Topic: Rune Factory 4?....AND 5?!?!?!

@Ryu_Niiyama I haven't gotten very far, but here's what I noticed so far.

Getting the negative out of the way, the game looks really ugly, and not just the graphics and the frame rates. The overall design of the area is just so bland. Which is unfortunate, because the other 3D games in the series (Tides of Destiny and Frontier) had pretty interesting towns. There are also some wonky camera angles, the 3D models often move in an unnatural way, and some weird design changes, like they made it so you have to hover over houses to see who's inside instead of just showing the icons over the house like in RF4. Overall the game feels like it's lacking a layer of polish.

That being said, the core gameplay still feels as addicting as ever. Despite all of its issues I can easily see myself putting hours on end farming, battling, and crafting. Eventually I can see myself ignoring all of its shortcomings, but the're just a bit jarring at first. Although keep in mind I'm pretty tolerable to framerate drops. I still hope this game does well since I'd hate to see this series die. Even if they have to revert back to 2D for RF6 to make the game feel and look better I wouldn't mind.

I'll see how my feelings are when I'm 10+ hours into the game.

Ya, I'd agree it's a little rough, both visually and performance wise (though the performance issues haven't been pervasive for me, only brief momentary issues so far).

Honestly, I'd kinda lost my hype knowing that beforehand, but after playing a bit tonight, I'm actually really surprised by how good it is and how much fun I'm having. I wasn't expecting to like this game so much.

But I really do. This game is freaking fun.

After hearing the performance issues hadn't improved much from the Japanese release last year, I was glad to be able to cancel my preorder before it shipped. I've got other games I'd rather spend the $80 on. I suppose I'll just be content with replaying RF4.

Yeah, i do think the the jump to 3D made the game lose some charm in the proces; everything's a bit slower than RF4 too. It's also a game that just worked really well in 2D.

That said, I know i'm going to sink hours and hours in this one too. Rune Factory just has that feedback loop that makes my brain buzz.

I wanna romance Simone. Marvelous (Edit: Hakama) gotta stop making NPCs better than the romance candidates. Fuuka is absurd. Pulling some serious listen with your heart Pocahontas magic there. There are three of her kind in the village. Why not ask them for lessons?

@Ryu_Niiyama Simone is definitely my top pick so far. It's totally unfair.

Not happy with the way this is going. Do the writers of this game not know it takes place in a fantasy world? Why are the characters all worked up about a mysterious cryptid when one of them is literally a werewolf, one of them does actual magic, monsters live all around the town and there is a dragon the size of an office building flying ovehead?

Why are they all running away in terror from "a real ghost" when five minutes ago, the MC was slaughtering the exact same ghosts - along with a horde of other monsters - in a dungeon located one block away?

I can roll with a certain level of silliness, you expect a certain amount of it in this genre, but this is absolutely awful writing. It's like I'm playing two totally separate games here.

@Ryu_Niiyama I feel like Fuuka is the exact same problem. It's like they had two completely different scripts involving cute romanceable werepeople, and they couldn't decide which take they liked better so they just included both of them and hoped for the best.

Ok so Elsje is the best companion. If your health is low she will throw food at you. If it doesn’t hit you, you can pick it up and then eat/sell it later. I’m romancing Scarlett who likes rice dishes (until I can make what she loves) so the free onigiri helps. Didn’t realize the free baths stop after level 20. Or that you can use the catch spell to get fruit out of trees in the wild. Upgrade the bakery first so you get more bread per day. You can kill bosses once a day. If you brush them then you increase drop and capture success.

I am warming up to this though. No real framerate issues so far and I am getting the hang of my daily activities.

@JasmineDragon Fuuka would have been tolerable if her native language was articulate (Like Petra in Fire Emblem…she is totally acceptable) but it’s just as broken as listening to her say gao every five seconds. If I could have picked a were to romance it would have been Misasagi. I know some people think broken language sounds cute or endearing but it drives me up a wall. I try to avoid Fuuka mostly now.

So...how's 5 going, compared to 4 anyways? Ignoring the performance issues and stuff, I'm behind on games and this came out close to Kirby's release and that game is more important to me, so, yeah. xD

Chances are I'm grabbing this next, and soon. Still hoping that one day we'll get a huge Rune Factory game where everyone is in it, so I can keep my Xiao Pai. xD

The main story isn’t anything new but it is entertaining enough. I think the NPCs sell it quite well. Does anyone that has rune factory 5 know if lumber or material stone is sold? Some of these upgrades require a LOT of materials.

As far as I know, it's never sold, you just have to find it yourself.

Quoting myself with the answer. Heinz can sell lumber and stone in his rotating stock.

...Didn't know that, huh...I'm overflowing with lumber to the point that I stopped caring, always out of stone, though. lol

That said, what's with Palmo? Why does every RF game has this weirdly-faced character? xD

Ok, apparently this game is easy to exploit. I didn’t realize Heinz’s stock changes every time you load a save. Even if you bought something already from him. So I ended up getting a rotation with him selling stone and walked out with 1000 pieces before I ran out of money. Will be farming for more money and doing this until I have a decent stock.

The only thing I hate is this game crashes so fricken much!

@Ryu_Niiyama Oh really, when is it crashing for you? I'm 35+ hours in at the moment and haven't had a single crash yet so would be interested to know what's causing it.

@BenAV I have crashed at least ten times now. It seems to be random but I have noticed it will crash if the SEED NPC comes to heal me twice. So I haven’t noticed any frame rate issues but so far this is the most unstable game I have owned/played.

@Ryu_Niiyama Weird. I've definitely noticed some performance issues, especially while loading in my farm and stuff, but no crashes. Wonder why our experiences are so different.

@BenAV standard or earthmate edition? I have earthmate which has some dlc baked in. I also have the bonus from my rune factory 4 save.

@Ryu_Niiyama Standard edition and I haven't bought any DLC. I do have the Rune Factory 4 save stuff though.

I'm also playing the Australian/European version which does seem to be treated as different software from the US version (as they're separated in the 'Trending With Friends' tab).

No crashes, just long loading screens with sometimes the stuff not even fully loaded when it does finish, and of course framerate as well. I don't know why they haven't bothered to fix this yet.