Somehow went from exclaiming "this is the perfect videogame" multiple times in my first several hours in Rune Factory 4, to being 20 hours into it and pretty happy to never play it again despite only being around about halfway through the main storyline.

Rune Factory 4 really has everything. Effortless, overflowing amounts of charm with every character leaving some sort of positive impression, an expansive farming system with so much depth sprawling in seemingly every imaginable direction, arpg goodness with a ton of different environments each with plenty of personality and unique touches, a ton of weapons (some delightfully goofy) with meaningfully different movesets for you to go chew through all manner of environments with, the ability to turn almost any enemy in the game into your own personal Pokémon and either set your army of critters to work on your farm or take them out adventuring with you, loads of secrets, loads of polish (I can't really overstate quite how impressive the level of polish is here), always something exciting to be working towards both narratively and in terms of building up your home/farm/town.

Rune Factory 4 really has everything. My mind freezes up as I use my magnifying glass to see so many stats about the soil quality of this specific tile, half of that stats feeling like they mean nothing. Five different crafting systems, a few of those with several different subcategories of crafting system associated with them, all of which need to be levelled up individually, and you better engage with these myriad mediocre crafting systems because you have to sell all this pointless garbage you're making to get the shipping rate higher. Stats you can level up for literally anything you can imagine, from using a specific class of weapon, to walking, to bathing. Storage boxes and fridges stuffed full of literally anything and everything you've found that you haven't had to either sell for money or use up in crafting. Yellow speech bubbles above characters indicating you haven't talked to them yet today, begging you to go find every single one of them every single day because of course the game expects you to befriend each and every townsfolk. Endless rooms of enemies where you just resort to bashing the same two buttons over and over to grind experience. Vegetable and flower seeds that start at level 1 and which you can specifically go out of your way to individually grind up to level 9 one growth cycle at a time. A princess points task system that gave me nightmares of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Nook Miles for all the pointless busywork it encourages. The same handful of trees and stones you have to return to day after day to get the ever crucial lumber and ore you need mountains of in order to build anything.

Leaving you drowning amongst its menagerie of empty compulsion loops, Rune Factory 4 is the perfect abyss. I loved a lot of my time with it, the game is genuinely beautifully made in many regards and it's hard to imagine a game really being better at the specific thing Rune Factory 4 is trying to accomplish, but despite this fuck I'm glad I got out when I did.

Rune Factory 4, 30 minutes in: "Uwaaaah!" (ᗒᗣᗕ) *clumsily falls and presses both asscheeks on the camera*

Rune Factory 4, 10 hours in: "The world is dying and I am dying. I sacrificed the lives of my friends centuries ago to extend my lifespan but I am living on borrowed time. Please, for the love of the world and for the love of your country, find my friends, now twisted into horrible monsters, and undo the spell that I have wrought. Grant them all this final blessing of mercy." *writhes in agony while the head butler judges a level 3 potato*

i was going through a health crisis when i first picked up this game so i think i may have irrevocably emotionally bonded myself to it, but in any case it is a very very good game. each and every one of the characters stuck to my brain like glue and would not let go no matter what i did, and the plot drew me in so thoroughly that for maybe a week straight i was doing basically nothing else but sleeping and playing this game and maybe eating if i remembered to. the difficulty level presents a nice challenge that only got frustrating to me past the main story. took a really long time to get through for someone playing it nigh 24/7, and it has has a crazy amount of replayability to me as well- i havent had a single time where starting up a new save file ended in it getting abandoned 8 minutes in, which is a feat even some of my favorite games have not been able to pull off. thanks rune factory 4 for making me not forcibly pull my skeleton out of my body being on bedrest! to this day i recommend this game to all of my friends and consider it to sit firmly in my selection of Some Of the Most Games Ever

The only reason I abandoned this is because I'm going to actually finish it on the Switch, I'm pretty sure. Anyhow, this game's pretty great! The cast is fun, the gameplay is engaging, and I like the story quite a bit. It's not breaking new ground, certainly, but it has a lot of heart and the way you get to know the characters gets you invested.

Though, it's the way you get to know the characters that makes me like this game a bit less than its predecessor. Instead of exploring relationships through a request board or even just heart events like in the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game, the events are... kind of random as to when they pop up. One of them is notorious for being required to unlock the third act of the story, and it can take forever to show up. I never made it to this point myself, but I definitely heard about it from friends, and honestly I found myself wishing the events were more predictable from even what I played. In every other area this was a step up from the previous game, with the ability to play as a male or female character and the cast being a little more grounded and less reliant on gimmicks, but that was a weird change that hurt things a lot. I have no idea if the Switch version fixed that. I guess we'll see...............

If you like RPGs and farming games like Harvest Moon-- look no further. Please play Rune Factory 4.

Rune Factory is difficult to recommend to people, in a way-- I don't think you can get away with only like one of the two genres it pulls from. Beating the game-- or at least the third arc-- requires all sorts of crafting, which requires money and material, and money usually requires farming. It really ties the game together, but if you don't already enjoy farming games, it probably wont work for you.

But it's a great game, honestly. There's much to do, and it's satisfying to toss all your old equipment to the wayside after making a new set of armor to go into the newest dungeon. The random events in town are sometimes a bit irritating if you're hoping for a specific one-- but at the same time, they make the town feel more lively, more real. The townspeople have lots of dialogue, and it takes a while to hit the end of their spiel. It's also nice that friendship builds over time without gifts, since you don't have to gift everyone in town every day to be liked. Gifts make it way faster, but you'll still find yourself integrating into Selphia if you just manage to talk to people every day.

