A lot of us here at Phenixx Gaming love a good chill, farming game. Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Rune Factory are just a few franchises we’re always happy to cover. This review for Rune Factory 5 has been a long time coming, but it took a while for me to figure out just how to describe certain parts of the game and my thoughts on them. Rune Factory 5 is a great experience, but it has some baggage from the franchise’s roots that could really use an overhaul.

The general premise of Rune Factory 5 is similar to previous games, you play an amnesiac, who discovers they are an Earthmate, a being with the power to tend the land and cultivate mana. You find yourself in the town of Rigbarth, and wind up joining SEED, a peacekeeping organization. As a ranger, it is your job to help the townsfolk, help develop the town, and solve mysterious phenomena occurring in the region. There is a larger plot at work, but most of your time is spent farming, fishing, mining, and adventuring.

As with other Rune Factory games, everything you do in-game is tied to a skill. Watering crops raises your water skill while chopping wood raises both your logging and ax skills, for example. Each weapon type has a skill, and those weapon skills determine what weapons you can craft, along with your forging skill, of course. Crafting (including cooking) has its own set of skills, and you can purchase recipe bread for different things at the bakery and restaurant.

Your character has health and RP (Rune Points), which determine how much you can do in a day. If you run out of RP, you begin to take health damage. Run out of health and you faint and wake up at the doctor’s office. This costs money and can cause you to lose items as well, so don’t get caught in a wilderness area that is too dangerous, because if you faint out there, you’ll lose the rest of the day.

Leveling skills by doing things like foraging, farming, and adventuring raise your RP levels. However, certain skills (namely crafting) are very difficult to level organically. Often, you’ll have to find a way to exploit the system to level your crafting fast enough to get the gear you need without fainting in the process. The crafting system could use a little bit of work, though I do like the large amount of leveling progression through skills in general.

Farming also has an element to it that is a little bit annoying. Your soil has stats. If you farm too much without fertilizing your soil, it loses nutrients and thereby can cause your future crop yields to be lesser. On top of that, unless you fertilize each square of your farm that you want to plant on with specific things, you won’t be able to get higher quality crops past a certain point. This system is tedious, frustrating, and desperately needs an overhaul.

Raising animals is different than most games as well, though in a less frustrating way than farming. Instead of purchasing chickens, cows, pigs, etc, you can catch monsters instead. Each monster in the game not only provides a certain material or item but also can be used as a party member instead of an NPC villager. If you’re lucky enough (or persistent enough) you can even catch boss creatures, though it is more difficult.

Monsters are housed in Monster Barns on farm dragons, which provide extra farmland. Monsters can also help out on your farm if you so choose. This leads to the other major issue with the game, inventory management. While there are sorting and filtering options in the various containers, they don’t particularly sort in a way that makes much sense.

On top of that, each item (including crafting materials) has a level, and things like weapons or armor don’t stack. There is a lot of inventory management, and it is very time-consuming. The controls are also somewhat strange as well. They work well enough, but they aren’t exactly intuitive compared to other farming games.

I know this sounds like I’m being hard on the game, but in truth, there is a lot to love with Rune Factory 5 too. The story is interesting, the characters are fun, and there is something really engaging about the progression of upgrading the town, upgrading your gear, and progressing through the story. I just feel that some of the more complex elements in regards to soil health and crafting progression make the game less fun for the average, casual player.

The voice acting is good, though only about half the dialogue is voiced, and sometimes sections start out voiced and then stop partway through. There is also a little bit of lag from time to time on Switch, but the PC version just launched so if that’s an issue for you, there’s always the PC version. I didn’t find it to be a deal-breaker though.

If you’re a die-hard fan, I’d definitely recommend Rune Factory 5. If you’re new to the franchise, I’d also recommend it since it is more friendly than some of the earlier ones. However, if you just want a casual farming experience, I wouldn’t say that Rune Factory 5 is the direction you should be going in.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Rune Factory 5 was provided by Koei Tecmo for this review.

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Rune Factory 5

$59.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Progression System is Solid
• Fun Characters
• Interesting Story
• Tons of Content
• Lots of Replay Value

Cons

• Soil Health is Overly Complicated
• Some Visual Lag
• Catching Monsters is Frustrating
• Inventory Management is Too Time-Consuming
• Crafting Progression is Very Grindy