It wouldn’t be a trip to Boston for PAX East without a stopover at the XSEED Games booth to see some of my PR friends that I have known for a few years now. XSEED always brings their A-game to Massachusetts and this year was no different. There were plenty of games to look forward to but two caught my eye. Rune Factory: Guardians of Asuma and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar will be coming out on The Nintendo Switch 2. When I saw Rune Factory in one of the Nintendo Directs, I knew I wanted it and had already preordered it for Switch 2. Story of Seasons is a Nintendo 3DS property and I missed out on it during the handheld’s run as king console. I think that’s going to change with the Switch 2 version as I really enjoyed what I played on the show floor.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a cozy, slice-of-life game that simulates the day-to-day workings of a young man or woman on their farm. You move into Zephyrtown and you’re the new kid and everyone wants to know your story. So much so that you can make relationships with people in town and unlike real life, you will enjoy talking to them. People in town might be your ticket to a new store in the bazaar through expansion or you might have to shop in someone’s store and if they like you, you could more out of shopping there. You might even be able to buy exotic goods that no one else has. The farming in Story of Seasons feels like it has been streamlined and made very simple to use. You can do multiple things like plant more than one seed or till more than one piece of land. I think time will be very important in this game because you will be able to sell goods at your stand in town during the Grand Bazaar. You will have to pay attention to the time of day so you don’t miss out on the bazaar and make all that sweet money by selling your fish, eggs, or whatever have you. I was able to play with one of the translators for the game at the XSEED booth and we were having a great time getting to know all the townspeople and seeing all that there was to offer in the game. There are a ton of people in Zephyrtown to build relationships with and you will have the option to deepen that relationship if you want to. You have access to what people in town like and dislike and you can use that to your advantage. You might be able to gift your love interest a flower in a box wrapped in her favorite color and score some major points with her. You can also go to town and buy all kinds of things like animals and tools as well as expand the town with different stands or an upgrade to your stand. Let be it known that I bought a chicken named Sven, an Alpaca named Oxnard, and a Yellow Lab named Allie. That’s my dog’s name and the other two are just silly. You’ll also have the chance to do things for people in town like bake cookies or collect materials and be rewarded with new items or baking recipes. I really like the character designs in Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar and am looking forward to the release.
The other game I really wanted to see at XSEED’s booth was Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. The Rune Factory franchise is going in a slightly different direction than in the past. In my opinion, this installment is going more into RPG elements and slightly less into the life sim aspect. Now that doesn’t mean that the life sim portion is gone. You’ll be able to have lasting relationships with people in the Eastern lands of Azuma. A bonus is that you’ll be able to recruit them into your party to help explore locations and fight enemies. You’ll be able to pick between a male or female hero to play. Subaru and Kaguya make this choice pretty tough as the designs for both are really well done. For the demo, I played as Kaguya but you can decide either way. I mentioned recruiting party members for battle but that isn’t the only game mode. You’ll have the ability to build up your town with all kinds of cool features like food carts, gardens, and all kinds of stuff. You’ll be able to assign people jobs in town that will help you out immensely like having a person be good with woodcrafting and lumber working. That way, you can tell that person to get busy on the wood and you’ll have a good bundle by the time you come back from the cave. If you have played Harvestella, then you will be right at home with the battle mechanics of Rune Factory. You’ll have party members who can help you in battle by attacking monsters and healing. You can also switch weapons on the fly and have two equipped at one time. Your character is an Earth Dancer and that gives you all kinds of new abilities, attacks, and weapons. The demo boss fight was a demon horseman who was weak to fire. Lucky for us we had a big fire attack thanks to our Earth Dancer skills. The game graphically looks really good and that should be even better when the game runs on the Nintendo Switch 2 in the summer. I’m really looking forward to these games and I would like to thank XSEED for taking the time out during PAX East to meet with me!
