Ushi No Tane Forum

Ah, I've been distracted; does anyone still want/need an RF5 hype-up thread? I said I'd make one on March 1, but if nobody feels the need for it...

How are your hype levels doing, everybody? Do they need a perk or are they brewing up just fine on their own as we are now within 3 weeks of release?

I gave up on RF5, but I don't think giving up on it ruins the fun of finding out later that against all expectations, it got another chance at life. It's an even bigger surprise, I think, if you weren't still actively harbouring hope and waiting for it to come true. Whether it being a bigger surprise is good, bad or neither, I dunno; depends on how much you enjoy surprises, I guess?

I'll admit when Marvelous put out Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven, I was a bit concerned that it was the end of RF. They touted LoM as the game from the devs of RF4. And honestly ... wasn't that great of a game. Very interesting combat system, but overused maps and bad story and overpowered bosses, just couldn't even finish the game myself. So my thoughts of a RF5 were kind of dashed at that point. I still recall how shocked I was when I first learned of RF5. Still excited for it, though I know this entry has several changes from the prior games, other than the obvious 3D environment.

If one has to force a hype thread, then that kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? If the game is great, then it generate hype on its own as fans flock to it and discuss it. Hype should come naturally and with little to no effort.

I'm personally taking a wait-and-see approach to RF5. I do plan to get at some point, but I might wait a few months to a year for patches or sales if I am feeling cheap. I am worried about bugs, especially any new glitches caused by the localization process. I greatly prefer to know what I am getting into when buying a game, so I will not be upset if any of RF5's deepest lore gets out. If the RF5 is basically perfect upon release and I learn that I didn't need to wait, then it will still be perfect whenever I obtain it.

No, I don't think a deliberate hype defeats the point, personally. I need that kind of thing. RF5 hasn't had much buzz...people simply haven't been talking about it. If I saw more discussion, I'd be more hyped, and that's useful to me. I was crazy-excited by all the chatter and speculation we had before Trio of Towns, for example...us discussing every little development as it leaked into view. That lasted from first announcement until Japanese release and then until English release, as well...it never flagged. I REALLY miss that and wish RF5 had that going on, too. I get hyped by seeing guides, too...an instructional video on how to gather all the easiest loved and liked gifts for the candidates got me more excited than anything else. On top of that, in the past year I've found that in general, people's hype for everything is taking quite a hit. From the backlog thread I've noticed that people just aren't as excited about as many games any more...it feels like covid is wearing people out and making life a bit more grey overall, so hype may need to be dug up with more deliberation than before. But everyone's different. There's those who don't need a hype thread, those that wouldn't want one, and then I'm sure there're some who do. I just don't know what the balance is...if it's worthwhile or not.

That's fair. I remember those days where speculation would spread like wildfire every time a new HM/SoS or RF game would come out. I almost never see that kind of stuff anymore for any game. I remember people posting unofficial translated dialogue for HM:AP in threads (I think a user with the name NurseFin did a bunch, but I don't remember clearly). I recall entire events being translated before an official English release.

Honestly, the lack of buzz here and on Reddit annoys me to no end. I feel like I'm missing something about RF5 or that RF5 is missing something itself. I could always be wrong.

The main things that I see people getting hyped for in RF5 is the gay marriage and the existence of RF5 after no new RF games in about a decade. Not the 3D graphics, not the combat, not the monsters, not the villagers, not the setting, not the new plotline, not the new gameplay mechanics, not the farming; heck, even the love interests themselves are seemingly an afterthought. Finding any discussion of their events and stories is a chore. The detail that some of the love interestsisn't even widespread about them, except maybe about Ludmila. Seemingly every discussion on Reddit of people who are on the fence about buying RF4 or RF5 ends with most people always recommending RF4 and sometimes recommending waiting for RF5 for one reason or another.

