Rune Factory 5 Review – A Janky and Frustrating instalment to a great series
Rune Factory 5 is the newest in the 15 year old series of games, developed by Hakama Inc and published by Marvelous. What can I say? It’s a very OK game. I’ve played RF4 and loved it but this one felt janky, uncomfortable and at times I wondered if my Switch was breaking down on me. It just feels like the game has bitten off more than it can chew, something that leaves myself the player frustrated with a lot of the new additions, no matter how well the good balances it out.
Too Much Going On In Rigbarth?
Right from the start I worried a little, I was playing on the Switch and the frame rate kept dropping massively in cutscenes. During gameplay it was fine, except just after I left a house, but in general it was smooth whilst I ran around doing errands, farming and wooing my character of choice. But during cutscenes it was unavoidable, now don’t get me wrong, I’m no FPS Nazi, I couldn’t care less if something is 30 or 60 FPS but the cutscenes jumped around as if it was an online game and I had the worst connection known to man. It was weird and worrying. I know for the Switch I shouldn’t expect much but this went beyond that.
So already a bad start but I was willing to overlook something that could be fixed by an update. The game itself though is just… too much, even for itself at times. The actual things that are included are absolutely fine but it seemed like the devs had a real issue implementing them using the new style perhaps? I’m not sure, it’s all speculation but it would make sense. The farming is frustrating, more of a chore than a relaxing thing to do when not clearing dungeons. And even the battles in dungeons feel messy especially when there’s more than two enemies on screen. The attacks, even with a Claymore don’t feel like they have any weight to them. It’s 100% more fun than farming but it’s still noticeably clunky.
I did enjoy the characters in Rigbarth. Especially the romance system, my choice of who I wanted to woo changed a whole lot as their stories progressed and more cutscenes were revealed. Thankfully you can confess to more than one person but it does hurt your chance of getting the rock eventually so it’s best not to if you know that’s the one you want to marry and have a baby with, or adopt for gay couples.
The fact is that Rune Factory 5 is a balancing act. If you can look past the clunky and frustrating gameplay then it’s actually a really solid game. What I see is a game that’s struggled to adapt to it’s own new vision.
