Rune Factory 4 Online Trial Is Now Live Outside Of Japan

One of my favourite games of all time. Part of the 1000 hour club on 3DS!

I had way more fun than I expected playing this on the 3DS, I seen it was on sale last night and I was tempted to double dip to re experience. Only thing that was holding me back was my backlog that I did manage to put a decent dent into this year, but if I keep adding more games I’ll end up where I started :/

japan? of course

Cool. I already have it on 3DS, but I haven't booted it up since...last few years, I think?

Hopefully this is the same case for overseas because I can't read Japanese

Never played it it will probably be show up for the switch later if not I'm getting five.

Been really really intrested in this series, hopefully a trial does happen

I already own it on 3ds, and with the new game plus mechanic, there wouldn't be much pptint in starting over on the Switch...

... But 50% off....

I couldn't care less about a demo for this game... because I preordered it and played about 150h. Loved it and already sold on Rune Factory 5.

I’m interested for sure, hopefully this demo will come West. I’ve been on the fence on picking it up for a while. Heard some good things about it but the mix of 3D with 2D sprites looks weird to me but might not look so bad when actually playing.

i really hope this trial comes over to the west, i wanna check out this game before the 5th one comes out

Please try this game guys, I need the next entry to hit at least 2 mil for the franchise to escape their niche status. So much potential and so many just sleeping on it.

Waiting for a sale for Rune Factory 4. Don't want to pay full price again on Switch. Already own it on 3DS.

Hoping we get the 50% sale too

@PrincessAzunyan Way too much fuss to get the game at a discount. I just don't understand why, when a game like this is available world wide, why it can't be discounted world wide. /shrug

As of today, unlike the updated article is implying, the game is still not on sale here in the West.

yooo i've been waiting for this

@Munchlax, there's very few reasons for people to actually subscribe to NSO so putting trials behind it helps boost membership.
Its a threadbare service but I need it to play online multiplayer. If I have to pay my subscription, these little extras makes it feel like I'm getting something for my money.

Not Us? Come on Nintendo thats not fair.

Doing trials like these does help with making the online more worth it. I already have it physical but if I didn't I would jump on this trial as it is the first trial I would have been interested in.

I'll probably play it during that week. I did all the things on the 3ds version when it came out so I don't really want to double dip especially if I end up getting 5 sometime later. A week of replaying it while it's around would make a nice change of pace though.

@RPGamer me to.

I just wish this game had multiplayer! My relatives adore Stardew Valley, partly because of how seamless multiplayer is. I think they would enjoy this franchise if Rune Factory added multiplayer, especially for 5.

@PrincessAzunyan
Unfortunately, this won't work for Rune Factory by the way. It only works when it's the exact same version.

Vesperia and Breath of the Wild are the same version worldwide, the same file supporting both Japanese and English, so you deleted and redownloaded the exact same file, which already supported English and Japanese.

But Rune Factory has different JP/US/EU/Asia versions, so you can't redownload a Japanese purchase outside of the JP eShop, and the JP version only supports Japanese.

It's not always obvious when games are the same version across regions. One way to tell is that if you have the icon, you can press + on it, and choose Nintendo eShop on that menu to see if your particular version's available in a particular shop or not.
If you do that with Rune Factory, (the trial means the JP/EU icons are easy to download) that'll just give an error message trying any out-of-region shops.

So...

I gave it a shot.

And I really, really don't understand why so many people speak so highly of it. The start of the story was absolutely terrible. It couldn't be more cliché if it tried. And the script... My goodness, that was possibly the worst writing I have ever had to endure in a game ever.

It is wholly clear that they pretty much directly translated the Japanese version. The way the characters interact with each other was so slapstick Jap style, that I just cringed at almost every word.

It didn't help that the text was accompanied with the worst sound ever, especially when that dragon was speaking in her "formal" style.

When I finally got to the gaming portion, where I had to till a field, that was just the final death blow. I am sure there are cool things to do once you get past that, but the writing, the characters, and after an eternity you finally get a boring mini-game.

I am glad a lot of people do enjoy this, but I will never start another RF game ever again.

@Daniel36 Just FYI, "Jap" is an offensive slang word for Japanese people that really shouldn't be used still. "Jpn" would be a better abbreviation

@Kieroni My apologies. Wasn't aware of that. To me it was just an abbreviation. Won't use it again.

@Daniel36 No worries. It's an older one, but best to be avoided.

@Kieroni No, of course. I don't want anyone to feel offended or even cringe, so... best to be avoided.