Rune Factory 4 Special Reviews

The game is very cute and easy to play

Do you like farming sims? Do you like action rpg? This is your game.

Hard to believe THIS is the sequel to rf3 Still cool tho

The absolute best game I've ever played. I've played hours and hours of this game on every platform I was capable of doing so. A fun story, funny and lively characters, and crafting systems that don't feel tedious or grindy. And the combat system is the most fun I've ever had in these dungeon crawlers in RPGs

Played this Originally on the 3ds for 300+ hours, I Love this game. it runs Stable and runs great, thought I'm not a big fan what ever they done to upscale the HD field Graphics, it looks like someone put grease over everything. So i [b]disable High Quality textures[/b], now it looks much better!

A pretty chill RPG+farming game, originally on DS(?) Nintendo systems, with a port that is...alright, but unimpressive. Still, the gameplay in general is deep enough that you'll have a pretty good time for most of the time you're playing. "So why the no-rec?" Well, see, the game in general is, on its whole, a pretty decent time, specially its story being a decent progression motivator. The epilogue, being the last piece that propels you forward,however, is just a straight up MISERABLE grinding hell of spiking difficulty, with hours of grinding being rewarded with small 30 sec tidbits of dialogue, all capped with a really short scene of "you saved the [spoiler]Dragon[/spoiler], now bugger off to farm or whatever". I have never had my enjoyment of a game get so deflated by an "ending" in my life like this.

i highly recommend Rune factory 4, and even though it says playable on steam deck, it runs perfect on mine. its one of my favorite games.

Very good game. I used to play this game all the time as a kid and I'm glad to replay it and see that there is more added to the story. If you are looking for a farming game + anime visual novel + fantasy adventure I'd say this is your game right here. And even you don't like those sorts of games or are not used to it, the characters are so lovable it makes it all worth wild. Like the fact you become a princess due to the others being so accepting in the village and big funny misunderstandings really show you its charm right out the gate. There is so much to do in this game, you rarely get a moment of boredom. The only negative things I see about this game are some weird dialog that is rarely used (like when Porco keeps asking you to marry him and similar I guess 'tropes' but it mainly made to be humorous so it doesn't really bother me but I could see how it could bother someone else. Still he is pretty lovable in my opinion) and if you are on the pc the button are placed weirdly but you can easily change that in settings. I don't know I just really love this game and literally there is so much good stuff and having like one negative thing maybe is very rare to find in my opinion. So try it out. Give it a shot.

Despite the dated graphics, this game is extremely fun; however, I cannot recommend this game because of a crashing bug that triggers during the ending of the 2nd arc. Apparently it's existed in the 3DS version too? But yeah I beat arc 2, and because of cutscenes.. there wasn't an opportunity to save and it crashed. Spent another 30 minutes replaying that entire section (with portraits disabled) and that seemed to work? Please patch this and I'll adjust my review, but until then.. Outside of those two things, the gameplay is very engaging and satisfying. There's no deadlines to be anywhere; you can play the game at any tempo. If you want to focus on a specific aspect of gameplay and only do that (for example: farming) then you absolutely can! There's so much to do; exploring, farming, cooking & crafting, there's a few styles of combat (so a different gameplay experience and feel), there's romance options and home decorating, festivals.. It's quite well rounded.

It's Rune Factory 4! I love this game, so much that I actually own it on 3DS, Nintendo Switch, and now on Steam. But let me tell you why I love Rune Factory 4. At a glance, this is 100% not my type of game. Its a farming sim, a dating sim, a grind fest, and an RPG. One of these things I thoroughly enjoy, and the other three I hate. I originally went into Rune Factory 4 with a closed mind because I was told it is similar to games I hate, including Harvest Moon (rebranded to Story of Seasons in its later years due to publishing disputes) and Stardew Valley. People who adore these games told me I probably would hate Rune Factory 4. And yet, I remember those first 20 minutes turning from "eh, whatever" into "I can't put this down". I was writing a thesis and stayed up until 4AM playing this game instead of writing my thesis. After all, this was a stupid free game for my NTSC-U 3DS (PAL region gang!), this wasn't meant to consume my life. But it did. And it did again when I said I'd support the devs when it came out on Switch. And it will probably consume my life at a random point again, like right now. But why? I think its the magic of the setting because no other farming sim, nor dating sim, catches my attention like this series has. The music is fantastic and I hum these tunes to myself at work over 8 years later. I love the interactions, I love watching the townsfolk grow as people from Dylas being less shy to Porco's love of food (and me, damn you let me marry Porco!) to learning more about Venti and her actually fairly sad story. Or maybe its the found family aspect that your character and others go through - Doug and Blossom; Margaret, Dylas, and Porco; Dolce & Pico, Nancy, and Jones. For gameplay, it has a lot on offer, and it gives you the freedom to chose for the most part how you spend your day. It has farming aspects, quick combat aspects, time management, gear grinding (both for items to create and upgrade and just to upgrade your skill), and of course, the dating elements. You can play without dating however it is highly encouraged by the game and it is heterosexual in nature. You can swap your sprite to be male or female at the end of the game or afterwards in a new game but to be clear, this is only once you've finished the game's 2nd arc. I personally am not a fan of this style of option as I feel its a low effort as the characters will still refer to you as whatever you started as not your appearance, but its an option if you would like it. You may be able to download a completed save from someone else and automatically unlock this feature as you could do this with a hacked 3DS (I transferred my save between 2 consoles), however I only can verify from a hacked 3DS perspective that this works, and not the Steam perspective. I also want to quickly touch upon arc 3, which could take literal in-game years on the 3DS to start; that has been fixed in all versions of Rune Factory 4 Special. You will not have to sleep literal days away, not tend to your farm, friends, animals, and love interests to get arc 3 to happen. [b]Rejoice![/b] I'll also give it a little bit of a negative for Steam Deck users as its nearly impossible to change names for anything. But I really don't care that my farm is named Selphia, my characters are Frey & Lest, and my barn monsters are just whatever the game defaulted to as I prefer games where they tell the story of a character vs your self-made character. It plays fine a part from that, though I find the control layout for the "XBOX controller" that it registers as as not as comfortable as the Switch/3DS layout. And I also will say to those who prefer the lighter controller that the Switch Pro and Playstation controllers offer to stay away as the game does not recognise these controllers and instead displays only the XBOX layout (So A and B instead of X and O for example, and inverted A/B). It says its compatible with the Playstation controller on the store page, but it did not work for me when I tested it on desktop, instead showing "XBOX 360". You might be better off getting the game for Switch or PS4 if you prefer those controllers. I don't recommend this game to people who don't like farming sims and dating sims. But if you like RPGs, this actually might be your cup of tea despite that. If you're willing to give it a go, get it on a sale, because its a great game that I never expected to be so invested in. If you like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Cat Tails, you'll probably like this, and its a great entry point in the series if you haven't previously started. Also, based on the 3DS bundle I got years ago, Shin Megami Tensei IV fans also seem to be fans of this game for [i]some[/i] reason, so if you want to step out of your comfort zone, I think its worth it.