Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma by developer Marvelous Games and publisher Marvelous USA (XSEED)—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes.
One of our favorite spin off series is back again! Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma sees the return of the casual action adventure RPG farming simulator that was hard to put down once I got started.
Guardians of Azuma takes us to a part of the Rune Factory world that has yet to be explored, the Eastern country of Azuma. Waking up one morning after sleeping in, it doesn't take long to find out that while we have been here for a short while, we have no idea of our past. We only know that we are late to start sweeping the temple grounds.
Like other entries in the series, players have a binary choice of protagonist, the female hero Kaguya, or the male hero Subaru. Unlike other entries in this series, our new protagonists are not the silent types. They have personalities and are fully voiced like the rest of the cast. It was honestly really nice to see a long standing series make this leap as it makes tagging along the adventure just that much better.
And better this adventure is.
Having survived a cataclysmic event known as the Celestial Collapse, Amuza was fractured with pieces of its lands scattering to both the skies above and the seas below. It's on one such island that we start off with small tasks that will lead us into a full blown adventure of gods, holy relics and good old fashioned friendships and relationships. But you need to put in the time.
Tasks come in sizes both big and small. Explore. Build a thing. Go to sleep. Talk to a person. Hand over materials. Meet up between certain hours of the day. Etc. But none of these tasks are ever time sensitive or critical. Didn't get to it? Get to it the next day. Guardians of Azuma keeps that casual feel where you can do as much, or as little as you want, and this time around? Hire people to do the mundane while you worry about the adventure.
Doing all of this fits into three main activities that you can do on a daily basis. Exploration, Town Management and Hanging out. Exploration is easy, you simply wander around the various towns, fields or skies of Azuma on the back of a dragon flying to other shattered pieces of lands to explore. You can fight and earn experience, gather materials, uncover various points of interest such as Jizo Statues, Frog Statues or Shrines that will grant you new recipes. You can even rescue townspeople turned into Oni!
While exploring, you'll also have to defend yourself from various wildlife and Oni that roam the lands. Combat is simple, you only need to press one button, but there are enhancements behind it that elevates it just enough to not make it boring. You also have the choice of a secondary weapon to swap over to in case the current one is not doing the trick. Finally, you can also dodge similarly to Breath of the Wild where you go into a time slowdown and get in extra hits for free.
Combat starts off slow and feels very choreographed, meaning that if you take a hit, you are not paying attention. This worried me for a bit, but there was honestly nothing to worry about. After the introduction to combat, exploration and boss fights? You gain the ability to bring along party members and are given a variety of holy relics over time that will also help you better explore the land.
When you're not doing this is where I found myself truly sinking in my time. Town Management. Not farming per say, to quote Richard, “Oh, no no no”, you are instead given development zones to do as you see fit. Here you can plant crops, flowers and even trees, but you can also place blacksmiths, udon carts, flower shops and a variety of extra housing for people to move into the area. If that wasn't enough, you can also place decorations to your heart's content.
Your options will only continue to grow as you adventure through Azuma. Don't like how you've placed something or want to replace it? Simply move it around or remove it entirely. The development area interface was well thought out. You can either perform everything you need in your third person view, or, you can get a top down sky view to fly through everything that needs to be done much more efficiently.
When it comes to daily tasks though, this is another area which makes Guardians of Azuma shine in the town development area. You can assign all of your villagers tasks. Cutting wood, gathering stone, watering and harvesting crops, managing the shops, allllll for the low cost of daily income. They don't do it for free so you do need to make sure your daily income is higher than your expenses if you're going to move to being hands off.
This finally brings us to the last thing we can do in a day. Hanging out. While 90% of your town's people are non-descript NPCs roaming around performing their tasks or taking breaks, making the villages look lived in, the other 10% range from besties to romantic possibilities.
In the beginning, the actions with both groups of people will be fairly similar as it's a lot of hanging out and getting to know them. As you get to know them, you'll also be able to take them on adventures with you in the wilds which really helps as the enemies become tougher as the story moves on. Where things become a bit different is that you'll be able to change the clothes of romantic options and have additional activities that are not available otherwise. In any of these cases, just watch the clock as activities can really eat up your day when you're hanging out with everyone.
So perhaps one point of note, and not exactly a negative, per se, is that Guardians of Azuma is not as pretty as it could be. The visuals look great up close but from far you can tell that the resolution has been scaled down. Even the other characters, party members and NPCs alike while roaming around town, move very blocky until you get close.
This helps optimize what's directly around you, but was this done to make it work on the aging hardware? Or was it done because the full optimization is for either the PC version or the new Nintendo Switch 2 dropping on June 5? I don't know, but it's easy enough to get past as it never slows you down. In either case, for those wanting to move to the Switch 2 once you get one? It looks like there's an upgrade pack already listed for a low cost.
Overall, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a fun new entry into the Rune Factory series. While still keeping things casual, there's something for everyone as you explore this new part of the Rune Factory world in hopes of bringing about a brighter tomorrow for its people.
Score: 8 / 10
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