What's weird about RF5 in particular is that the information is out. It's in Japanese, but the game and what it delivers is out. There should be hype. There should be plenty of spoilers about characters and stories out, and people exited to experience those things for themselves. People who can't wait to do X or Y in a game. People who speculate on the fictional lives of him or her. Yet these kind of spoilers and conversations are either really hard to find or, in the worst case, seemingly not worth talking about. I know it's kind of taboo to spoil things about a game, but I wonder if it has gone too far. It can be hard to tell what counts as spoiler and what doesn't, so talking about a game in detail can be tricky. I wonder if this silence about the game is hurting any buzz around it.

My greatest fear for RF5 is that it's going to be forgettable. If it fails to live up to other games in the series, that's one thing, but a game being bland and unmemorable is worst than a game being comparatively lackluster. RF4 SE might be a hard act to follow, but RF5 should be at least memorable in some sense. A lot of users were talking about the game when it was released last year, sharing details and the like, and then the discussions largely stopped, only sparking up with new announcements before dying down again. Discussions for RF4 continue into present day, and that game came out nearly a decade ago! I feel like I'm not understanding something.

... Anyway, while finding translated events is a chore, I did find some results. In the spoiler tag below are incomplete pieces of some the love interests' confessions (no Lucas or Ludmila, sadly) events. Translations are in the comments. If anyone has more, then please let me know.

Myself, I think there are two big reasons why RF5 isn't getting hype. One is that it's practically a clone of RF4. The characters are different, but the gameplay is more identical than games before it. People love RF4, but I more want a proper next entry into the series than a reskin of RF4. I get that it's a comeback game and this actually makes sense here, but I'm a bit discontent about how samey it feels in so many ways. I hope it gives me a greater impression of having its own personality once I'm playing, though.

The other is that people are just less enthused about everything, now. Many of us have covid burn-out, maybe even without realizing it. Life is very stale (for me, where I am, it's also still very wintery and dark out, which makes winter much, much worse. Not even a hint of spring, yet!)

And the graphics are probably something to adjust to, as well. I haven't yet decided if I like them or not and I don't think I'll be able to decide until I have the game in my hands.

I don't know why the Japanese-language players didn't generate much discussion after Japanese release, though. Maybe not as many Japanese-language players on Fogu went ahead and tried it? I do still find it strange.

Thanks for the links

I think there's truth to the observation that hype in general seems less common these days. I have to wonder if that's due not only to the pandemic, but also the culture of industry crunch and post-release patches. Many people don't expect games to be at their best when they release anymore anyways, hence the lack of Maximum Excitement. Could be wrong, though.

As for me, I'm actually very excited for RF5! We're a little under three weeks out from it now, which is hard to believe. While discussion online from people who have played the game is oddly difficult to find, the impression I've gotten from Reddit/YouTube/etc. is that the cast of characters is on par with RF4, which is honestly the main bar it needs to clear for me. The main issues people bring up seem to be related to optimization, or that the days run so long that the story ends up feeling shorter in-universe. The optimization problems do worry me a little bit, but broadly speaking, it hasn't been enough to kill my excitement. The environments are also a little lackluster, but I think the character/monster models are polished enough to make up for it (at least in part).

I'm hopeful that the western release will bring a lot more buzz, since Rune Factory has a pretty large international fanbase. If I'm remembering correctly, RF4 sold better overseas during its foreign launch than it did domestically. I did stumble across a YouTube video compiling all of Scarlett's romance events with an English translation recently, but the channel hadn't uploaded any compilations for the other candidates, unfortunately.

The video in question: I'm unsure which candidate I'm going for first yet, personally. I prefer men IRL, but several bachelorettes have interesting personality blurbs (Ludmilla is a standout) and I'd like to see their events to at least learn more about them as characters. I'll probably end up going for Murakumo or Lucas on my first run regardless, but the quiz did give me Ryker, so I'll keep an eye on him too.

Ah, yeah, that could be? Maybe? I'm not sure, but I personally DO find that overall hype is reduced a bit by the fact that games are so often released in a rough or incomplete state, to be patched or improved as-needed or demanded afterward, since that's become industry standard. (I do know of a FEW games that never seem to receive updates or patches afterward, like Ace Attorney, but not many! But AA is in the visual novel category, and those more typically don't need any optimization updates.)

