#RF4 Xiao Pai

[sugiarttime]

Rune factory… again…

[crestfallencrest]

Been jumping between Rune factories lately and every time I play 4, i get reminded how much i love Xiao Pai and how much she deserves a hug sobs

[mhk-87]

I play Rune Factory for dialogues like these...

(^_^)

[elisemochi]

I forgot to ever turn my asks on 😔

anyway thanks for playing my silly game with me @jake-marshall

Fritz/Raeger

I know I've seen this one around

I'm not super far into this game and I haven't focused on Reager much but yeah I'm into it It's seems very fun imo

Wayne/Kasumi

aww that's pretty cute tbh

my first thought was that im pretty sure in one of the boys talks Wayne says something about not minding if she were to scold him by default im kinda like 🥺

It's that damn meme where a character has a knife their neck and is still just like

"You're beautiful"

I'm kinda into it ngl

Leon/Xiao Pai

I have never even considered this but this is inspired that is such a fun concept imo

They would be so silly/pos

[tsuuyuri]

me explaining why xiao pai is the best bachelorette in rune factory 4 and has the best storyline and the best chemistry with lest and is actually lowkey traumatized by her family and deserves tons of love and affection and she's cute and unique and funny and also carries an axe to battle which is badass and her cutscenes are great and her another episode is adorable and so is her newlywed mode and everyone needs to start recognizing her it's been 13 years

[tarojun]

A crossover of Rune Factory 4 characters with the Claymore manga/anime series, using koikatsu.

[knightlystudio]

Xiao Pai: 10 years later.

[thetoonfiend]

Xiao Pai: Did Dolce just tell me they loved me for the first time? Lest: Yeah, they did. Xiao Pai: And did I just do finger guns back? Lest: Yeah, you did.

[yorufi]

two favs from rf4!!

i would give anything to marry Lin Fa… even if she’s already married and has a child… please please ple- ☹️☹️

[brinaanana]

Rune factory 4 charms!!

The recent Rune factory news kinda powered me to making rf4 food charms as well haha ;’DD Im seriously excited to more info on the games!!

⬇️ ⬇️

Shop link!      ///  Sharing is greatly appreciated!!!!

Note: If you had ordered from another preorder batch and want to order again, please contact me via contact form located in my bigcartel. This way I can deduct shipping costs from your second order and have all the items ship together.

[my-current-obsession]

Something I've always been curious about is how people settle on a favorite love interest in the Rune Factory games. I see a lot of general discussions and polls about "who is your favorite" but not "WHY is your favorite", so I thought I'd finally put the question out myself.

For me personally, a lot goes into my overall opinion of each character. My first impression is based heavily on their appearance. You get a rough idea of their personality after only a few conversations. And the longer you play, the more you get to know them - especially as you do their specific events. But do they have a unique relationship with the protagonist, and if so, what makes it stand out? And how does that relationship change once you're actually dating or married?

Is there something about their marriage event (or the wedding itself) and/or newlywed mode that makes it stand out or do you like it just because it's more of the character and relationship you're already attached to? As an example, I think that Kiel's marriage event is honestly fantastic and really elevates him for me... but that one aspect isn't enough to put him above certain other characters.

In the case of RF4, I also think the mechanics play a big role. You can't progress Doug's affection past level 3 until you beat Act 2, which means it's probably a few weeks after that (most likely when you're starting Rune Prana) before you can even DATE him. Meanwhile you could absolutely be MARRIED to almost anyone else by then. Leon has a slight disadvantage by being the last love interest available. Anyone with more than one prerequisite event has a disadvantage, particularly Margaret who needs FOUR RANDOMLY HAPPENING events before you can put a ring on it. On the other hand there is Dolce, who in Special has her one prereq prioritized so you'll always trigger it, making her the easiest person to marry in the game. How much does any of that impact you? I know that as much as I do like Doug and Margaret, I'm hesitant to go for them since I either have to wait for a long time to even have a relationship or risk never being able to marry unless I save scum the town events.

So yeah, in my case I obviously have a combination of all of these things to determine my ultimate favorites. I'd say the first two options is how I had my "early" favorites who I immediately liked, whereas options 4-6 is what settled their final placements in my heart. How about you? Do you take everything into account like I do or does one aspect rule above the rest?

