YMMV / Rune Factory 5

• Base-Breaking Character: Fuuka as a love interest. Fuuka talks in a childish manner, with lines such as "Yummy food makes me happy. Yucky food makes me sad,"; behaves immaturely (Fuuka cannot resist touching "sparklies", even if that sparkly is a rare ore or a cursed object); and has a youthful appearance, which has raised concerns over her age and whether she's mentally and physically mature enough to be dating the protagonist. The debates around her (and a few other characters to a lesser extent) got so bad that the subreddit for Rune Factory banned all discussion over the perceived morality or validity of love interests due to constant flame wars. The fact she speaks complete gibberish in the form of growls, barks, and purrs (the translators had to make up a language from scratch for her speak in the English version ^note  Source - https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/12599-rune-factory-5-interview-the-localization-team-on-fuuka-their-process-and-big-achievements) in the original Japanese version does not help matters. There's even a mod for the PC version that makes Fuuka look older. To a lesser extent Cecil has also attracted controversy due to him looking much younger than the other bachelors.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Green Peppers, Pumpkins and Strawberries are still some of the most profitable ways to earn money from early to mid and maybe even late game since they're safe choices before you jump to tougher, more demanding crops like Pineapples. Although annoying to harvest manually and prone to clogging your Shipping Bin they quickly turn into a huge profit once you grow them, especially if you use Formulae or Ignis Crystals to quicken their growths and they also regrow (as long as you keep them healthy), allowing you to have a steady income to invest in any other areas you need.
• Contested Sequel: Rune Factory 5 is generally agreed to have less content than Rune Factory 4. Whether the game is bad, okay, or good, or whether its quality is justified due to the series' Development Hell; justified due to the software and hardware ^note the game was made in Unity, which can struggle to run on the Nintendo Switch; justified by being a fully 3D, open-world game ^note albeit not the first; or not justified at all are all up for debate. People who consider the game bad generally do not outright hate it, but find it disappointing compared to Rune Factory 4.
  • Debates over how the story compares to Rune Factory 4 also exist. Some find Rune Factory 5's story to be blander and more predictable than Rune Factory 4's. It is also worth mentioning that Rune Factory 5's story is only 2 arcs, where Rune Factory 4 had 3 arcs.
  • A lot of people don't like how the maps are laid out and think they're too empty compared to previous titles. Other people dislike how game looks and compare it to previous console titles or outdated Playstation 2-era games. Other people disagree with both points or think the game is justified for the above reasons.
  • The game has difficulties running on the Nintendo Switch, with frame rate drops and other (usually minor) glitches being a common occurrence. For some fans, the inconsistent frame rate and glitches are enough to damper or ruin their enjoyment of the game. Most fans have no problem with the game with these issues, however, or just get used to them.
  • A few players have complained that characters seem less "lively" in Rune Factory 5 than in Rune Factory 4. Reasons given for these complaints include the lack of environment-related and inter-character-related dialogues. Many characters only seem to interact during one-off events, and characters do not react to pieces of the environment or certain locations. ^note Priscilla may have an exception and react to being in a dungeon, but it's unclear at time of writing whether this is actually the case. Another factor is that, for whatever reason, characters in Rune Factory 5 are more likely to recycle dialogue than in Rune Factory 4, with the latter in particular having been praised for how varied and non-repetitive the dialogue is. Yet another factor is that group chats are practically absent in Rune Factory 5.^note In Rune Factory 4, if certain non-playable characters were in the same location together (such as someone's house or a festival), special group conversations could occur where the characters talk to each other about this or that. In Rune Factory 5, the only time characters talk to each other is when all of the bachelors and bachelorettes are present at the festival, including the ones unlocked later in the story.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Any enemy that can cause the protagonists and allies to instantly faint, regardless of how much health one had beforehand. Multiples of them can spawn at once and ones like Hell Ghosts teleport around the room, including behind the player. Players who encounter these types of enemies unaware of their gimmick and without any faint-resistant equipment or status buffs usually gets confused to how they did so much damage in so little time.
  • Spellcasting enemies like Mermaids, Fairies and Magicians most of times have attacks that are difficult to dodge and do a lot of damage unless you're wearing elemental protection. Magicians have a variant, the Death Witch, that has One-Hit Kill ranged attacks and the High Sorcerer which uses the Gatling Comet spell against you and on higher levels, at Rigbarth Maze, this spell can destroy your entire party if no one has high fire resistance, and oh, they also tend to come in groups too.
  • Dragons in Rigbarth Maze, especially Yellow ones that start showing up as early as 3F. Yellow Dragons hit like a speeding truck full of bricks and if you haven't upgraded your equipment to Orichalcum grade yet there's a fair chance you won't deal any damage against them. Other colored dragons aren't as tough, but they still hit very hard and Red Dragons have a fire breath attack that can hit you multiple times ignoring your invincibility and if you're not grossly overleveled or with protection that attack CAN get you from full health to critical or simply give you an unwanted trip to the clinic.
