#rune factory goa

[idoitanyways]

Place your bets.

[crownconstellation]

azuma post of the day. on my hands and knees crying screaming throwing up begging people to stop throwing rf5 under the bus to uplift goa so far because i have seen so much of it already.

i will not deny rf5 is clunky and i have talked about this many a time by now but i need — and cannot stress the need enough — people to start looking at rf5’s situation with a bit more understanding from the development end. like…

it was the first new game in the series in what was, by its time of release, 9 years

the series had been longtime presumed dead before 4 Special came out in 2019

it was in development during the middle of COVID 2020

it was developed using an engine the team did not have much experience with

the series had not been on console since the Wii & so 5 was designed based off the most successful handheld game because it was their most recent & most popular reference for game structuring

do i wish 5 had done some things differently or had more padding to it in some areas? oh, absolutely. but like…. the state of the team, the world, & the series itself need to be acknowledged before constantly throwing it under the bus. like no shit GoA looks better, it’s being developed on a different engine that its team is likely more familiar with with presumably far more budget available because of 3/4S + 5’s overall commercial success. & because of 5, they know what worked and what didn’t work when bringing the series back to console so they were able to move forward with experimenting and referencing the series’ past console games (particularly Oceans) instead of just what game was the most popular (4).

guardians of azuma as we’ve seen it so far can only exist in this form because of 5, both where it stumbled and succeeded, and i wish people acknowledged the circumstances behind their development periods as being vastly different so putting 5 down to uplift goa up isn’t exactly fair.

[lilaroxa]

RF1: Year 1 - Spring 27 [Big Cook-Off]

Ah, yet another event Raguna can't participate in in Year 1. Well, not without much careful planning, at least.

At this point, Raguna doesn't even have a kitchen because I thought you needed to upgrade your house to buy a kitchen from Ivan. Turns out, you can buy a small one!

So IF you buy a small kitchen on Spring 1 (which I think is impossible because you can't sell anything on Holidays with 0 FP) AND its utensils on Spring 19, you still need to make sure you have the right ingredients (and skill points) to make one of the potential dishes he would ask for (Orange Juice, French Fries, Hot Chocolate, Pump. Pudding, Pike Sashimi or Baked Potato).

In my case, he asked for a Baked Potato. So, even though Raguna had grown plenty of Sweet Potatoes in Toros Cave, he still couldn't participate! You need an oven (which is a Large Kitchen utensil) to make a Baked Potato!

-----

Anyway, Mei makes a good point. Kardia does have a lot of food festivals (probably thanks to Jasper, of course).

But this got me wondering, what kind of festivals await us in Azuma?

I know that Mei may not be from the same region we will see in Guardians of Azuma, but I would love to see some creative traditionally "Eastern" festivals to contrast with the mainline Rune Factory series!

I can't even begin to imagine what Azuma has in store for us. All I can hope is that they do Mei (and all the other East representatives) justice by showing us just how different Azuma is from Norad!

LILA'S RUNE FACTORY TEMPERATURE BLANKET

I had a sinking feeling that I should have maybe done two rows per "day". Looking back at the double Melody row, I think an entire blanket with thicker lines like that would look amazing.

I just knew that realistically, I wouldn't be able to handle double the work. Although I do feel tempted to take this blanket a bit slower for a result I'll be more proud of...

To any fellow crocheters out there, should I pause the project to fix this?

[mykuredreams]

Rune factory guardians of Azuma got me really hooked up ❤️

[lilaroxa]

Cautiously optimistic for this.

Rune Factory has never been about the graphics for me, but I can't decide if I like what I'm seeing here.

I think it's the lack of a defined style? If it weren't for Woolby and the Rune Factory turnips, I wouldn't have guessed this is a Rune Factory title!

I know it's probably on purpose; it's a spin-off after all and I support Rune Factory trying new things, but I worry that Rune Factory is trying to play too much into farming sim trends. At least the "farm/village" customization is more fleshed out than 4 and 5. I can see myself having a lot of fun with it.

But I think my major problem with GOA and 5's graphics is that everything looks so flat. Where did the grassy textures from the first trailer go? And something about the characters faces just feels off to me. It's very "anime" for Rune Factory...

But hey, I'm holding out on the hope that the story delivers and the characters are just as memorable as the past entries. It's why I play Rune Factory, after all!

[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.

[seasaalttrio]

was looking at the characters revealed so far for goa and realized it'll probably be the first rune factory game where there's no elf lady to marry

[autumnarcanavo]

Above is artwork and sprite work from Rear Sekai or as it’s known here now in the west Elrentaro Wanderings and I don’t know if I’m seeing things but these characters look incredibly young, something to note is that this is the same artist and producer that handled Rune Factory 5, now we know Japan has a real problem with the sexualization of youth in media but it’s getting a bit much here the protagonist Narumi doesn’t look older than like maximum 13 years old even though some of their character arts make them appear at least a bit older their conversation sprites look insanely young I don’t know how deep the romance system goes but maybe I’m reading too much into things or maybe I’m getting too old for Farm Sims in the Fantasy Genre? Who knows all I know is the producer split from Marvelous Entertainment not long after RF5’s release and seems to not be attached to RF6 or RF GoA

[lilaroxa]

LET US INNNNNN