Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

I love this game

It says verified on steam deck yes? Then why does it crash every single time i put the steam deck to sleep and wake it up? Also why does inviting people out seem so basic compared to rf4? I take somebody out to the forest and they just nod at me? What's that? I hope it gets more deep later.

I've been chasing that "just one more hour" farming-sim high since I finished the My Time series, and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar scratched the itch for a while... but somehow I'd never played a Rune Factory game until now. Rookie mistake. This might genuinely be my favorite game in the genre. You're not choosing between "the farming game" and "the combat game" and "the dating sim," you get all three stitched into one system. Taking someone into a dungeon, watching how they fight, having them react to what's happening in combat — it makes the relationships feel earned in a way that a gift-giving loop alone never quite manages. The voice acting backs this up completely — every character feels distinct and thought-through, so the relationships actually land emotionally instead of feeling like flavor text. And that's on top of just genuinely fun weapon variety, a satisfying upgrade system, and village management/decorating that's its own delightful time sink. It's rare for a game to nail farming/life-sim comfort AND combat AND base-building AND romance all at once without one of those systems feeling like an afterthought. This one does. If you loved My Time at Portia/Sandrock or Gr…

This game is super duper awesome!!! But, after about twenty hours, I've become a little wary of some of the game's features and mechanics. Pros: - LOTS of ways to customize/build up your character's skills and property! - The NPCs that CAN be befriended are all surprisingly fun, or at least intriguing - You get to build SO MUCH!!! From buildings to furniture to decorations... Amazing! - The writing has at SEVERAL points made me laugh - The English voice acting makes me genuinely happy - Super in-depth stats/skill/gear systems - You can have NPC friends join you on your adventures out of the village! - Small thing, but I like that certain NPCs will talk to each other if you bring the right ones out <3 Cons: - Very few NPCs that you can actually befriend, but even less that you can marry - Some mechanics get given to you WAY later than you would think - Ridiculously easy, even on hard (making those extremely deep skill trees and gear kinda useless) - Very repetitive music, with very few tracks in total - Non-friendable NPCs are really uninteresting - Some of the friendable NPCs are just glorified merchants It's a super duper fun game, but if I'm getting this co…

Great story with tons to do outside of the main quest. The graphics were different than what I am used to, but enjoyable all the same. I liked being able to build bonds with the characters and how much freedom there is in the choices you can make regarding each village and their layout. Ive beaten this game twice: once as Subaru and once as Kaguya. No matter how many times I play it, it will be different. Love games like this and keep it on my Steam Deck as a staple. The only thing I was unhappy with was having to pay for Pilika and Cuilangs routes. Hopefully in the future the developers will not resort to such scummy tactics.

Without the previous skill system, there's nothing to do between the story and romancing the characters, so I got bored quickly. You can't become overpowered and do dedicated grinding for individual stats, which makes no sense for a Rune Factory game, and because there's little purpose to the game without the power fantasy, I got bored and couldn't even bring myself to complete my favorite romance option, which has never happened to me when playing a Rune Factory game before. The whole point of the series for me when it came to gameplay was just grinding to become overpowered, so with that gone, they basically ruined the game for me.