Review – Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

Rune Factory is a series that manages to put out games rather quickly, with very different feels each and every time. While I am aware that two of the three games I covered on the Nintendo Switch, Rune Factory 3 and Rune Factory 4, are remakes of earlier games, they were still flying out. The last new game, Rune Factory 5, while quite good, did run into some performance issues on the original Switch. I’m sure that is a surprise to no one, especially if you know the scale of that game. This brings us to Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, the first Rune Factory game, and probably the first farming sim game, to launch on Nintendo Switch 2.

Let’s just jump right into it: what makes Guardians of Azuma different from other Rune Factory games, besides the fact it’s available on newer hardware? Well, there’s a major emphasis on exploration and combat. Yes, of course, you can farm, you can make friends and build relationships, but the way you build up your village is to explore, battle creatures, and save people that have been transformed into any number of enemies you’ll come across. When saved, you can send people back to the village to live there and give them a job.

Think a bit like how in the original WarCraft, to train more army units, you needed more farms. Same principle here, but in this case, you need more housing. As long as everyone has somewhere to live, you’ll be able to invite them over. Once invited, you can give them a job. Everyone has different talents, which means some will work better in shops, as farmers, mining, chopping trees, and so on. Some have negative traits, and thankfully you don’t really get to know these villagers too well.

The way you create buildings and set up farms is up to you still. You, as the player, will need to set designated areas for farm land, and build shops in other designated spots. There is only so much space, so it’s a little bit of Tetris, fitting it all in. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock more villages where you can do the same thing, and new abilities that get rid of blight in the area, which gives you more space. Luckily, once farm land is set up, your villagers will do their job and plant seeds, water them, and sell them for you to make money. It somehow turns into a bit of a full-on life sim, but with the added joy of being able to run around and fight bosses. You even get experience to unlock perks based on weapons you use, swords, big swords, bows ect, but also just living and being friendly with people.

Now, onto the actual areas; each one of them is based on a season, and it’s pretty obvious which season you’re in once you’re there. If it wasn’t, well, the areas are literally named after them. Summer Village, Spring Village, so on. These areas are quite nice looking, and their “wild” areas around them are all different enough from each other for it to be obvious which is which. The area that’s really lacklustre is the in-between one. To travel from village to village, you ride a dragon from one to another which makes them all feel incredibly disconnected. On top of that, there are little islands in the sky you can land at and look around, but these areas are very empty and boring to look at, really taking away from the main part of the game.

That said, all the character designs are really nice to look at, and much like a lot of these types of games, it won’t take you long to decide who your love interest might be. The voice lines are well done, and the music is cute although not always fitting. There is no grandiose soundtrack to boss battles, or particularly sad songs while the characters talk about the blight ruining the land.

The long story short is that, sure, it might have some issues, and the emphasis on battling might put some people off, but the sum of its parts is what really matters, and it’s great, very much worth your attention. There are small segments in between that do take away from the experience, but they’re simply not long enough segments, or often enough to take a massive amount away from the enjoyment of the game. It’s also more forgiving and welcoming to newcomers; If you’ve never played Rune Factory then this might be the perfect kick off point. If you have, and would be open to a bigger emphasis on combat, this is the place to go. Simple as!

Graphics: 9.0 Guardians of Azuma is, without a doubt, the nicest looking game in the series, and a great looking title overall. There are small blips in between that don’t quite hit the right notes, but not enough to ruin the enjoyment of the game.	Gameplay: 8.5 Trading some of the farming from the other games in the series for additional combat is great if you’re more into the RPG aspect. Going from farming sim to life sim is an interesting change that is a natural progression for the series.
Sound: 5.0 The voice acting in Guardians of Azuma is well done, but most the music misses the mark. It’s on its way to the right spot, but stops a few steps short.	Fun Factor: 8.0 There are certain parts of the way the other games work that are missing, like actually spending time in your village with the villagers, or every villager being important, where most now are just tools to use for the village.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is available now on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was provided by the publisher.