In this review we will be looking at Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma for the Nintendo Switch, Switch 2 and Steam. The version I played for this review was the Nintendo Switch version and this review will be updated once I get my hands on the Switch 2 version.
So, what exactly is Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma? Does it perform well on Nintendo Switch and is it worth you picking it up after playing through the game to completion? Read on and find out!
What is Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma?
The Rune Factory series of games is a spin-off series of the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons franchise adding fantasy-based elements such as monsters and action combat on top of the already great farming and life-sim.
Guardians of Azuma further spins the series off in a slightly different direction with a strong, traditional Japanese coat of paint and I love it!
What's the Story?
I won’t go into too much detail as I don’t want to spoil anything and Guardians of Azuma’s story is one I would highly recommend experiencing for yourself.
The basic premise is as follows; You choose between two different Amnesiac Protagonists (as per series tradition), Kaguya (female) or Sabaru (Male) and they just happen to become bestowed with the powers of an Earth Dancer. An Earth-Dancer can use their latent abilities to help clear blight, restore withered trees and generally heal the land around them.
We start out in Spring Village, which is down on its luck having very few residents left due to its blighted lands and monsters nearby. Here we meet our companion, Woolby. Woolby is a Wooly – A sheep-like creature famous and abundant in the Rune Factory series with the exception being Woolby can both fly and talk.
Following Woolby’s advice, we decided to help Spring Village and were very soon made village chief. The rest of the adventure is about recovering your memories while helping other people.
After a while, you’ll visit other villages to lend a hand and attempt to unite them against the blight. It’s a feel-good kind of story full of wholesome and humorous moments which I shall refrain from spoiling any further.
What's the Gameplay like?
At its core, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a Time Management game. Each day plays out over 24 hours and it’s down to you to decide what to do. You wake up each morning at your shrine and can decide to plant crops and tend to land, hang out with the village residents, complete requests or go out into the surrounding areas around the villages to fight monsters and clear blight.
Completing any of these tasks will help level up your village allowing for more residents and the ability to craft and construct better buildings.
Farming
Farming has seen the biggest uplift since the series began. Being able to build facilities is a great addition to the Rune Factory formula, however, There’s still a limited amount of land to build on so you have to plan things out carefully. Do you make more plots for growing crops or do you put down a Blacksmith building? The choice is yours.
As your village gets bigger and attracts more villagers, you can draft them in to help out, for a cost of course.
Villagers can do tasks such as plant and water crops, lumberjacking, mining ore deposits or even man numerous shops and stalls you can build on your land. Being the village chief means you just need to make sure you are bringing in enough money to pay their wages or they’ll be unhappy and potentially leave.
It was nice to be able to assign a ton of villagers to farm and know I didn’t have to go out and water each crop every day, although I do have to admit; that I weirdly kind of missed it. Thankfully, you can manually do this yourself and you’ll get upgrades through the story that allow manually tending the fields even easier. As an added bonus to becoming an Earth Dancer, we can now even bring back withered crops from the dead, which is very handy in the early game as you are still working on allocating your villagers.
Finding Friends & More
I should quickly touch on relationships and the various residents of Guardians of Azuma. They all have their own unique stories, scenes and routines and these are the characters you’ll be spending most of your time with in the game. There’s a total of 25 characters you can form bonds within the game and yes, Romance options are available for quite a few of them even same-sex.
To get to know each character, you’ll have to engage with them each day and hang out with them. Each character has their own likes and dislikes so you’ll want to be mindful in treating them right. As you spend time with them their bond meter will fill and level up to a maximum of 10 levels and you’ll be rewarded slightly each time. For example, a level 2 bond will allow you to add that person into your party for combat and raising a character’s Bond level past 7 will allow you to ask them out and confess your feelings towards them.
All characters are voiced this time around, albeit usually single-word replies and responses. I played through the game in Japanese and I found the voice acting to be very good even if a little repetitive at times.
After progressing the story and unlocking other villages, your town’s folk will start paying other areas visits, which can be a little annoying when you are trying to track them down to give them a birthday present or to fulfil a quest. Thankfully, Guardians of Azuma has a fantastic logging system for quests and likes and dislikes for your town members making things a lot easier to track.
Combat
The combat here in Guardians of Azuma is very similar to other Rune Factory games except this time you can have quite a sizable party of four with the protagonist included.
The combat is essentially hack and slash with enemies being visible onscreen and on the various maps. You’ll have a wide selection of weapons including swords, bows, and dual daggers along with some special items called Sacred Treasures which unlock as you progress through the main campaign.
Each weapon and treasure has its own skill tree and you’ll gain experience (and levels) by using said weapon. In fact you pretty much level up everything by repetition including other activities outside of combat such as cooking or fishing.
Combat is a lot of fun and you can switch between your Bow or Primary weapon at any time. The combat feels great and there’s a lot of variety to be had, especially later in the game once you unlock more abilities and Sacred treasures. There are even a few dodge mechanics similar to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild with a similar time-slowing effect allowing you to slice and dice your enemies.
How does Guardians of Azuma run on Nintendo Switch?
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma runs great on Nintendo Switch. I’m a little shocked as I assumed the game would run a little poorly, especially with the Switch 2 and Steam versions being geared towards a lot more powerful hardware.
The game keeps a decent framerate with hardly any noticeable framerate issues, even when the screen is full of enemies, party members and particle effects. The only criticism I can give the game is the image can look a little ‘soft’ on occasion but the wonderful art style and bold colours make up for it.
In terms of world traversal, there can be a minimal amount of pop-in but overall, the game ran great, I’m truly impressed with this Switch version.
Annoyances
Although a great game, Guardians of Azuma does have a few minor mechanics that were pretty annoying. The main problem I had was the constant jumping puzzles. These were mainly used to solve small puzzles or access chests, Frog or Jizo statues (optional collectables for cooking recipes) and rarely as part of the main story thankfully. The protagonist has a very ‘floaty’ jump and it’s really hard to judge where you will land. It’s a small gripe but it happened enough times that I thought I should mention it.
Later in the game, you’ll unlock an item that lets you glide. Sadly, I found jumping actually becomes worse as often you’ll forget you have it equipped and it will activate automatically. The button to cancel gliding seemed to have a 50/50 chance of working when I pressed it often making me wait several seconds while Kaguya slowly drifted to the ground.
While on the subject of annoyances, I should probably mention that characters will often have a knack of teleporting to a different part of the map while you are trying to track them down. Now, I know this is a big mechanic of Rune Factory games and I get it, every character has their own schedule and routine etc but it’s very frustrating to run across a map the game shows you the character is only to have them disappear right in front of you.
Difficulty
Ruins of Azuma took me just slightly over 31 hours to complete. In that time I saw two endings to the game, one for getting married and another for finishing up the main questlines. I played through the game on the ‘Balanced’ difficulty which to be honest, I found a little easy. I rarely had any problems in combat even in some of the bosses. I would recommend if you are a series veteran or want a more challenging time, try the Hard mode.
Upon rolling the credits twice, there’s still a fair bit left to do, most of my bonds are only sitting at around a 6 or lower and there is a form of post in case you were wondering.
Conclusion
All in all, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was a real joy to play. It’s got a great mix of farming, combat, and life sim elements with a fresh new setting that really stands out. Sure, there are a few small annoyances like the awkward jumping and NPCs doing their best to avoid you but they don’t take away too much from the overall experience. The game runs surprisingly well on Switch, looks lovely, and has plenty to keep you busy even after the main story’s done. If you’re into cosy games with some action on the side, or you’re already a Rune Factory fan, this one’s definitely worth checking out.
8
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by Marvelous!