. I have seen other works from Iwasaki and they are definitely capable of drawing older looking characters. In an interview featured in the Rune Factory Archival Book, Iwasaki was asked "Could you tell us what points you try to keep in mind to make Rune Factory's illustrations so unique?", and they answered "My first priority is always the head-to-body ratio, since they're a bit more of a deformed style compared to normal designs. [...]" Big head and tiny shoulders is a stylistic decision that was made for the series since the beginning; perhaps because they want the series' visuals to give off an innocent/light-hearted/joyful image (the downside being everyone looks much younger than they should, which is somehow exponentially more apparent on younger looking characters like Amber, Kiel and Fuka). I think this chibi-like approach to designing characters peaked in RF3, and since then they've toned down a bit and made the characters have slightly more realistic proportions.
It still doesn't explain why the guys have more varying proportions this time.

3's characters had good portraits but the bachelorettes still mostly played it safe. Nobody looked "old" and nobody looked too young other. All of them were just in between and everyone in RF5 sans Fuka / Fuqua seem to be heading to that direction. I always did wonder what would happen if art direction change. RF had as much of a chance of changing art direction or designers as anyone else. An even older and more iconic series like Sakura Taisen that came back with a new sequel after 12 years of being dormant had TITE KUBO in charge of the art designs. Imagine if we had say the Lord of Magna artist or Hidari doing RF. Hell, imagine if we had a designer outside of our expectations like Tsunako of the Neptunia series.

tfw bachelorette discourse is never gonna end.

==============

Random speculation, I think Lucas is the DSC bc we're long overdue for a DSC bachelor and the twist is when he gets his memories back he alternates between his base design and his thicc chonk DSC form since he's probably at an age between his "adult youth" and "middle ages".
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