Have you finally played through Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley? Never mind, maybe Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will catch your eye when it releases on Nintendo Switch and PC on May 30, 2025. Two years after the lackluster launch of the fifth installment, Marvelous and his team are already ready to reinstate the franchise with a rather special opus. Moving away from the usual worlds inspired by Northern Europe, Guardians of Azuma intends to disorient its loyal community with a fantastical version of feudal Japan. A first for the series, certainly, but there will be no question of altering the recipe for its action-RPG-style farm simulator. Rather, it will be refined with new ingredients. We were able to discover a little in advance what it will be used for with a somewhat disjointed handling of about an hour.
Direction le Japon pour la première fois
The eastern lands of Azuma have lost their luster. The Celestial Collapse, a catastrophe caused by the impact of a colossal and mysterious object, has caused an unprecedented cataclysm that has interrupted the energy flow of the runes. The Gods have disappeared, the crops have perished, resources are dwindling, and the people are desperate... until one day, hope is reborn when one person wakes up from a deep sleep: you. Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will let you choose your hero, a man or a woman, the other becoming a secondary character that you can even marry if you feel like it. Thanks to the powers of the Earth Dancers, it is up to your avatar to save this land and take the lead of a small village. We have known gentler awakenings, but no time to stay in bed, we will have to face this Filth and bring prosperity back to this region.
A region that quickly regains its shine as soon as you roll up your sleeves. If, like its predecessor, Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will be far from the technical warfare and its artistic direction remains fairly conventional, it could well offer some beautiful panoramas. Failing that, it should disorientate fans of the saga by letting them explore this territory never before seen in the license. Exploration will have an even more prominent place in the game, with a world that leans more towards the semi-open side and is divided into several zones. We haven't seen enough on this point, but we should find all the movement mechanics of a modern open world. It will always be a question of breaking and harvesting everything that can be broken in one's path, with a little endurance, to stock up on resources using various tools that are naturally unlocked as one progresses. A small peculiarity specific to this episode and its story: it will be necessary to purify the polluted lands in order to hope to fortify them, but we have not seen enough to gauge their interest.
Four entire villages to renovate
Unlike Animal Crossing, Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will not be a walk in the park. It is indeed always a question of ensuring the exploitation of one's village while repelling external threats. The action-RPG combat system is too classic and is content with few mechanics and reduced to their simplest form so as not to overwhelm those more interested in the simulation dimension of the game. Some new features are there despite everything, including powers linked to the status of the telluric dancers, but also and above all the arrival of talismans, much requested by the community, and the bow, completely cheated from what we have seen. Let it be said, the strength of Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will not lie in its bland dungeons nor in the fights which are cruelly lacking in punch and whose difficulty seemed non-existent to us during this first handling, even in a save propelling us much later in the game. In any case, this is not really what we are looking for with a title of this caliber and we assure you this spin-off looks more promising on all the rest.
The heart of the gameplay will be the simulation aspect. The farming aspect remains largely similar to what the license and other games of the genre have accustomed us to, but the whole point will be the reconstruction of entire plots, modifiable at will. More concretely, we will first have to restore color to our first village by managing its agriculture, its inhabitants and by building new infrastructures. Then quickly we will find ourselves with three other small towns under our tutelage, all on the theme of a season. The management dimension should therefore be a little more in-depth as we progress, with several farms and the resources that go with them to manage or even villagers to transfer, all having a preferred area (sales, agriculture, ore, etc.). We'll obviously have to wait for a final version to decide, but the promise is pretty nice.
Love is in the meadow
Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma should leave a prominent place to freedom. You can indeed place the traditional buildings and decorations of Japan as you see fit and we can already imagine the most creative ones making us pretty towns. Tea rooms, forge, bridges, cherry blossoms, everything is there to give you material to make beautiful things. Where the game stood out the most during this first hands-on was with its building and farming mechanics, which proved relatively intuitive, notably thanks to an aerial view that makes life easier and a useful little assistant that makes certain tedious tasks. Budding farmers will therefore not be alone in this time-consuming undertaking with a well-oiled gameplay loop.
As always, a gallery of colorful characters, as the series is so fond of, will accompany them during their journey, some of whom may come to beat up monsters and explore the surroundings with us. And who knows, maybe they will end up married by the time the world is saved? Once again, it will be possible to marry one of the game's 16 suitors, and there's no need to activate Karine LeMarchand's gaydar: they will all be seduced regardless of your character's gender. Whether it's helping to run a tea shop or lending a hand to a friend who's training, Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma will feature short sketches with your aspirants, who for the first time in the franchise will all be fully voiced to make everything a little more immersive.
We're waiting for Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma... without rushing too much
An hour going from one save to another on a game of this caliber is far too little to form a concrete first opinion. The mix of adventure, farming, and social work still works well in Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma, but it should be lacking in terms of combat, which is far from exciting. While there is a real graphical leap compared to its predecessor (the bar was very low), its technical finish still leaves something to be desired, especially on PC. All that remains is to see what the few new features will actually be like when they finally release on May 30, 2025, on PC and Nintendo Switch.
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