The environments in RF5 are definitely the major sore point for me, too, graphically. Not ALL of them...the town seems fairly nice. But any shot I've seen in a dungeon reminds me of this first-person shooter I tried way back in 1990, lol. Green walls of messy green texture represent hills, brown or grey walls of messy texture reprepsent rocks or earth...not pretty. Though I may not care when I'm playing, as long as the characters look good. They had trouble optimizing the game already since they did so many updates post-release in Japan to get it to run better, so I guess asking it to look nicer too would be too much for that team? They don't have the skills? I don't know.

About the official English site. We're only 3 weeks away from release, and still two sections of the website are blank/inaccessible. Products and Daily Life & Adventures. What's up with that, I wonder.

Thanks for the video link, Chronic Lurker. I really appreciate it.

A lot of games also add content with patches. A game might not be at its final form with all of its features until months or years after release. RF5 is actually an example of this - gay marriage was added in a patch months after release. I've heard that RF5 will probably have a Day 1 patch when it releases in March, too.

A probably large part of why RF5 struggles to run on the Switch sometimes is its engine. It was made in Unity, which has a reputation of not running well on the Switch. It makes me wonder what decision came first - to use the Unity engine to make the game or to release the game on the Switch. It also raises questions as to whether RF5 will eventually be released on the PC, where Unity runs well, like RF4 was.

The environments are hit or miss. The enclosed areas look nice, such as inside buildings, but the wide open areas are barren and the textures needed work. If the wide open areas were more condensed (smaller and fuller of stuff), then I think that game would look better.

Another issue is that some of the character models differ from their sprite artwork. Lucas has one of the most obvious inconsistencies (his hair color is either grey or black, as the artwork has grey hair and the model has black hair). Other characters are more subtle, but a lot of their models have or lack details that the artwork has. When the models were less detailed and the camera was fixed at a distance, this sort of issue wasn't much of a problem, but, now the that models are more detailed and the camera can be zoomed in, making the sprite artwork match the models becomes important. As it stands, it looks like the models were made at an earlier time before the artwork and sprites were finalized, and no one bothered to update the models with the final designs.

Well they have been milking RF4, with the original release, and then Special, and now it's even on STEAM. So new players have come on board to talk about it. But, you would think that would draw interest to RF5 ... and it is oddly silent.

If they thought adding gay marriage would bring on the mass of players they've certainly miscalculated. Nice feature but not a reason to buy a $60 game. The 3D both interest me and concerns me. 2D sprites and backgrounds can be very detailed and beautiful, whereas doing the same in 3D often looks lacking. So we'll see.

I have also seen several review vids on RF5 and as others have said the general conclusion is to play RF4 if you haven't already. Not the most flattering of recommendations for sure.

What I want to see more of is the personal interactions between the PC and NPC's, and I don't hear anyone really talking about that being improved over RF4. If the relationships just seem stale that's going to be a huge let down for me.

I have bought and played every version of RF on handhelds so I felt obligated to add this to my collection. So far every version seemed better than the last, so I'm hopeful at least.

They didn't even intend to add it from the beginning, apparently. Xseed asked them to add it, so they said 'yeah that should be in there!' and so, they added it. It wasn't calculated to increase sales, I'm sure. It was just to finally add some inclusivity options to let a larger range of players play in the way that means the most to them. To put it negatively, it might be to avoid bad press if they did NOT add it.

Well, Fogu has grown quiet, for sure, however...that's definitely not why it's so quite overall, even in other parts of the net. Even Olive Town got way more chatter than RF5. On Fogu I think part of that may be because RF5 did not get its own forum board, or even a dedicated sub-board. People don't feel encouraged to make their own threads about this-and-that on RF5...they just drop a post into this huge collector thread.

We'll definitely see more chatter soon, with English release getting people asking how to trigger events or where to find this, or how to do that, etc.

This will be my first RF experience and I am so looking forward to it

I think the character designs are great and I like most of them. I was disappointed when they announced the delay but my hype was immediately picked up again after the gay marriage announcement. I really hope this game will do well in the west as it did pretty good for a RF game in Japan? I could be wrong.

