Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was one of the games I looked forward to playing the most on my brand new Nintendo Switch 2 when it released back in June. Unfortunately, because I bought the physical special edition, it meant that I wound up not getting it until significantly later than everybody else. Some of the physical bonuses, like the Japanese folding fans, were held up in some kind of customs dispute thanks to some new tariff policies. Thankfully, however, Guardians of Azuma was worth the wait, and hopefully this review was too. Also, if you want, there is an original Nintendo Switch version of the game and also one for the PC on the Steam platform.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a new spin off for the Rune Factory series, being more in the vein of Rune Factory Frontier or Tides of Destiny than a numbered entry. This title is a JRPG-farming-town management hybrid that has a heavy emphasis on its village and relationship building. Steeped in Japanese aesthetics and folklore, Guardians of Azuma has you take the role of an amnesiac of your choice as you venture through the country of Azuma and revitalize the lands by resurrecting its gods. As an Earth Dancer, your chosen protagonist is the only one who can help the country recover from an event called the Celestial Collapse that left the land barren and unwelcoming long before the start of this game.
The beginning of Guardians of Azuma tasks you with venturing to each village, solving a problem they’re experiencing, and resurrecting the god of that chosen season, but the tale soon spirals out of control with a new threat looming over Azuma. This title spends a lot of time in cutscenes and in joyful banter among all of the colorful characters you meet, juxtaposed with the increasing stakes of story events that you want to solve as quickly as possible so you can have a beach date with your girlfriend or boyfriend!
The characters of Guardians of Azuma are the real selling point, here, and the English localization did an amazing job of finding pleasant and endearing voice actors for the big cast of goofballs that make up its characters. While Ulalaka is demure, kind, and overly charitable to the point that it can cause concern from others, and Matsuri is brash and hard-headed with a competitive streak that regularly gets her in trouble. The bachelors have some real winners too, with Kai having some of the absolute funniest dialogue in the entire game and Fubuki being that timid fox boy that’s extremely popular with female fans. Outside of the bachelors and bachelorettes, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma has an all-star supporting cast of whom I don’t think I disliked a single one.
Relationships in Guardians of Azuma are easily trackable, relying upon you reaching specific bond levels with the character, story completion, and things of that nature. Raising bond levels is as simple as performing your blossom dance for them and giving them gifts, though you can also spend time with characters throughout Azuma and raise your bond with them by having meals, talking about their interests, going shopping, or even taking naps together under a tree. While there is a bit of a drawback in that giving gifts consumes 30 minutes of in-game time, having all of these other activities actually makes it feel like you’re spending time with someone to earn their trust rather than just buying their love. Though, you can still absolutely win their heart with your wallet just as in every other Rune Factory and Story of Seasons title if that’s what you want to do.
A lot of money was put into the presentation of Guardians of Azuma, and it really shows. While there are no more character portrait cut-ins for dialogue scenes, the 3D models are expressive and well-animated, doing a great job of selling story events and relationship developments. A lot of time is spent standing around talking in Guardians of Azuma, as there would be in literally any other Rune Factory game, but where Guardians really differs from past entries is that they don’t just tell, but show you things happening too. Sometimes dialogue-heavy cutscenes will be interrupted by characters swinging swords at one another or even shooting arrows off the backs of dragons- this presentation style is the kick in the pants that Rune Factory 5 sorely needed. Due to the better emphasis on animation, combat flows more fluidly than ever before too.
As an action RPG, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma’s combat will be familiar to many players. Your main quest will oftentimes task you with going outside the confines of a village to slay monsters, so it helps that combat is fluid and understandable. You begin with a short sword which only has a simple combo attack, but after using it for a while you can unlock an ultimate finisher, charge attacks, and more. As you play through the title, you’ll find other weapons such as dual blades, long swords, bows, and talismans that allow you to cast spells to deal damage at range.
Attacking in Guardians of Azuma is pretty simple. You can perform light and heavy attacks, charged attacks, and spamming light attack will eventually result in a flashy ultimate that’s significantly different for each weapon. You’ll acquire sacred tools from the different gods of Azuma, each with its own element and function in battle, and you can perform special attacks with these weapons to deal big damage, heal your party, or create strong damage-over-time effects over an area an enemy is in. For defensive options, you have a nimble dodge that, when used at the perfect time, functions similarly to Bayonetta’s Witch Time where all of your enemies slow down, which allows you to really lay on the hurt.
Exploration in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is significantly improved over Rune Factory 5. There are so many things to find out in the world, such as frog statues that give you important crafting recipes, shrines you can clean to provide useful equipment recipes, treasure chests, and tons of items to gather. There’s just always something to find, and the environments have considerably more visual variation and make better use of vertical space than what Rune Factory 5 attempted to do. It helps that the environments are filled with items to pick up, enemies to defeat, and feature a variety of things hidden off the beaten path. It’s nigh a guarantee if that you find a small alcove somewhere, a shrine, frog statue, treasure chest, or some other hidden goodie will be tucked away there.