[mhk-87]

This mother and daughter are very cute…

(^_^)

[sevxra]

It's the start of a new year (almost) and what better way to start it than with Rune Factory merch? If you're interested in the first ever set of GraffArt Badges of the RF4 girls, please let me know!

Availability in the sheet below! (Link also in source). REBLOGS APPRECIATED AS WE DO NEED A HOST TO BUY THE LISTING!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qAAeAGGfR2Jdwf-7MNIgEjE64Ob_lsNQeKlq7_rAfL4/edit#gid=0

[hysterical-ryu]

Part 11 of my RF4 child redesigning project: Xiao Pai!

Sorry for taking a while to get this one out!

For Xiao we have Bao and Emery!

Xiao Pai and Lin Fa’s names seem to be a mix of two names, but for Bao I only went for one (and went for a Chinese name, for obvious reasons). With Emery I decided to go for something that was specific to Xiao Pai’s character, which is that she loves flowers, specifically emery and crystal flowers.

I like to think that Bao would be similar to his grandmother, in that he messes up but it somehow always works out for him. He’s aloof, but definitely not stupid. Bao has amazing focus and tends to not pay attention to anything other than the task at hand. He’s sweet and kind and spends most of his time helping his grandmother and mother at the Bell Hotel. Whenever he isn’t helping out he likes to read at Dragon Lake, or cook.

Emery is also a sweetheart, but since she’s younger than Bao she doesn’t get many chores. Her older brother also has a tendency to take her chores and finish them for her. She doesn’t mind since it gives her more time to go around and socialize. She loves talking to the travelers that come through Selphia and asks them about their stories all the time. Emery would love to travel with her family someday. She’s also precocious and nosy.

I definitely wanted to go for the Chinese-inspired outfits that Xiao and her mother wear. I also considered “referencing” Xiao’s father when making these but didn’t since he doesn’t have a unique appearance (rip). Also, I didn’t intend for Bao to be doing the “gotta be one of my favorite genders” pose and I didn’t realize that was what it was until after I sketched him lmao. So shout out to Bao, gotta be one of my favorite genders.

And finally, next will be Amber!

[avenger-concerto]

Major Rune Factory ramble and rant to get it off my system before 2024 ends.

This is just me airing out some dirty Rune Factory laundry before the year ends so I can get it off my chest and start a new, as Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma comes up. It'll be one big tl;dr so if you don't wanna read then you are far from obliged to do so but if you want, then sure thing.

I wanted to write something sincere and honest that isn't just a jab meme with a predictable punchline.

Really, this is just me speaking aloud not just about Rune Factory but about the nature of writing in farm sims. I dunno. It's the last day of 2024. I've done my New Years cleaning and I'm bored.

So, RF fans and by extension, Bokujo fans keeping saying "We need Rromanceable MILFs" but I think they just mean more bachelorettes in Rune Factory that visibly not just look but also behave like adults.

I'm aware short / young looking / petite adults exist too (Xiao Pai in 4 looks visibly young but she constantly makes it a point to Lest that she's their senior while they're dating) and that younger players may also get into the series for the first time but let's not forget the series' history so we can learn and observe how it can evolve and progress in the future. It's easy to forget that Rune Factory used to pander to otaku in Japan long before they realized it had a huge market with female players and an international audience.

Granted, RF1-RF2 were very tame and the latter game I remember attracting a lot of fanart of the male characters and it sowed the seeds for an interest in potential bachelors. Which is a sharp contrast to Rune Factory Frontier, which up its tropes like a trashy 2000s harem romcom anime with features that wouldn't fly well today e.g. choosing to "accidentally" walk in or peep on the bachelorettes' changing room by the beachside or the discourse surrounding Eunice's story arc but that's another can of worms unrelated to this post. The Rune Factory 4 manga that was published in Dengeki Maoh back in 2012 had a lot of skeevy fanservice that would not align well with the series image nowadays.