I just hope someone will open a poll to vote for our favorite marriage candidate ha

Kikki wrote:They didn't even intend to add it from the beginning, apparently. Xseed asked them to add it, so they said 'yeah that should be in there!' and so, they added it. It wasn't calculated to increase sales, I'm sure. It was just to finally add some inclusivity options to let a larger range of players play in the way that means the most to them. To put it negatively, it might be to avoid bad press if they did NOT add it.

The hypothetical bad press in the West never bothered Marvelous before, plus many western websites announced that RF5 didn't have gay marriage. The fanbase largely knew that RF5 didn't have gay marriage at first as well. The bad press was already out. From what I can tell, Marvelous focuses primarily on its Japanese audience and pays little mind to audiences elsewhere.

As for why Marvelous suddenly decided to add gay marriage to RF5, I don't think the X-Seed was the main reason. The timing (the announcement that gay marriage was going to be patched into RF5 happened after an official Japanese fan poll concluded), lack of initial inclusion (and no indication at the time that Marvelous was going to add it), the original marriage graphic in the menu being a husband and wife, and the new RF4 SE port not adding gay marriage all point at X-Seed's pleas not being enough to convince Marvelous. I'm going to copy what I wrote in another thread.

PaleSunflower wrote:In addition, if X-Seed's account of what happened is correct, then Marvelous showed no strong interest in putting gay marriage in the Rune Factory games for years, despite the English community and the English translator requesting it for probably at least a decade. Coincidentally, gay marriage was only added to RF5 after an official Japanese fan poll concluded. While we don't know the results of that poll (to my knowledge), it's quite possible that the results are the key reason why the developers behind RF5 seemingly suddenly decided to add gay marriage to it. (Gay marriage was one of the options for desired features within the poll, which was probably intended for the Japanese audience based off the language.) Nothing is confirmed in this case, but the timing is suspicious.

Another potential reason is the RF5 had a great 1st week of sales, and then had, from what I can tell, a not-great 2nd week and so on. A lot of websites (including Fogu, if I remember correctly) reported how well RF5 sold in Japan in its 1st week after being released, but I can't find any numbers after the 1st week of sales, implying that those numbers are, at best, mediocre or, at worst, terrible. Adding a popular, desired feature (as indicated by the poll) may have been done to boast sales, as cynical as that sounds.

Blue Rose wrote:I find the VA choices this time around to be pretty good. For the dudes, Mura's my favorite but Reinhard's is pretty close (Chris Hackney!). For the gals, either Lucy or Beatrice with Ludmilla as second.

SungWon Cho and Joe Zieja on the VA casting has me HYPED tho.

Bluie wrote:I can practically hear SungWon Cho's 'Archibald' voice coming from Oswald.

Lucas was already my favourite character (and my test result!), but his VA being Mark Whitten is just, chef's kiss for me.

Excited to hear everyone's performances!

Maybe it's silly, but I'm excited to cast spells in 3D combat. The only 3D game I played was on the Wii with Wizard (Animal Parade?), and I don't remember there being magic. My hype is going up as the end of March approaches.

I recently watched a video of a comparison between the English and Japanese VAs for RF5 and it was very interesting to see the differences between them. The girls all sounded really similar to me in Japanese, so I'm glad the English voices feel a bit more distinct. The only one I had a little trouble with was Priscilla during her intro, but I didn't mind her voice as much in the cutscene they showed as an example, so that's good. I think of the girls, Lucy has my favorite voice. Erica Lindbeck did an excellent job!

For the guys, it was almost the opposite. Their voices were mostly deeper in Japanese, but I feel most of them were pretty fitting. I really like Martin and Ryker's, and Murakumo sounded so much like the voice actor for Itto from Genshin Impact I had to go look it up to confirm they weren't the same person! I think it was mostly the inflection though. Only one I had a little trouble with for the guys was Reinhard, again in the voiced intro. Cutscene felt much better.

All in all, the voice actors did a really great job in my opinion! I'll link the video below in case anyone else is interested!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9I7oa5wx_Q