Like any game, is it perfect? Of course not. But it's fun, it executes the genres its a part of well, and it makes me happy-- and I think that's enough.

This game helped me with being more patient. I think when it comes to games, my biggest weakness is that I am not patient. I don't like feeling like I am not getting my time worth of a game. That being said, I also have a tendency to rush through games to get to the next one. This game is one that you take your time with. Let it slowly cook, and consume it when the time is right.

To actually talk about the game though, its pretty good. I stopped at act 2, act 3 is too obtuse to find on your own and it ends perfectly fine at act 2. Combat is fine, it is serviceable and its not meant to be some type of hardcore action game. Its more about grinding and leveling up to overpower guys than swiftly dodging, although you still can. The game doesnt do any one thing great but its the combination of every thing that makes it great. How many games exist out there that are action jrps, with farming and social sim aspects? Not many. There much more I can say but I think I got the main point across. If you were thinking about trying this, then you should. It's great, and is a game that can suck the time out of your life very fast.

Note : RF4S is a slightly better version especially because it's not on a 3ds, but if you actually want to play on a 3ds then this version is perfectly playable. If you can, pick a ROM with Japanese dubs.

There are a lot of times I look at farming games and think they look painfully bland. You position yourself in front of a farming tile, you press a button and watch a one second animation during which you do nothing, something happens -either you plant, you till or gather something-, you move forward in a janky manner and do the same thing in the next tile of your grid based farm.

Then you have Rune Factory 4. When you water your plants, you have to move along your land to progressively water it. You can press the tilling button repeatedly to till forward. You can even charge your tools like you would charge weapon. It FEELS like a game, it feels GOOD. Even when you pick up items, there's this positive feedback because there's a weight to the item, it's not just a long animation where your character picks up something and you're stuck watching, unable to move. Hell you can even pick up multiple items at once and stack then on top of your character. All of that is what makes the farming in this game really good to play.

When I first started this game, I thought it would be an average mix of anime tropes, maybe some JRPG elements and farming. I wasn't wrong but the game also delivered so much more. Sure, the story and the characters are very tropey but at the same time, the game makes such a smart use of dialogue that I've never felt like a game was this alive. The amount of dialogue is insane and even after a hundred hours of playing, you'll still have new things to read. Every day, every character says something new. They also talk to each other. There are also random events in town involving them and there are multiple dozens of them! Quantity over quality is not something I usually appreciate but RF4 is perhaps the only game that manages to deliver something out of that. The end result is that the tropey characters have a lot of nuance, personality and that ultimately I learned to love them and to not mind living alongside them. This goes to the point that I just cannot stand most similar games because none of them offers one tenth of RF4's writing. I've really seen no other game with such an organic town and characters and it doesn't help in making me enjoy other farming games.

RF4 is a great farming game, a great slice of life game and it's also a great adventure and RPG. Not only does it combine aspects of management and adventuring rather well, but the game also has a lot to offer. Crafting and cooking are core mechanics and the crafting in this series is perhaps the most in-depth I have ever seen in any game, with an enormous amount of freedom given to the player when it comes to customisation. You can use any item in the game to craft and almost all of them have a specific effect. You want to make a weapon with every single status effect? You can. A giant spear bigger than the screen? You can!!!

The freedom given to the player is a huge part of why this game feels fun. There are tons of ways to break the game, for example you can throw bad food at enemies and it'll affect them the same way it affects you. Have a rotten food which deals -50% HP? Throw it at a boss and see what happens, the developers did not prevent you from doing so! Every time you find such a thing, it feels rewarding and at the same time not out of place. Ultimately the game is a lot about minmaxing, grinding and optimizing things but in a fun and stressless ways. It's not a hard or frustrating game and yet it still is quite fun to break.

Despite its limitations, the game also offer a great amount of exploration in the style of ALTTP dungeons, with every screen usually being a separate map area. The world is huge and there are a lot of dungeons, enemies, items to be collected... Did I mention you can capture every single enemy and use them as fighting pets, mounts or have them work in your farm? And if you don't like them, then bring up to two villagers alongside you in battle, you can even equip them as you wish!

The game has a ton of such systems and you never get bored. Grinding is a core mechanic and everything in the game has stats, from walking to sleeping to taking a bath. Sure they don't amount to much but it's still great hearing the skill up jingle every time you level up your walking.

Perhaps what I like the most about the game is its ergonomics. Teleport home whenever you want. Need something? Press L1/LB to open your quick menu which allows access to your ENTIRE INVENTORY within seconds, seriously no other game can rival this. It feels like you don't waste a single second and everything is as optimized as it can get. It feels... great! Truly, one of my favourite games of all times.

Great farming/rpg game
Probably the best of the series in many aspects, like the farming mechanics, the combat, the amount of stuff to do and arguably the best cast of characters.

BUT, I have to take 1 full point because of the awful event mechanics that can completely halt your progress. I can't believe that continuing the game's story or marrying your waifu/husbando is tied to RANDOM CHANCE. If you get unlucky you will waste a lot of time resetting to get the specific event you need to progress.