I could get used to this lifestyle!
It's that time again for a new episode of Chichuki Plays, the show where I go hands-on with upcoming games and show them off. We usually play about an hour or so but I didn't think that would be enough for this one so enjoy a special 2+ hour episode. This time, we're looking at Rune Factory:Guardians of Azuma on the Nintendo Switch 2.
I was lucky enough to play a build of the game at PAX East this year. I'd like to thank the fine folks at XSEED Games/Marvelous for allowing me that luxury. I'd also like to thank them for sending me a review code for the game.
To start, you pick if you want to play as a man or a woman. I played as the woman, who you have the option to name, during this playthrough as Stevie. If you'd like, you can keep her name Kaguya. You'll also be able to pick your birthday. Relationships are key in Rune Factory so knowing when a birthday is could score you some major brownie points with someone you like in town. There are plenty of tutorials at the start of the playthrough and I advise you to read/pay attention. I really like the character designs in this game. I really wanted to get to know some of them and made the effort to talk to them each day. You might be able to connect romantically with someone from the village so start working on your charm!
Long story short, Spring Village needs fixing and it's up to us to do that. We take over from Sakaki as the village elder and will be able to grow the village. Ulalaka, the god of Spring Village, will be able to help us grow the level of village. Growing the level of the village allows more things to be done in the village as well as getting more people to live in the village. We will need more people staying in the village to get more benefits. Benefits could range from having more people working or having more buildings to build. As an Earth Dancer, we will be given different abilities to help with our tasks. Revitalizing the flora of the village or being able to grow things faster are some of the Earth Dancer abilities.
Rune Factory isn't all about finding friends in the village and building up said village. You will also have to fight to survive. Exploration is similar to The Legend of Zelda games in the fact that you will want to explore almost everything. I say it's like Zelda because here you break crates and mess around trees like in Zelda yo break pots and cut grass. To upgrade things and build buildings, you will need supplies so save up. The combat reminded me of Dark Souls where you could lock onto to enemies, parry, and dodge perfectly for bonus attacks. There is a skill tree where you can learn different skills to help you. You can learn new attacks to help in combat, new dancer skills, or upgrades to health and more. The dances and other skills will cost Spirit points. That prevents you from spamming them all the time. You will have a a blue bar under your HP bar and that's the Spirit points bar.
You have the ability to equip two weapons, one in each hand. You could have a sword in one hand and a bow and arrow set in the other. You can set up the equipment the way you want to play. You can also change your outfit to fit your likes too. An interesting feature here is that you can change the look of an accessory to be the fashion look you want and be the power-up from a different piece of clothing. I think that's really cool and more games should do that. You will also be able to cook food to help you on your journey. You will find recipes throughout the game as well as get them as rewards. A quest from the request board in town could net some tasty food rewards or better. You will want to do the requests from the request board as well as find all the frog statues. The frog statues are like Legend of Zelda Koroks where you get rewarded for finding them so keep en eye out.
Story missions could take you into dangerous locations. Dangerous because there will be monsters to fight inside. There will also be boss monsters at the end of the location and could be pretty tough to beat. Those monsters could be transformed villages and you will need to beat them to save them and get them to come back to the village. It's an interesting mechanic to not make exploring feel forced. You will still have to find items in certain locations but that can't be help in games like this.
To sum up, Rune Factory:Guardians of Azuma will be a welcome addition to the Rune Factory series. It looks great on the Nintendo Switch 2 in terms of graphics and voice acting. I really want to get to know more of the villagers and find out where this story goes. Again, I'd like to thank XSEED/Marvelous for the review code.
Make sure you check out the hands-on video below!