Rune Factory 4 Special (Nintendo Switch)

Rune Factory 5 comes out on March 22 in English: https://www.nintendo.com/games/de...-5-switch/

It is Better than Stardew Valley in every single way, honestly. Like I really mean it. Marriage events, perks for being married, farm work, monster taming, combat, character animation and liveliness (va lines for all main characters), the music, really everything. The only thing stardew might have done better is peaceful village because there are constant events and things for the player to do in rune factory versus stardeau where you mainly just farm and do maybe one event per month. There are birthdays, holidays events, typhoons, seasonal events, it's just much more alive and dynamic, the Town of Selphia vs the town of Stardew Valley, some players might prefer a more involved experience with the town and some would prefer to be a hermit who only does farming, the different games can vary in value depending on what you want.

One notable difference, is this game is anime themed to the max, if you've got some weird thing against anime, girly stuff or whatever then you may not like this, however a major downside of this title vs Stardew is that there is no same-sex marriage, the best you can do is an illusion wardrobe to make a male character appear female or female character appear male, but you will always be referred to by the proper pronouns or name.

Stardew Valley is a cheap copy of Harvest Moon for SNES.

Rune Factory is Harvest Moon with JRPG elements which segregate it from the main Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series. Fantasy races for characters, monster raising (not like pokemon, more like monster rancher), and fighting in dungeons. Farming serves are your source of income as well as ability to improve your equipment and relationships in town.

Personally, Rune Factory games are a lot more fun than Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons as the main series has mostly become about manufacturing while Rune Factory crafting is entirely optional. Running dungeons is also optional. Not engaging in either will mean more difficulty and not progressing the plot, but a high level farmer can grow endgame weapons (yes really) and a high level explorer can forage for endgame farming products. It all evens out. Just have fun and do what you wanna do. Shops will sell equipment if you find yourself behind so farming truly is the go-to sustained income anyway.

Being a Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game, there are social relationships and ability to marry local candidates. Rune Factory games are more social unlike the predictable Story of Seasons games where characters merely say "how do you do", maybe some quick character lore, and go about their business. Talking to people everyday often provides different dialogue relative to weather, upcoming town events, and current character events (town events are different from character events, which provide more character lore). Getting to know people is the same tossing of items at NPCs as Harvesr Moon/Story of Seasons, but in Rune Factory some characters require plot progression as well as character event triggers. This leads up to the biggest problem with Rune Factory 4 in particular.

So Rune Factory 4 on the original release on 3DS had a big issue with randomly generated events. As I said before, Rune Factory marriage can require these events. The problem is that character events can only be triggered when there is no town holiday going on and if the weather is right (there is one PER WEEK in Rune Factory 4 so be careful! You can "order" them gone as prince/princess). Since events are randomly generated at the start of a day, yes this means save scumming (the act of saving the night before and reloading save file to get results you want). Allegedly the release of Rune Factory 4 on Nintendo Switch remedied RNG, but I didnt see much change. It is still absolute hell to get the marriage event for characters like Arthur and Leon who have multiple event triggers needed for marriage. If you want the men to propose to you, get ready to jump through MORE hoops.

Stardew Valley is very appealing to western players because of it's availability on a wide variety of platforms, Doom/Dragon's Lair-style, it's easy gameplay, and it's progressive social relationships (LGBTQIA+ friendly). Newer Story of Seasons games are only NOW allowing for samesex relationships with the Friends of Mineral Town and Olive Town games on Switch (and mostly because it's easier to program lets be real). For the most part all Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games are heterosexual-only with some weird outliers like the sexless rival character in Harvest Moon Magical Melody on Gamecube. If this is a concern for you, Rune Factory 4 allows you to change the protagonist portrait so you effectively become the female protagonist and vice versa. This means as a female, you can marry female characters. I dont recall pronouns changing, though. You will still be able to have kids anyway.

As an aside, if you hate modern anime you will likely hate some Rune Factory characters. Rune Factory 4 has a little girl-looking fairy character who is marriagable, which is imo creepy. Even if she's potentially hundreds of years old, im not falling for that Fire Emblem-assed 1000-year old dragon excuse. The other characters are alright but some are too tryhard quirky for my taste like Clorica, the narcaleptic female butler in the royal palace and the detective florist. At least the english dub is really really good, with Matthew Mercer as Leon and Vic Mignogna as Vishnal.

If you are looking for more JRPG elements, you will level up and raise skills for everything you do with everything you do. Throwing things eaises throwing skill, walking raises walking skill, and talking to people raises your social skill (imagine). As I stated before, just have fun and do your best. You wont hit walls are one would with Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. Buy equipment from shops (which update as you progress the plot) or craft them yourself. Befriend monsters and mount them to get to places faster. Or just have them join you while farming as a pet.

Small note, you can customize the entire game world by tossing objects around but I believe it's quite limited. You can buy a forge, lift it up, and leave it in a NPC's house if you please. Nobody will ever mind. If that's what you find convenient, go for it lol. I left all of my crafting and storage in the player room and didnt upgrade room size much until endgame.