Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is not a bad game. I scored it 2.5/5, which is in my eyes passing class. There are interesting ideas to work and places where it excels, but there are also some important disadvantages that do not give positives enough respiratory rooms. At the moment, I put into it for tens of hours, and these conflict feelings are primarily on massive departures taken in the name of the spin from the beloved series. There is a fun cast that can connect and quite a great fight, but the missing links are sharp.
What makes the rune factory?
When I think about the previous factory rune games, which I sank for hundreds of hours, there are several things that immediately pop up as a central, vital mechanics that defines the series. Agriculture is the first – in a sea of cute, cozy games we can cause things such as land management and efficiency, with mechanical depth and tangible rewards for your efforts. Following the seasons and making a large range of seeds on which you can get your hands with limited agricultural space is a puzzle that feels triumphed to overcome.
The second is creation with systems that are ground, but without sometimes feelings. In the end, you have created many more things than you need, in the name of an increase in skill levels, but games also have serious money outflows, so Grind is necessary and creates a complete and satisfactory game loop.
If there are two pillars of the Rune factory, then the azuma guards hardly qualify. Instead of making money on proven victories in these deep mechanics, instead we have a brighter struggle and a system of shallow villages. The result is a game that feels like a generic offer that has somehow managed to get rights to Wooolies and Buffamoos.
Azuma is wide but shallow
Agriculture is still here, yes, but your villagers can be completely automated. But they are not good at it, they grow random crops in random tiles in a way that made me want to pull my hair. In the end, I fired all my farmers and spent the beginning of every day by completing all agricultural tasks myself – if they could not maintain different crops separate and reaping effectively, they spend the rest of their digital life in mines.
There are still plenty of objects and meals, but without the progression of skills that plays what you can do. Instead, you can spend the whole game that does not cook a single meal, but in some way you can produce the most beautiful perfoite in space because you have somehow come from the best milk by buffamoos killing at a high level. There is no experimentation, intrigue; Just a score of recipes that act as shopping lists.
I am almost convinced that the game will feel better if it removes agriculture and produced completely than to leave them as a half -baked mechanics, which makes me desire to re -introduce Rune Factory. Currently, the Guardians of Azuma is a low point in the history of the Rune factory, which forgets what of us made fans of the series.
