Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma - Nintendo Switch 2

This has been an amazing game in the two or so weeks so far with my Nintendo Switch 2. I am a long time fan of the Runefactory series, having started with Runefactory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon on the DS, and this game may just be the best of them all! New city-building mechanics are super fun and all the characters and voice acting just make the game amazing in my opinion. 5/5!

This is my first ever Rune Factory game - I've heard amazing things about the series but have never really gotten around to purchasing any of the entries. The Far Eastern aesthetic grabbed my attention quickly for this particular entry, and since starting it I've struggled to put the game down! The balance between the sim aspects and the action rpg elements is spot on, and it's easy to get sucked into both aspects of the game. After such a phenomenal experience, I'm definitely going to have to spring for future entries into the series, and maybe even go back to play previous ones!

I love this ruin factory spin off! The story is interesting and fighting style is so dope.

Okay, this game is a solid action RPG with elements of farm sim in it. There's a lot to see and do in this title, plus you're not doing so alone either, you actually have a party backing you. The game looks beautiful, hitting a constant 60fps on Switch 2. The soundtrack is also decent, not a song feels out of place and nothing grates on the ears. All in all, a rock solid action RPG that can keep you occupied for almost 100 hours and that's without the DLC.

Marvelous improved a lot from 5 on this one. If you don't already know Rune Factory games are basically fantasy farming games with RPG elements. The leveling system has changed from every skill having its own level to a skill tree you spend xp on. Village management is a lot more polished though farming is in my opinion simplified, this isn't a bad thing and some things are definitely improved about ( one seed does a square instead of needing 4 seeds per square when the seeds can only stack up to 9 per stack). Items that are stackable can stack much higher (old limit was 9 for most things). Hard to tell until 6 comes out how many of these changes are due to Guardians of Azuma being a side game or not. The game has an autosave feature now but still uses save points to manually save which might be a stylistic choice at this point because its an odd choice, I also wish when developing villages I didn't have to physically move my character between different development zones in a village. Mouse mode is supported when developing but I personally don't use it much for the above reason. Another thing to note is this is technically a switch 1 game with an optional download (included) to upgrade it to a switch 2 version so it can theoretically work on a switch 1 even though its a red switch 2 cart. Overall highly recommend if you like farming and rpg games.