Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma - Discussion Thread

[Bluie]

https://www.gematsu.com/2024/08/rune-fa ... -switch-pc

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The Project Dragon thread is a bit old now and with an official name revealed, methinks its time to start a new one. I'm still a little 'ehhh' on the game as a whole, but I love Rune Factory so I'll be biting. Very happy to see marriage is still in.

[3applesforfall]

I'm extremely excited!

[Kikki]

I'm really not sure about it. I'm not excited, but...well, it's a wait-and-see situation for me. Olive Town was a crushing disappointment, and RF5 was very underwhelming, so...nothing connected to Marv is impressing me lately. I don't feel like getting hyped for something that'll end up disappointing me (again!) so I'd rather just not think about it until it's upon us and I need to decide if I'm getting it or not. Being a spin-off rather than mainline RF, it's definitely not a shoo-in for me.

[Poppyseed]

I’m also feeling low energy about it because of RF5, but I’ll wait until we see more. These trailers aren’t really giving me enough to say. It looks better than RF5 already though, so there’s that! I’m still undecided on the art direction, but I like the improved animations.

[mario_0345]

I'm liking what I've seen so far. This game strangely enough reminds me of Story of Seasons(Harvest Moon) A New Beginning. I think it has to do with the town rebuilding element. I do like that we can use magic to speed up crop growth. Looking forward to it coming out next year, still Spring 2025... that is a very interesting release window.

[RodCopper Fishin]

I like it so far, looking forward to learning about the characters and the lore mostly. It seems to refer to the marriage candidates (is that what they are?) as gods, which I find intriguing. I’ll be looking forward for more info as this chugs along. I like the look of both protagonists, although maybe the male slightly more.

[hanajimaismycat]

Did anyone else catch Hina in the trailer? Also, didn’t she seem like she was on the enemy side?

[Meowie]

Not that this game seems that exciting to me personally, but this is exactly what RF5 should've been. An acceptable comeback to the series. A game like RF4, but with more additions.

1) I love how there's a clear, simple, and good enough plot for the story. I don't even remember why I was fighting the bad guys in RF5. Here, it's pretty clear that we're reviving a land struck by a celestial disaster, and there are villains thriving off the power of this destruction. This entire celestial disaster gig awfully reminds a lot of Harvestella's story, however. It looks like Marvelous was indeed taking notes.

2) Some couple new features and upgrades. Village building, addition of new weapon types, using your dance skills for farming, upgraded facial animations, and fully voiced scenarios are all great additions to look forward to. Playing RF5 just felt like playing a worse version of RF4 because it just had everything RF4 did but with a far worse implementation.
 
3) Visuals. I don't like the art style for this game at all, but graphically, it's miles better than RF5. It's clean, simple, and modern.
I don't know why, but I have a feeling I can have trust in RF's future. Yes, RF5 was bad, and this game probably won't have the wow factor that RF4 had, but I realize they haven't really derailed that much from the original track. They still have the formula RF4 had; it just needs to be done right. I know RF6 is quite far away, but I have a feeling it will be what I want from RF. I just hope they actually didn't fire Hakama completely but instead made him work with other studio teams at least because I always admired Hashimoto's focus on writing in his games. 

I feel completely different for SoS because they have actually derailed quite a bit further from what was working in recent times. The recent footage really wasn't assuring at all to me. Oh well, I guess time will tell after all? I think we can expect the announcement for the next SoS in the next direct, which probably will be 6 months from now. Not too far away to be honest...

Looking forward to it coming out next year, still Spring 2025... that is a very interesting release window.

I believe this game was always supposed to launch with Nintendo's next console. The next console was originally supposed to come out this year before reportedly getting internally delayed to early next year. It makes sense how they were first teasing this game to come out this year and now suddenly it's a Spring 2025 release.

[Solar Wind]

I know this isn't coming from a huge studio but like, would it kill them to animate the faces some more? The facial expressions feel so basic, especially the angry/determined ones. It looks so cheap.

I'll wait for reviews and see how the love interests are before I consider getting it.

[FarmingForDaysMan]

I’m a bit wary but overall excited. I will be getting this game when it comes out.

[FarmingForDaysMan]

Did anyone else catch Hina in the trailer? Also, didn’t she seem like she was on the enemy side?

