Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Review

It can be assumed that if you fall out of the sky, he would land through the roof of the temple and woke up with amnesia for flying, talking sheep with horns exchanging your divine duties, you can get a day off. You may want to relax and recover. You can take a moment to yourself.

There would probably be a lot of asking to become the most dynamic city volunteer in a restless local community, restore God’s divinity and set off to strive for rejuvenating the world after a destructive apocalyptic event. Well, apparently you don’t have what you need to be a land dancer.

Kaguya, one of the two possible heroes of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, has what you need. There has never been a more concerned citizen, a more selfless activist or a more ambitious amateur farmer. She is knocked out from the heavens after a violent battle with a mysterious figure on a black dragon; He gets in the story of a heavenly fall and plague and meets the god of spring; He pulls out a hoe and begins to plant a Velcro. He also makes adventures, romance some people, builds a house or two, learns to cook and tries to save the world. We love a Renaissance woman.

Most Azuma guards are quite a plain RPG. Kaguya has many possibilities of choosing weapons in a low circuit, arc and holy artifacts passed on to her by gods who cause instinctive damage. The weapon can be improved or improved, and later can get talismans to aid her fight. This means a variety of fighting that does not materialize – I have never met a fight in a game that I could not with the brutal strength of the sword, regardless of what I felt at that time, and supplies full of cheese omelettes.

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Most battles will not require a strategy, although enemies have weaknesses, and bosses can be stunned, and simply hacking. I didn’t particularly care about the fighting plate – it’s nice to turn over my death fan and hear how members of my party talk in monsters that we meet, and does not divert attention from the part of the game that are more addictive. Let my friends I recruit go to me: I have to float with an umbrella to find a frog statues for a local child.

The polar opposite of fighting is the aspects of Game Sim/Village Developer/Landscape Architect, which can be as plain or as complicated as your heart wants. My style of urban planning ended with a “function above form”, which means that I have four bustling energetic, productive villages that look as if they were zone by an excessively guaranteing squirrel. Players with more eye for aesthetics will have fun with decorations, which there is a lot to find in the world, and the development mechanics are basic to apply (although at the beginning there is some frustrating friction when creating basic off -road tiles requires an annoying amount of menu navigation).

When you start recruiting villagers, they will be assigned to work in your absence, which means that Kaguya must only make a few decisions in his role as literally the mayor of everyone, before the money begins to appear, leaving her freely with a free journey and a fight or flirting or making more onigiri.

There is a lot going on in this game. Kaguya must discover, fight monsters and discover what her amnesian heroine is, but she also built these villages, grow, socially, cook about one hundred thousand recipes, revive the divinity of some gods and go to sleep before midnight. Initially, it is bulky, these systems bordering excessive in what is actually not a huge world of game. Kaguya spends a lot of time to reverse his steps when he slowly develops the truth about what is happening with Azuma. At the beginning it is a strange statement: why do I have as much as I can do and do so little about it?

Time and progression pay off very well to fight this imbalance. Social mechanics rewards long investments with various forms and takes some time to get out of the shallower aspects of their personal tasks. The developed villages are irregularly equipped with developer zones and existing infrastructure, so some have basic early prizes, while others are growing at later levels. The story simply becomes more engaging later in the game. The first 10 hours is almost repulsive, but as the game progresses, the sense of occupation turns into a feeling of comfortable density.

It is satisfying and sometimes thrilling to see the characters that I met in Spring Village, who settles to eat a meal in the autumn village, or know that I will be able to satisfy the request of a peasant in a summer village, because my barn in Winter Village produces eggs that I need for a recipe. Because so much is automated, it runs away with a trap concentrated by the player of God, which she could easily fall into; Kaguya’s role, both narrative and mechanically, is simply quitting the ball to restore her life to something so that she can continue her life. Build a house, plant a field and there will be people to go to it, water and harvest, fish, get out and log in and go to animals and run shops.

This is one case of playing in the line: that the goal of someone or healing something is that he can stand alone.

The social system is the second distinctive. Unfortunately, this is overtaken with one of the weakest and least engaging characters, but when you unlock more villages, the list of characters that you can make friends is varied and charming, and some personal tasks that go in really delightful directions (I lost hours of life, chasing mischievous shapes, advertising local companies and make players social.

Because the progress in personal search is associated with the calendar, and because there is no restrictions on the number of characters with which you can interact during the day, it goes well with the main progress, exploration and development of the village. It was completely liked when I wandered only to notice someone I talked to in the distance and a sprint to die to eat together.

Of all the characters you can meet in Rune Factory, the best are the gods you wake up in all history. Without spoilers (because their leaves are some justified entertaining disclosure) the fact that the gods have both the main importance of history and social suitability on the side means that they have the most time for development, even those you do not meet only in the game.

Kaguya often goes back in these parts of history, and the quirks, neurosis, fears and desires of the gods occupy a central place. This is perfect because they resemble less a pantheon of powerful deities, and more improvised meeting of siblings arguing, which ignored the texts, along with non -fat nicknames, established alliances and a handful of realization. They are just as invested as Kaguya in restoring divinity and examining the cause of the heavenly fall, but also some of them are socially restless or easily dispersed or are guilty of some money, so they will need here or there.

These are two levels where the game plays: Help save the worldOr Help your friend. At the beginning Kaguya is a stranger, literally landed in the Sanctuary of the Spring Village, without the memory of her place in the world. Rune Factory seems to be alien to myself, with all the moving parts present, but watching each other, I’m not sure how to work together. When Kaguya settles in himself, when he engages in his environment, he helps the village and villagers and begins his divine journey, the game fits her.

At the macro level, he collects allies and information needed to find out what is happening with the heavenly breakdown and how to fix it. At the micro level, it collects resources and knowledge needed to come up with how to cook honey toasts for a demanding confectioner. She can be a land dancer for the gods to bring them back to life and lead them towards rejuvenating the world, but in every other aspect she is only a person trying to aid where he can.