Rune Factory 5 Pushed Back To 2021, First Gameplay Footage Appears

That looked really good tbh. (Considering what it is and what it's goal is)

Let's hope they don't forget to put the games title on the icon this time. (As they did with part 4)

The best part of the whole Direct, no contest. I loved seeing Disgaea 6 announced, but nothing beats Rune Factory.

Beyond hyped to see this happening, the character models look comfy as hell and all the essential elements are present. Can't wait to see more and buy Day One!

I’m totally hyped. 4 might possibly be my favourite third party game of all time. Easily sunk 1000 hours on 3DS and haven’t seen everything.

This looks really good.

Although, I'll say, that new PS2-looking Harvest Moon game is a bit embarrassing when you consider how good this looks.

It's a bummer that it will not be releasing this year, but it's shaping up really nicely. Definitely a game I'm looking forward to getting my hands on. It looks amazing and the game play also looks enjoyable. Next year is gonna be great.

Looking great from that trailer.

Looks fun! Great to see it embrace a 3D world again. Hoping the marriage options will at least include some older-looking women though. I love Frontier but the bachelorettes look disturbingly young...

@TriforceBun Bi-Wedding would also be nice (like in Stardew for example). Since I am usually super bored with the male characters in japanese games.
Meaning I don't want to play as one of them and also don't want to date one.

That's absolutely fine. Give it all the polish it needs, because this game looks like it will be worth the wait! 2021 is shaping up to be one of Switch's best years ever.

Gonna miss the townfolks of RF4 when this comes out.

I'm excited for this. RF4 was a great time.

I've never played a rune factory game, but this actually looked kinda fun? Are they meant to be good games?

Monster Hunter Stories 2 and Rune Factory 5... Best day ever!

I'm buying this!

I'm glad both characters (gender choice?) seen to be canon. I'm not going to play as a girl but I really liked her design

@Yanina for me Stardew Valley opened a door that should be never be closed again. Lose half of possibilities just because you choose a gender on game's first screen makes no sense.

This was a top tier Mini Direct. I have no doubt I will spend hundreds of hours in this bad boy alone.

Okay, as a diehard Rune Factory fan, I was extremely stoked - and still am - but once the hype settled and examined everything more closely, I found the appearance of the game (excluding the character graphics) fairly disappointing. In particular, the environmental assets appear as low detail, sparse, vaguely generic, and in many cases (minus the HD scan), look like they could have been rendered using GameCube or PS2 hardware.

In fact, although I haven't played the game in several years, on a whim, I decided to run a search of images from RF: Frontier (which btw was released on the Wii more than a decade ago) and sadly, despite being rendered in standard definition, I found myself shocked by how much better Frontier looked compared to RF5.

This apparent gulf in aesthetic quality clearly wasn't due to system power, as the Wii was markedly underpowered even at the time and, although the Switch lags in that area today, Nintendo's hybrid is 10-fold more powerful than the Wii. Rather, the differences in quality seem to lie entirely in the execution of each game's artistic vision. The level of care and tiny detail put into each of Frontier's village and varied dungeon environments elevated the game's artistry into something that transcended its system's severe limitations.

However, having thought about it more, I understand that Frontier wasn't truly a 3D game (it was more akin the Animal Crossing where the world has 3D assets but the camera is fixed straight ahead). As such, Frontier's fixed perspective probably aided in enhancing the game's finer details, so perhaps the fully 3D RF: Tides of Destiny would serve as a better comparison.

Even in that case, RF5 looks - at best - graphically on par with that game. To be clear, Tides of Destiny came out on PS3 and Wii almost 10 years ago. Compared to that game, RF5 - at least in its present state - looks largely bare bones and empty.

I do love the game's use of bright, oversaturated colors, but even that seems to be overdone. I will say that its character and enemy models look genuinely nice, but the environments look strangely low poly and blocky - even the fields - something which couldn't possibly take much to render - look overly grid-like, in a sterile sort of way. The oversized veggies look fun, but again, kind of strangely low-poly, and the general arrangement of said crops also seem rather chaotic (hopefully it was only showcase this way to demonstrate the range of veggies).

Hopefully the game is being delayed so as to fine tune the visuals and to implement higher quality textures and other environmental details. All of that having been said, I'll most likely love RF5 regardless of its graphics - graphics aren't THAT important to me - but I wanted to note its visual deficiencies as it makes me worry that other aspects might also have been half-assed.

Super excited for this game!!! Been waiting for it since 4 came out on the 3DS.

Pokeman and Atilizer all in one package....

I knew this was going to get delayed but I knew it as soon as they announced it, I mean releasing 5 only a few months after the rerelease of 4 it just was way to close it didn't add up.

I'm wondering if it's true that Harvest Moon used to be developed by the same developers that made this. When I see Harvest Moon now, I cringe and think what if? Giving this a try.

Yes! I was waiting for a long time, but finally we have more info! Hopefully it's coming early next year.

The graphics look really colorful too!

Man did I try to get into rune factory 4 but couldn’t. I never played one but heard nothing but praise for it so I took a shot. Shot missed it’s mark for me. I’m still pondering why it’s not my thing. I got it to be a filler when they delayed Animal Crossing (one of my favorite video game series) and haven’t touched it since. Anyone wanna buy it for cheap? Came with a art book and soundtrack 🙂

@Andy_Witmyer

Of course, there's also the situation of the previous company that made the Rune Factory series going bankrupt, and then (most of?) it's devs/employees being hired by Marvelous, which more than likely saved this series in the first place.

After all of that though, we also don't know what kind of budget they were given to make this game yet, either.

Overall, I'm happy purely for the fact that we are getting a Rune Factory 5 in the first place. Before their first announcement, I had no expectations of it happening at all.

I never assumed it would release in 2020, I always thought it was a 2021 game.