Rune Factory 4 Review

With Rune Factory 4 as my first foray into the series I was pleasantly surprised with the entry. I was expecting a similar experience to that of Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon but what I found instead, was a game richer, and more diverse in content, allowing numerous hours to slip by unnoticed.

The game starts you off with an unfortunate question which decides your gender, after this you find yourself aboard an airship and after a scuffle with some thugs, falling towards the town of Selphia. Typical JRPG tropes are delivered in quick succession and shortly after the fall you are left with amnesia, soon after this you have become the stand-in Prince(ss) of the town. As it turns out there's a lot of jobs for a Prince(ss) to do and Rune Factory 4 takes its time allowing you to have free rein of your princely duties. If you stick with the game for a few hours though you'll have a handle on what the town requires and what you can get up to during the day.

The main core of the game revolves around a blend of farming, dating and maze-like dungeon crawling. Shortly into the game you are introduced to the farm; here you can plant crops, tending to them to eventually sell for profit, or to use the ingredients during cooking. You'll find yourself partaking in plenty of activities during the day, each one feeling like a worthy diversion of your time. This is due to the fact that you can level up numerous skills quite easily to begin with adding a consistent sense of progression. It's fun to see your level rise quickly at the beginning of the game and even though there's a lot to do, you can tailor each day or indeed each part of a day to honing a particular skill.

 Combat is light and enjoyable and although it doesn't offer an in-depth system of combos and counter attacks, it's fast paced and difficult enough to warrant sufficient attention. There are numerous weapons to use and you can upgrade your ability with each one, learning new moves to attack enemies with. You can also equip your character with magic abilities such as fire, water attacks or even healing spells, to give you an added boost in combat. You can obtain help in combat by befriending monsters, making them help with enemies or just having them tend to the farm. It's a nice little feature and the fact that you can have numerous monster pets means you're not limited in your choosing.

The romance system works in a similar way to Harvest Moon's meaning you chat to townsfolk, offer them presents and go on adventures with them to build up a relationship, which can result in marriage. The romancing options are made more enticing by the fact that every character has a unique personality. It's exciting to find out a character's likes and dislikes and even more exciting to build up the relationship through the aforementioned methods. The writing for the entire game is humorous and charming and I often found myself smiling at conversations. Unfortunately, much like the previously released Tomodachi Life, Rune Factory 4 does not allow same-sex marriages and this was highly disappointing to see. It's a fault that should never happen in the times we live in but developers can sometimes seem miraculously blind to this issue. This issue aside Rune Factory 4 has a unique and quirky cast of characters who greatly benefit the day-to-day activities that you take part in. The story is relatively simple but because of the likeable cast you'll want to see it through.

Apart from these aspects of gameplay, as Prince or Princess your job is to improve the town of Selphia and keep the citizens happy. You can do this through Prince(ss) Points, which allow you to build new buildings, obtain licenses for cooking, forging, medicine etc. and more. You can't do this without pleasing the townsfolk though so you'll have to take requests from citizens to gain enough points. It’s a nice system that gives you incentive to complete smaller tasks for citizens. Knowing there were larger upgrades to be gained for my town made me want to complete numerous tasks to gain enough Prince Points to build bigger and better things.

There's not much to fault in Rune Factory 4, the game looks beautiful with the town of Selphia feeling very much alive due to the scurrying of busybody citizens. The audio is surprisingly good, and I often found myself humming along to the catchy tunes. As it's my first Rune Factory experience I can easily recommend it to newcomers as the game offers up tutorial after tutorial for the uninitiated. I can see this being grating to existing fans though as the beginning of the game does limit your freedom quite a bit, making you trod through simple tasks before giving you a free rein. Saying this there's plenty to do once you're past this stage and it's here where the game really comes alive. Whether you want to farm till your hearts content, pursue romance or do well by your townsfolk, Rune Factory 4 will invite you back in time and time again.