It’s always interesting to review a game that is a spin off of a spin off. That’s the case with Rune Factor: Guardians of Azuma. For those who may be unaware of the history, the Rune Factory series is a spin off of the popular farming sim Story of Seasons. While Story of Seasons (formerly Harvest Moon) is a very cozy game, Rune Factory has taken some of those relaxed vibes and brought in traditional JRPG elements. In its newest entry, not part of the main line series, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, continues enter even further into more traditional JRPG territory. The question becomes, is this re-imagination of the series in the best interest for the future of Rune Factory?
So it begins
Choose your character, Kaguya or Subaru (female or male) and hop aboard the white dragon. Why are you fighting the black dragon and its rider? What does this all mean when you awaken? Half a year later and you have no memory of who you are but the spring village has taken you in. Through a series of events, you’ll find yourself performing ritual prayers, unraveling the history of the village, and understanding what has happened to the gods in this area. Interesting that all the statues are dragon statues isn’t it? You managed to land in a village that worships a dragon god after riding a dragon, coincidence?
The world of Azuma will quickly open up to you, especially if you focus on the main story line. It’s been 50 years since the Celestial Collapse according to the village elder and the village is suffering. It’s time to cut down the tree that refuses to bloom and cut your losses. Thankfully, before this happens, a young girl will help you find a most important fluffy creature. With Woolby’s help, you’ll begin finding your way to restoring the village. It’s almost as if you’re an Earth Dancer and important to the future of Azuma.
In less than an hour of game time, you’ll meet your first god, be introduced to the farming mechanic, which will be important to your story progression, and get a very simple understanding of what Rune Factory truly is. Along the way expect to meet more gods as this will be very central to the overall story line. Exploring the world also means removing the corruption that plagues Azuma. As you move through, you’ll recover your memories and understand the importance of who you are. If you’re lucky, you’ll also find yourself falling in love with one, or two, or more companions.
Thankfully, the storytelling is done in arcs that build upon each other. The story arcs also make the game feel not so drawn out. There are some moments that feel very long or even borderline repetitive at moments. Its not because it is bad story telling but it does begin to get a little formulaic. Of course, this is a JRPG so many tropes will feel familiar but still mostly well executed.
You won’t stay in one village for too long despite becoming the village chief. Instead, you will find yourself exploring all that Azuma has to offer. Make sure you manage your village to keep it running and put money in your pocket. That money will come in handy. You’ll also want to make sure your village is leveling accordingly as main quests will be tied up in your village levels along the way. Being a village chief sounds difficult, but with the right balance of villagers, buildings, and work management, it’ll be fine.
Travel to different villages, meet gods, and eventually, find your way to the skies to continue the story. Being up in the sky isn’t just for gods and monsters in this series. Your dragon ride on the white dragon will happen pretty often the further you get in game.
Game Play Mechanics
The mechanics have changed a bit from the mainline Rune Factory games. For those who are long time fans, there are some aspects to get used to along the way. Some of this makes for easier game play so you can focus more on the story and less on some of the farming.
You’ll no longer consume energy as you chop down trees as this is just something you can do fairly effortlessly. That is of course, if you’re choosing to do this often. You’ll have a lot of time to organize your villagers to do the work of mining, woodcutting, farming, and gathering. As village chief you’ll want to make sure you are maximizing what jobs the villagers are best at. Each one will begin as a farmer, but that doesn’t mean they are all good at this.
You’ll also need to build certain aspects of the village to assign people to work the fields, the shops, lumberyard, or mining for materials. As someone who doesn’t usually get into farming sim games, this was such a relief. Once the story picked up, all I wanted to do was progress the story and farming took a backseat. Yes, the story does feel that good in this world.
The skill trees also have received a little bit of a rework. In fact, there are now multiple skill trees for each weapon type, although the types have been reduced. So while the weapons no longer have levels in the same way, you do receive XP to level the skills for each type of weapon. You’ll also see there is a skill tree for social skills. While some games have you explore different stats for options in your conversations (think the Persona series) you’ll see that your activities are locked behind the tree. These include poking fun at potential companions, holding hands, and embracing.
Admittedly, the initial view of the number of skill trees, especially as they grew, felt overwhelming. There are also many different sets of XP, one for each skill tree, and then an All Purpose XP that can help contribute to areas you may need a few extra points for. Again, this does feel like a lot, but once you get the hang of it, it’s fine. Personally, once I knew what weapons I’d be using the most, I focused on those trees, basically eliminating many of the others from my focus. While this isn’t the recommended strategy, it is something you can do.
Villages, Villagers, and Companions
The Social Links/Relationships also feels like something that was very much focused on for Guardians of Azuma. Your characters will interact with each other within battle allowing a bit more of their personality and relationships to shine through. Hina and Mauro will bicker a bit like siblings, Suzu and Iroha will care for each other like proper sisters, and occasionally, as the main character, you’ll receive compliments for your skill in battle. Time with characters also feels prioritized as you can unlock different recipes and equipment based on your bonds with characters. As someone who enjoys character development, spending more time with characters and less on farming felt like a great balance. That is of course until needing upgraded villages to progress the story.
One of the things you can do with companions eventually is to cook with them. Cooking is also quite easy as you just find the ingredients and have them readily available. Although occasionally you will produce unique dishes with your companions. Recipes are also found out in the field by doing a small dance for frog statues or at the small shrines in the wild. You will also get some recipes from the companions in the different villages.
Certain companions can become more than just friends. They can become partners, a spouse, and even the parent to your child. You can romance more than one character along the way and queer relationships do exist in the game as well. Playing as Kaguya, I decided to romance two of the female companions just to see if it was possible. The moments of confession and the moments that came after were sweet. For one character, it felts almost too sweet, but overall still enjoyable.