"But it's in anime style, so female characters will look young by default" It's true. Especially with Minako Iwasaki as the artist, as much as I love her art. But that's not always the case. Fire Emblem mainlines or Hoyoverse gacha games (Genshin, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero) can and have designed adult female characters who visibly look and act like adults. (just posting Ruan Mei from HSR and Shamir from FE:3H as examples) And not just their designs or mannerisms either, I mean like... more heavier, hard hitting and mature storylines. I feel like 5 lacked it in that department compared to the feels coasters that were the marriage candidate sub events in RF4. But then again, it's probably weird to be asking for a revenge story or a tale of redemption and loss in a fantasy farm life sim but this is just me rambling on.

I don't want to say I've "outgrown" Rune Factory or anything. Cozy life sim games are such a comfort to me and I'm well aware a meme I posted then deleted yesterday resonated a misleading message but knowing 5 gave men likers Murakumo but kept Misasagi or Elsje off limits was weird.

I know 5 was just one entry in the series. I know bachelor and bachelorette rosters are variable depending on the game. Tides had a wide variety of designs while its bachelors fell flat because they were last minute. I personally felt like 5 had far more better designed bachelors than 4 did and 4's bachelorettes felt more balanced compared to 5.RF GoA and RF6 could turn out differently with their own sets of marriage candidates but the problem with RF5 was that they designed and wrote bachelorettes as if it was a game released in the late 2000s and early 2010s in 2021-2022.

RF Guardians of Azuma releases next year and RF6 will presumably align with the series' 20th anniversary window in 2026 so we'll see how the series. I know romance and marriage aren't the only things that define Rune Factory games but I feel people should be more open to discussing what makes them uncomfortable with the series instead of handwaving it because of X or Y.

I go on benders like this because I grew up with Rune Factory as the title that introduced me to cozy life sims. It has a special place in my heart. I was in high school when I first got into the series but even then I could tell that the candidates looking young may have had nothing to do with my age, probably due to a combination of artstyle and who Marvelous/Neverland were pandering to at the time.

Granted, my experience getting into the series won't be 1:1 with others so I can't speak for them and hell, maybe I'm wrong too but I do feel like "hey, maybe put more effort into the series' female characters" shouldn't be a hot take that can be dismissed with it being a cozy life sim or that kids play these games too.

That being said, I still haven't and will never forgive the garbage writing they gave Xiao Pai in her main marriage proposal event. RF4 treats her pretty horribly and it's always kinda weird when I read people going on about how "we should have married Lin Fa and adopted Xiao Pai instead" when in her romantic dialogue, she's brought up how she's older than Lest (in the JP script, she specifies by two years) which brings me to my next point....

I think ultimately it also has to do with the fact that the characters we play as in Rune Factory are pretty young themselves. In games like Potion Permit, the My Time At games, Fields of Mistria, Sun Haven, and Stardew Valley, we are blank slates we can easily customize to our liking with our headcanons and whatnot.

Rune Factory... the self inserting begins and ends once we choose a name for our protagonists. RF protagonists are usually their own characters and any dialogue choice prompt we are given with them aligns with their base personality.

Raguna was pretty "vanilla" in RF1 but had shades of 2000s harem romcom protag vibes in Frontier. Kyle in RF2 was more or less similar to RF1 Raguna imho. Aaron and Aria played the role of precarious and rowdy kids seeking to go save their father. Micah in RF3 comes off as a mild-mannered but somewhat deadpan snarker in the face of Sharance and the Univir Settlement's antics. RF4's Lest and Frey are defined by their devotion, trust, and loyalty to their friends. RF5's Alice and Ares have this air of skepticism and caution that I haven't really seen with Lest or Frey. Aden is the reckless, hotheaded shonen hero with his childhood friend, Sonja, as the fussy but well-intentional voice of reason in Tides/Oceans. A lot of male protags in RF are written to be "boyish" and "inexperienced" hence why older adults in these towns don't seem like immediate options but Ares can also marry Murakumo and Lucas so really, at this point I probably shouldn't think too hard about it.

I don't really have anything else to say aside that I like cozy life sims a bit too much and Fields of Mistria is a blast so far. I think Celine, Reina, and Valen are my favorite bachelorettes so far but I like all the bachelors and bachelorettes really. I really do think Olric will be added as a post-release bachelor in an update or patch after the full thing comes out.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Here's to 2025 and more Rune Factory games to come.

[tarojun]

8/21 Bunny Day, for my favoured characters.