- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 21/Jun 00:01

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma – Review

Even though we’re fans of Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Story of Seasons, we probably preferred the Rune Factory series a bit more as it combined cozy elements with more traditional JRPG mechanics. Fae Farm recently provided gamers with a similar experience, adding a dungeon-crawling component to the mix where you really had to grind a lot to make any progress. Even so, the game proved to be enjoyable and accessible to newcomers to the genre. All of that aside, we were really looking forward to the subject of today’s review, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. Early footage made it seem as if Guardians of Azuma would be a big overhaul for the series, with many new elements. While this is true to a certain extent, we do feel that the series would benefit from a few more modernized mechanics. Story In Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, you’ll play as a so-called Earth Dancer who has the power to restore balance to the world. The game lets you choose one of two characters, which you can give a name of your choosing, if you desire to do so. The world has suffered through an event called the Celestial Collapse that has taken away almost all the power from the nature gods. As a result, the world has been fractured into small islands, and blight has spread across the remaining parts of the world as well. The game follows the typical amnesiac storyline where you must gain your powers back, invigorate the gods, and eventually become the hero the world needed all along. The overarching story is a bit simple, but there’s enough incentive to keep pressing onwards. Progressing bonds with other characters is a key component here, and it also adds a lot of charm to the mix. Character-specific quests often have their own separate storylines. Graphics Even though Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is not an ugly game at all, it does look a bit dated. The colorful cast of characters looks charming, albeit rough around the edges. The bonding sequences often use the exact same animations for most characters, which also does not help with immersion if you’re dedicating some time to bonding with the different characters. The world is fun to explore, but it feels rather empty and lacks variety in terms of assets. All in all, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma looks like a cute title that would have been impressive two generations of consoles ago. While these are negative comments, the game still packs a lot of charm and is pleasant to look at. We were always happy to unlock new areas in the game, as these did present us with a few new item options and new enemies to defeat. The boss designs were quite neat, so that’s certainly a plus. Sound In terms of sound design, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma nails it to a tee. The music is relaxing but also upbeat and adrenaline-inducing when it needs to be. Even the more repetitive tracks in the town areas never lost their flair, even during prolonged gaming sessions. There’s also a surprising amount of voice work in the game, as most main dialogues are fully voiced. The voice cast does a formidable job bringing their characters to life, even if many of these characters stick to stereotypes within the JRPG genre. While we would have loved full voice acting for side quests and other minor dialogues, it’s not uncommon for titles such as this to focus on the main content instead. The SFX are decent, but nothing to truly write home about. Gameplay Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a fairly traditional JRPG. The Rune Factory series, in a sense, could be described as Harvest Moon (or Story of Seasons) with combat, and this is probably also the reason why it has been attracting a very diverse audience since its first title back in 2006, aptly named Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. In Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, you’ll cultivate fields, help bring new life to different cities, combat monsters, bond with a variety of villagers, and eventually defeat a great evil and settle down. The offset is very straightforward, and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma does manage to ease you into most of its mechanics without feeling too overwhelming. The overall progress curve is quite pleasant, as you gain experience with literally every action you perform. You’ll gain experience per weapon type, per sacred treasure you use, for socializing with the other characters, and so on. For all of these actions, you’ll get experience for that specific skill tree. On top of that, you also get general experience that can be used for any skill tree. It’s a fairly rewarding system, and it does give you quite a bit of freedom. If you dislike a certain weapon type, you can still invest general experience in it to level that skill tree as well. Combat itself is not that complicated, and it often boils down to spamming your attacks, casting the odd skill or two, and dodging incoming attacks. As Rune Factory still involves bonding with other characters and settling down with the character of your choosing, you’ll also spend a lot of time talking, going on outings, or handing out presents. It’s fairly entertaining to unlock the bonding quests as you increase your bond level, but the generic outings are perhaps a bit bland, as these are nearly identical for all the different characters. The aforementioned bonding quests, however, are properly fleshed out and a joy to play through. On top of bonding with key characters, you’ll also have some farming to do, and in Guardians of Azuma, you’ll even have to rebuild parts of the villages. In assigned building areas, you can place field tiles, buildings, and decorations. These last two will also provide you with permanent stat upgrades or other passive bonuses. You can manage your growing population by assigning jobs to them, and you can even evict slackers. It’s a fun new system that adds a bit of depth to the otherwise simplistic farming mechanics. Even with Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma’s enjoyable gameplay loop, it does suffer from very dated design choices in some departments. For starters, item stacking in the inventory is a tedious process. For example, identical food items don’t stack, and if you craft a lot of these, your inventory may be filled to the brim with food items, not leaving any room for any other items. Luckily, excess items are sent to the storage box automatically, and you can access the storage box from a lot of places. The controls also feel a bit clunky at times, and there is no rhyme or reason as to which ledges your character can climb and which ones they cannot. Placement controls for buildings are also extremely finicky, making an otherwise relaxing experience frustrating at times. Luckily, this is negated by the ‘overhead’ mode, which allows for more precise movement and placement. It feels like the solutions to some of the more annoying parts are already there, but simply not implemented that well or clearly explained to the player. It’s mainly minor things, but when you combine them all, it becomes clear that the series needs a few more modern touches here and there. Conclusion Even though Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma does have a few dated components, the overall package is very enjoyable. We enjoyed exploring the different islands in the world of Azuma, and the story was more than captivating enough for us to keep pressing onwards. With so many romanceable characters, you’ll probably find your pick of the litter, and you can always come back for a second playthrough if you change your mind eventually. The combat was entertaining, albeit a bit simplistic, but grinding for materials and items proved to be very rewarding. We particularly enjoyed the new building mechanics, adding a bit of additional gameplay depth. All in all, this was an entertaining entry in the long-running Rune Factory series, and we hope to see the developer flesh out some of the newly introduced components in future installments.