For the purposes of this review, I’ve been calling those who can join us out in the wild companions and the generic villagers, just villagers. Villagers are the ones you’ll manage to do all of the work you may not want to do to spend time on the story. Recruit these generic NPCs to work on the village although you can speak to them along the way as well. You can usually balance these villagers in a good way to have them work towards your village score. Again, some of the main quests will require you to have your village at certain levels, so don’t completely neglect your village. If you spend too much time ignoring your village level, you will spend a lot of time on them later.
While villagers are NPCs, they do have a happiness score. Ignore them too long or don’t make the village a good village to live in, and they will leave. We already see a villager leave at the beginning of the game, don’t make this a pattern as village chief. Plus, if your blacksmith is unhappy and leaves, who will upgrade your weapons?
Combat
The combat is extremely smooth. If you try to switch in the middle of an attack, it will take a second to switch over which feels realistic. Wandering around and want to switch weapons? It’s a quick press of a button. If you are changing your sacred treasures, it’s still very smooth, and you will find yourself doing this fairly often in certain combat scenarios. As you explore the world outside of the villages, you’ll also be doing this as you look to remove the corruption that is impacting Azuma. The corruption is everywhere so expect to be changing up your treasure to find additional resources, statues, and also progress through areas. This is a plus in my opinion as it also means more variety in your XP.
In time, you’ll be able to bring a party with you out into the wild and the party combination will mean everything. If you’re the attacker, plan to have a healer, a buffer, and maybe a defender. The companions will each have their own role to play
One thing that was interesting about the combat was that when the monsters were 5-7 levels stronger, they weren’t difficult. In fact, with the right weapons, you can find yourself catching up to their levels pretty quickly. When taking some time to power through the main story and exploring the world outside, I found myself jumping about 50 levels in 10 hours of game play. As a note, this is not recommended, but it is possible if you find yourself wanting to progress story quickly. Especially if you’re finding yourself spending too many relaxed hours farming and enjoying your time with your companions.
The combat feels balanced if not easy but this isn’t a bad thing. While Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma progress closer to a more traditional JRPG feeling, it still feels a bit more relaxed. When you drop to 0 hit points, your character isn’t dead and it isn’t game over. Instead, you’ll faint and find yourself back at the closest village. This does mean your all-purpose XP will take a hit though. Plan accordingly.
Exploration
We’ll keep this area short as we don’t want to spoil anything. There is a lot to explore in Azuma and you won’t always get to explore everything on your first run through an area. This is absolutely normal and you’ll find ways to move to areas that were seemingly difficult to get to in time. If you can’t get to something just yet, due to corruption or strange wind currents, don’t panic. Just expect that you’ll be coming back to this area later on in the game.
Guardians of Azuma does have an in game clock feature that also is important when you’re exploring. If you are out past midnight, you’ll start to see your hit points and your rune points go down. The exhaustion is setting in and it is time to head to sleep. Thankfully, fast travel is possible, so if you’ve lost track of time, fast travel back to your nearest bed. Fainting due to lack of sleep is probably one of the worst ways to lose all purpose XP. Especially when you know you’re working towards an upgrade.
Performance
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is being released on Steam, Switch, and Switch 2. This review was conducted on Steam and the visuals were fantastic. I didn’t see very many frame drops and thankfully, never had a crash during my game play. The audio was perfectly balanced and there were plenty of sliders to adjust accordingly.
While I did encounter some loading screens, they were rather short and didn’t feel like they interrupted the game play. With the combat being so central to even your village leveling up, it’s important that everything move smoothly and it does. It felt like no matter how much was happening on the screen, I didn’t see lag during high volume moments.
That’s not to say this was perfect. During the later quarter of the game, I would notice certain times when the game would take a moment to show me my next quest. Whatever main quest I was tracking would mark as complete and it would be two or three seconds before a new quest would appear. During this time I also could not move my character or open any menus. Again, not something that was too much of an issue, but worth noting as I played on Steam. This would make me nervous to see what the loading would be like on Switch, although those playing on Switch 2 with its upgraded hardware may be fine.
Final Thoughts
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma feels like a great blend of cozy and grindy while still finding its narrative way. While there is definitely some experimentation going on with the streamling of certain areas from the general Rune Factory series, the game play loop is still very true to its origins. Those who enjoyed previous entries will mostly likely find themselves enjoying this as long as they don’t miss complex crafting. For those who want the in-depth crafting and complexity that required spreadsheets of data, yes, this will feel too simplistic to you. The complex crafting from Rune Factory 3 and beyond is removed for streamlined play and possibly a way to introduce new fans into the series. If you haven’t played a Rune Factory game, you can jump right into this entry and enjoy.
Of course, the game isn’t perfect, time moves a bit too quickly in the game. There were numerous times where exploration would be cut short due to it being too late. This was frustrating especially if I knew I was very close to a save point but just too far to make it. Another area of exploration that felt frustrating was some of the jumping and minimal platforming in the game. At times, when trying to jump on lily pad type objects, sticking the landing was tough. Often I’d over shoot or undershoot and end up drowning. There were also moments holding a parasol that if I was on a small ledge it would suddenly seem like I was trying to glide.
Exploration isn’t perfect but rarely any game is. This is still a fantastic entry to the series and one for fans to enjoy. For JRPG fans looking for a new Nintendo Switch 2 launch title to dive into, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma could and should be it.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was reviewed on PC via Steam. Gamer Social Club would like to thank Marvelous USA for the review code.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is releasing June 5, 2025 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. Physical Earth Dancer Edition and Earth Dancer Accessory Set are scheduled to release June 20, 2025. On Switch you can purchase the digital version of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma to receive this bonus Rune Factory 4 Hero Outfit Bundle.
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