This a recent Rune Factory game was previously announcedProject Dragon finally has an official name and release window, thanks to today’s Nintendo Partner Direct. It’s now called Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, and it’s coming out next spring.
Guardians of Azuma takes place in, well, Azuma, a land that went through something called a “Celestial Collapse” some time ago. Since then, the four seasons have not returned to the land. You play as a hero who wakes up with no memories and is greeted by Woolby, a being associated with the dragon god. As an earth dancer, your mission is to restore nature to Azuma and recover the missing runes.
This is Rune Factory, so you’ll spend a fair amount of time sprucing up your farm and various other locations while restoring the seasons and the gods that govern them. You’ll rebuild villages inspired by conventional Japan and unlock a variety of recent and returning festivals. We’re also given glimpses of what could be the marriageable townspeople, as well as the wedding ceremony itself. And as usual, there are two potential heroes, a male and a female, but you can befriend or romance any eligible bachelor, regardless of gender.
Unlike Rune Factory’s numbered games, Guardians of Azuma seems to have a much, much greater focus on combat, with the trailer showing off a number of action sequences and plotlines revolving around the conflict between two sides and two dragons. It looks like we might even get to ride one.
There’s a lot to appreciate in the Guardians of Azuma trailer, and it certainly looks like an improvement on Rune Factory 5, especially in the combat department. In my review, I gave Rune Factory 5 a 6/10, saying it has “a lot of the mechanical depth that made its predecessor so enjoyable, but none of the improvements you’d expect from a move to a new, more powerful platform.”
Hopefully Guardians of Azuma will be an improvement over just the visuals when the game launches this spring. You can check out everything else that was announced during the Nintendo Direct here .
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