I DID :D

Edit: Whack sorry for the double post, but I’ve been thinking about Hina and I’m glad that someone else caught that, too

Edit 2: I misspelled “Azuma” in that second tag, but check this out :D

https://x.com/layton_discord/status/182 ... 69008?s=46

[hanajimaismycat]

Did anyone else catch Hina in the trailer? Also, didn’t she seem like she was on the enemy side?

I DID :D

Edit: Whack sorry for the double post, but I’ve been thinking about Hina and I’m glad that someone else caught that, too

Edit 2: I misspelled “Azuma” in that second tag, but check this out :D

https://x.com/layton_discord/status/182 ... 69008?s=46

I saw a different trailer where Hina didn’t seem like an enemy on the Japanese site, but it was definitely Hina. I wonder if there will be another from RF5 as they usually carry over 2 characters?

[FarmingForDaysMan]

Did anyone else catch Hina in the trailer? Also, didn’t she seem like she was on the enemy side?

I DID :D

Edit: Whack sorry for the double post, but I’ve been thinking about Hina and I’m glad that someone else caught that, too

Edit 2: I misspelled “Azuma” in that second tag, but check this out :D

https://x.com/layton_discord/status/182 ... 69008?s=46

I saw a different trailer where Hina didn’t seem like an enemy on the Japanese site, but it was definitely Hina. I wonder if there will be another from RF5 as they usually carry over 2 characters?

I’m hoping that Hina and the blond guy who I believe was with her (and steering the airship) are allies? That’d be awesome!

[PaleSunflower]

I can't get enthused about this game. It seems farming will be an even less important part of the game, and dancing has mostly replaced it within the context of the setting. Without farming being at least somewhat important, RF:GoA feels less like a Rune Factory game and more like a standard RPG with aspects of RF attached. (I believe I heard that Silent Hope had something similar going on with RF's aspects, but I'm not sure.) In any case, I have no interest in getting this game right now. It could surprize me in a good way later, but it is not pleasing me now.

I suppose farming's role being reduced to an optional side quest was sort of an issue in RF5 as well, but it feels more blatant here. RF5 was a huge let down for me, so RF:GoA downplaying farming like RF5 in my eyes does not instill confidence. The trailer does have the nice-looking monster models in the same style of RF5, so I will have to see what else is carried over from RF5 into RF:GoA.

(The game could have some mandatory farming quest that must be done to beat the game, but I'm not sure. The whole "revitalize the towns" request from the trailer could mandate some farming, as some of the quests in RF5 specifically required the player character to grow stuff. How important growing crops will actually be to the regular gameplay is currently unclear. The water mill and other farming mechanics could be neat, but, if regular foraging and diving into dungeons is just as good for gathering resources, then I probably wouldn't use it much.)

[PSI_Nightshade]

I am looking forward to this one. It feels to me like they have taken lessons from Rune Factory 5 and have made some improvements. However, it's hard to really see with videos alone so that is up in the air if it will really hold up (especially performance wise). The farming aspect seems to still be around (although I am amused that we traded away the watering can for a magic water umbrella) but it looks like that we're not farming in a specific farm? It's hard to tell from all those scenes stitched out together, but it looks like you're rebuilding a village and you set up which part of it becomes farmland? I can't help but being curious about how everything will come together. It also looks like you can make different field types since there was a shot showing rice paddies. It's possible that they took a page out of Stardew Valley here and made it so you could arrange your farm/village the way you prefer.

The presentation and story seems to have been upgraded with actual cutscenes happening instead of just a simplistic in-game scene with textbox dialogue taking over. No idea if this only covers the main story or the side stories will get similar treatments but we'll see in due time. The battle stuff seems to still be on point. The new weapons and abilities will at the very least shake things up a bit. We don't know anything about crafting yet (unless I missed sight of it) but I expect it to be pretty much like what we've seen it so far.

Time will tell what else this game got in store or if it can live up to its promises but I can't wait to get it personally. At worst, I expect it to be an experiment with goods and bads just like Tides of Destiny. they'll keep the goods to put into future games while leaving the bads and the stuff that wasn't fitting with the series proper behind when they work on Rune Factory 6. At best, it might just reinvent the series altogether. Since it's not Rune Factory 6, I'm fine with them trying a bunch of new stuff and see what sticks.

As an aside, the uniforms of the people who seem to be the antagonists are quite different from what the series have shown so far. This is likely a far fetched hypothesis, but since they already confirmed that Rune Factory 6 will cover the "West", maybe this is going to be an introduction of some faction hailing from that western land.