Rune Factory 4 Special

I'm not much into farming sims, but to be fair it's mostly cause I never gave them a proper chance. Rune Factory is a series that I've always been curious about since its closer to RPG and it's not just about maintaining your crops and whatnot. Despite being originally released in 2012, I felt that Rune Factory 4 did feel pretty actual and wasn't too dated aside from some minor QoL issues with the UI.

It's funny that I approached this game more because it featured combat, and it didn't take long to realize that was the actual worst aspect of the game. It's playable for sure, but does seem like something with the complexity of the 16-bit era. The combat doesn't really have much more than hitting enemies with your sword or other weapon and perhaps getting out of the way of hits, and occasionally casting a spell. If that was the only thing the game had going on, it would surely be a disappointment. However it's not the case, the farming aspect is at its core and does provide one of the most satisfying gameplay loops I've played recently. The game has some really good progression-based systems as every action grants you XP in that specific aspect (similarly to Elder Scrolls) and the more craft, the more items you can unlock. At some point all of these systems kind of intertwine together as your food recipes via cooking will create your economy which then leads to more things to unlock. Go explore outside and to the dungeons and bring in back some new material finds, these will allow to create better gear and farm equipment. Every day doing the farming and then exploring is just very satisfying as you can constantly feel (the slow) progression happening, so everything really has a purpose. So in the end the weaker combat doesn't really matter all that much, it's just one the things to do among others and it's much more about the spoils than they bring.

How to succeed here is time and resource management. Find stuff that turns into a profit or allows for a lot of XP growth, loop it for a while and then move on to something bigger. While there's no time limit to the game, it's just natural to want to do things efficiently so that you can progress in dungeons and whatnot. The story perhaps fall into certain tropes of JRPG (amnesia, antagonist wanting to be god, etc...) but a lot of the NPC townspeople have a certain charm to them that make things more memorable. The game does require a certain time investment, it took me 41 hours to complete the 2nd act for the normal ending, but you can continue further for another act even which I imagine will bring in many more hours. Overall this is a very fun game and I think I might be ready to jump into something like Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley as I really enjoyed the management aspect the best. I do feel the combat and equipment here does bring in more purpose as to why you are doing all this, but I guess I'll have to see for myself. Definitely would recommend the game as a good intro to the genre however, just easy to transition from a RPG player standpoint.