Every single weapon has its own skill tree and can be upgraded at a weaponsmith. Using particular weapons and doing tasks like cooking, bonding with NPCs, mining, and logging will all yield XP you can use to unlock nodes on those skills’ respective trees. Farming, the hallmark of Rune Factory and how you’ll fund your expensive weapon crafting and upgrade habits, will give you all-purpose XP that can be used on anything, meaning that if you hate how long swords feel to use, you can stick to your preferred weapon and get the stat bonuses, et al, from the long sword’s skill tree using all-purpose XP instead. It’s very nice to have this flexibility, and by the mid game, you’ll be earning thousands of all-purpose XP every time you harvest in your villages. This does mean, however, that Guardians of Azuma is reducing Rune Factory’s heavy emphasis on excessively grinding because you no longer have to sleep or eat a lot for stat boosts, but the adjustment to village decorations and skill tree nodes increasing stats is so unobtrusive and inoffensive that it never caused issue during a hearty 70-hour playthrough.
On top of this, you’ll regularly have villager requests to complete, and every NPC you can bond with has bond quests that will give you greater insight into the character, their insecurities, and how you can help them. Many times in Rune Factory games, players won’t pursue anything beyond the one romantic interest because you’ll have to restart the title in order to check out another romance path. In the post game, a system called rewoven fates allows you to check out the other marriage candidates’ romances without losing much, if any, of your progress. It’s a neat little feature for those who want polygamy with extra steps, or for those who were already dating a character by the time the final marriage candidates unlocked in story progression.
Farming in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma has been streamlined from previous entries, at least a little bit. You can still manually plant seeds and water them by using your protagonist, but with a click of L3 you can go into the new overhead view that lets you quickly and accurately plant, water, and harvest. You no longer need fertilizer or to use a hoe and withered grasses to increase the health of the soil, and instead leveling of your crop’s seeds is performed by reaping with the burning sword given to you by Azuma’s Summer god, Matsuri. Leveling up your crops, which helps you produce higher quality recipes to make the most money, is simple and relatively convenient in this entry. Though, at times, I still long for the need to maintain soil health for my level 9 pineapple, rice, or gold pumpkin farm. Having the handy overhead viewpoint to quickly manage crops is an absolute godsend (no pun intended), and it really helps show off this game’s village building aspects.
Since village building in Guardians of Azuma is such a focus, as you complete village growth tasks, you’ll being able to place more buildings and decorations, as well as attract more people to provide you with necessary services on your journey to save the land of Azuma. In previous Rune Factory games, your monsters would be the ones helping you with your farming, but in this entry, your recruited villagers will help you in the fields, run your stores, fish, mine, and go logging for you. Monsters have largely been relegated to combat companions and sources of materials for crafting, though I found myself not really missing monster help in the fields since once my crops were max level, I was able to delegate much of my farming to the villagers, which allowed me to focus on exploration and requests without having to worry about money. Thankfully, you can change the jobs of villagers and, thanks to an update, you can fine tune what you want villagers to help you with.
While Guardians of Azuma has streamlined elements of the farming, the social aspects of it are still top notch. The relationship mechanics in this title have been improved and are presented in a much more understandable way, as previous Rune Factory games had some extremely strange padding in this regard. Rune Factory 4, for example, had marriage events that relied upon random number generation, on top of prerequisite events that also relied upon RNG to trigger, which meant you could have to wait an in-game year or even longer after meeting the requirements to marry but still be unable to do so because the RNG gods dislike you. Rune Factory 5 had relationship events that took place over multiple days which could lock you out of other relationship events you may have cared more to do. Guardians of Azuma’s approach of bond levels with easily tracked requirements to get your next bonding event is something the Rune Factory series needs to embrace, fully, in Rune Factory 6.
Outside of the simplified and streamlined farming, the only other thing I can think of that Guardians of Azuma does poorly is its menu system. Cooking high leveled recipes is a great way to make money, for example, but some dishes may be prerequisites for other dishes, and the menu can’t be sorted alphabetically or anything that will help you find where a specific recipe is. This just means cooking takes a little longer than it probably should, but this is a very minor complaint when all is said and done.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma runs extremely well on Nintendo Switch 2 with the upgrade pack. The game maintains a very consistent frame rate both in and outside of combat, and the only time it really hitched or lagged was when fast traveling from one place to another would cause it to hitch for about 4 seconds or so, then run smoothly afterwards. On Nintendo Switch, the frame rate is halved, and you can have some very obvious frame drops during cutscenes when cherry blossoms are falling, but it mostly managed to perform consistent when in combat, which is especially important given that Rune Factory 5 would lag like crazy during important boss fights. The Switch 1 version features heavier LOD pop-in and some poorer quality shadows, but still runs better than several other of developer Marvelous Inc’s games on the platform.
Overall, I believe Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is one of the best entries in this franchise. The streamlining of systems that took tens of hours to grind out in past entries can be seen as a negative for some, but in my case it was a very much welcome change after the fifth game played that tune until it was worn out. Guardians of Azuma instead plays more like a JRPG with some relationship, farming, and village building mechanics, with great lore and character interactions throughout the whole adventure. This title is pretty, combat is fluid, and the new town management elements can do a lot to bring new fans into this series. Hopefully, the next Rune Factory puts just as much, if not more, effort into its presentation as Guardians of Azuma.
Developers: Marvelous Inc.
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Steam