Good game I had great fun while playing in this game.
Gameplay: 7/10
Soundtrack: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Story: 9/10
Overall: 7.75/10

It didn't hook me enough within the 1st hour and the grind for progress was not enjoyable. Looked for a guide and it warned me that I have to do the fetch quests and mandatory dungeon runs for story progression. Maybe when I was young and played the first 2 on a borrowed DS with all the summertime in the world that made me try this, sadly my expectations were soured.

This should have stayed on handheld consoles, maybe that's how it should have been, Thank you for reading this small review of someone who barely played the game.

A game that is, not so much unfinished but just rough and unrefined.

Part of me wants to say this is a great translation to 3D for the series but then I remember tides of destiny/oceans exists, which in spite of it's Shallow farming system has great combat, a beautiful world design that is so inspired and stand out and interesting varied works map and dungeon designs (if even say as far as rune factory s where you explore a bunch of fragmented islands on the back of a giant mythical beast with a male female main character split. Oceans is better then GoA which has some great ideas but for me a lot missed the mark). And honestly even frontier does a better job in so many ways especially with how lovely trampoli is and how well it grows as you progress the story, you may see new npcs in 5 but the town forever feels lifeless. And again the dungeons are these unique crafted things and not a series of rooms that feel like they where made for a dungeon randomizer.

From the moment I saw the trailers of 5 I hated how uninspired Rigbarf looked, I was convinced even then it was going to have the player manage the town, a step up from being a prince, even more so with an ability to upgrade shops (that's insanely pricey but has barely no benefit and no visual reward either) screams this was always the intention. And after playing Azuma I'm only more convinced this game was meant to have that feature, but they split it off into its own game due to time or whatever.

But it's a solid game. All the features are there more or less, so many don't feel as polished or interact as well with each other as they did in 4. Ultimately this game doesn't do most things as well as past entries and doesn't bring anything new to the table evolving the series. It feels like they got the funding and copyright sorted after the collapse of the previous company and wanted this out the door to gauge series interest after it's 10ish year hiatus that felt like the series was dead and buried.

Style wise I think I prefer how frontier 1-4 looks to this much too caryoony style. And for romancable npcs they are the youngest looking group across the board some not just in looks but behaviour comes across as far too young and naive children. The series definitely needs to get over the idea single parents romantic lives are dead. Please stop putting these too young ones front and centre and featuring in almost every scene including other npcs romance stories where they hijack it to be about them.

It's also worth noting I originally tried this on switch and the impression it left was so bad with how it looked, ran,loaded I hated it, I didn't even pick this up on pc right away. But even with it running so much better it does give a far better experience, there's still no excuse for a town layout as inspired and boring as this, for landscape modeling so crude as this entire game world and textures that I swear the playstation 2 had better ones.

I can only hope the silence on 6 means they are working to make it the most complete rune factory experience to date but I also worry Azuma might be more then a spin off abd it's what we may see more of in the main series.

Should you get this? I don't really know. If you want more time factory then yes but honestly pick up 4 or 3 on steam these days to have a better more classic experience.