Rune Factory 5 Reviews
While it still has many issues, Rune Factory 5 on PC is leagues better than its console counterpart. There are a decent amount of graphics options and full keyboard and mouse support so you can farm, fight, and fall for characters at a far more stable frame rate.
Rune Factory 5 is improved on PC, and is an enjoyable entry in the series. However, it's graphically dated with serious tech issues, and gameplay is a step back in some ways.
Rune Factory 5 does a few things differently that'll interest long-time fans of the series. The jank and slight annoyances with farming will turn most newcomers away though.
Rune Factory 5 is a good game for series fans, but we'd recommend the last entry over it. We found that game was easier to control and preferred the top-down view. But, of course, you can still pass all manner of fun time with this sometimes slow (often choppy) installment.
Rune Factory 5 delivers everything you would expect from a Rune Factory game, though it does so without adding anything new. It moves from a rather rough start into an enjoyable experience which combines quirky characters, a story wrapped in a bit of mystery, farming, fighting and taming monsters, crafting, and consuming unhealthy amounts of Recipe Bread. Fans of the series will enjoy their time in Rigbarth, though the series and its formula are starting to show their age.
Rune Factory 5 is an endlessly charming, technically messy farm-life RPG that will delight series fans for a while.
Rune Factory 5 is loaded with fun, long-lasting content, and is difficult to put down even after the credits have rolled.
Rune Factory 5 is more of the familiar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes enough small improvements that it does feel newer, but if you are looking for something leaps and bounds different from the last game, you will be disappointed. The game has a lot of charm and love put into it, but the abysmal frame rate does make it hard to recommend, even though I thoroughly enjoyed it. With some future patches addressing the game’s framerate issues and input delay, Rune Factory 5 could easily turn into a wonderful game.
While not wholly deviod of quality, that Marvelous released Rune Factory 5 in it's current state, is pretty shameful.
It boasts an invigorating sense of player agency, a clearly-defined framework of rules in which to make your fun, and a carefully-calibrated concoction of farming, role-playing, and life simulation designed to keep things interesting.
Rune Factory 5 doesn’t break the mould but it's still definitely worth your time, for returning fans and potential new ones.
There was probably no need to fix something that was never broken in the first place, and so we think that Rune Factory 4 Special is still a better game, but nonetheless this fifth episode marks the beginning of a new era of games on Nintendo Switch. Let's just hope that the hard edges of the new graphical engine will be softened out soon.
Review in Italian | Read full review
For non-series fans, it's like many classic retro series, and while it still retains its old style, it's a bit of a hit in this era.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
Rune Factory 5 has one of the best casts and writing in the series, but a batch of performance and presentation issues spoil the crop.
The change to 3D and other changes introduced in Rune Factory 5 are well intentioned but poorly executed. Asides from some new quality of life features, I’d only recommend this game if you’re a fan who’s already exhausted all the content of Rune Factory 4 and just wants more Rune Factory, and if you haven’t played the fourth one already then you definitely should.
As a relaxing life sim Rune Factory 5 certainly has a cozy home on Nintendo Switch. The dozens of hours of gameplay extend beyond finishing the main story, with levels to be maxed out, new equipment forged and even a new dungeon to explore, making the occasional lack of clarity of next steps a minor issue in the deservedly popular farming title.
Rune Factory 5 is a technically perfect game that meets all of its goals. Unfortunately for the player, the goals met are either not very impressive or downright uncomfortable.
A solid continuation of the agricultural-jRPG series of games, this time in 3D, but without major changes in the gameplay system and for a limited group of players. However, if in the morning you like to sow turnips, and in the evening pick up maidens (or bachelors), Rune Factory 5 properly dosed brings quite a lot of fun, especially since you can still have them at hand.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Overall, Rune Factory 5 plays things pretty conservatively, and it’s the better for it. It’s a comfort food kind of experience, and while this might cost it on store shelves given that it has been released at the tail end of so many excellent, intelligent, innovative, and big RPGs, it’s a game of simple delights and pleasant experiences. Sometimes, that’s enough.
The occasionally enjoyable combat cannot make up for the unreliable farming controls, repetitive music, poor performance, ugly visuals, and lifeless world. One or two of these shortcomings could have been forgiven if Rigbarth was a world worth soaking in, but it's simply not. The mountain of issues amounts to Rune Factory 5 being lesser than the sum of its faults and one of the year's biggest disappointments so far.