• Difficulty Spike: Everlasting Darkness is a huge leap in difficulty and can catch many players off-guard especially since this a game that's relatively easy on them. Everlasting Darkness is a long and difficult dungeon that drains a percentage of your RP just by being there with the drainage becoming worse the deeper you go into it. It also has enemies specifically designed to punish reckless players with some that have One-Hit Kill and others that create a static, but very damaging area of effect attack. Another problem is that the first time this dungeon becomes available all facilities in Rigbarth will be shut down until it is cleared, so if you've been relying solely on Serendipity General Store to cook food (Flour and Chocolate) you're in for a nasty surprise as the store won't open again until you finish the story events in Everlasting Darkness.
• Disappointing Last Level: Calamity's Edge is literally a straight line to the final battle with only powerful monsters in your way. This is even more jarring since it comes right after the SEED Floating Fortress which is one of the larger dungeons in the game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As is usual for the series:
  • There's always at least one character that players wish that they could marry, but the game won't let them. In this game, Terry, Misasagi, Elsje and Radea have left many players yearning for more than friendship.
    • Misasagi is a cool, mature were-animal woman who swears to protect the protagonist, though at least a few players want to marry her to have the adorable Hina as a stepdaughter.
    • Terry, meanwhile, has Dummied Out voice lines suggesting he was either planned as a bachelor or designated DLC, but cannot be married, and seems Married to the Job.
    • Radea is a rough around the edges and comes off as aloof and confrontational, but hides a much sweeter and caring side that leaks every now and then. It helps that she's also a dragon and has some woobie points after being manipulated and used by the game's Big Bad.
  • Among the marriage candidates, Ludmila is insanely popular, dominating unofficial fan polls and getting a ton of fan attention. She's the series first romantically aggressive female candidate, being very open in her affections toward the PC with more than a few extremely suggestive lines... but she's also a Nice Gal who wants to make everyone as happy as possible, meaning that she comes off as quite sweet and lovable, and has a fun personality outside of her obsession with the main character.
  • One of the new monsters introduced in the game, the Ribbitee, is a pink frog that carries a lily pad like an umbrella. Fans instantly fell in love with its cute design, and it quickly accumulated tons of fan art. It helps that some of its Palette Swap versions can be surprisingly vicious, giving it a Killer Rabbit reputation that fans loved even more.
• Game-Breaker: Many examples right here.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Hornets are present as usual and their tendency to spread poison to you or your allies is as obnoxious as ever. Hopefully you have an Antidote Herb on you, if not, get ready to watch your or their HP slowly drop to the point a gentle breeze will knock them out or, if it's you, kick you back to Rigbarth Clinic. Later, more powerful, variants can also Paralyze and (not "or") Seal you. Fun times.
  • Ghosts and Spirit enemies love to disappear for a few seconds and them pop up somewhere else— Ghosts usually try to attack you with their scythes and Spirits will use an elemental attack of their type. Both aren't usually too difficult to kill, but can be a very annoying distraction when fighting other, more dangerous, enemies.
  • Any enemy that knocks you over like Palm Cats are this. It's easy to get knocked and have other enemies to get a few hits in with no way of avoiding it and if you're careless or just plain unlucky you can get stunlocked in a Cycle of Hurting that will make you take a lot more damage then you should had or just punted to the clinic.
  • Dark Sorcerers in Everlasting Darkness are a pain to deal with due to their habit of surrounding themselves in a dark spell that hits really freaking hard unless you have proper elemental protection. And since you'll be in a hurry due to the area's RP draining you might rush right into this attack if you're using melee weapons. They're not terribly difficult, but can make any fight a lot more tedious or annoying than it should be.
• Good Bad Bugs: Mineral ores respawn when you reload a save file. This is particularly useful after the day after the meteor shower, there will be meteors in the world which can be mined for the rare Starfall seeds. They'll break after a few hits, so you can only get a few... Except that saving and reloading afterwards causes the meteors to respawn as if you never touched them. As a result, with some patience, it's possible to get dozens of seeds in a single day.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After Ryker opens the Lackadaisy's door by picking the lock, Martin says a life of crime might suit him. Later on, if you date Ryker, you learn he's a thief, albeit an honorable one.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: One of issues is that the game feels too easy even on Hard difficulty (Early Game Hell notwithstanding).
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Many people noted that the game is shorter than its predecessor in both main story and post-game contents.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A common complaint from reviews and some fans is that Rune Factory 5's gameplay amounts to "Rune Factory 4, but 3D". The lack of innovation irks them.
• Junk Rare: Literally. The Rare Can is difficult to find, but has its use since it can increase the drop rate of rare items if you upgrade a weapon with it.
• LGBT Fanbase: The reveal that the game would finally allow the protagonist to have a romance with the same-sex and get married to them has gained the game this.
• Narm: The equipment on your character carries over to cutscenes, so you can completely ruin the mood and tension by making them wear a ridiculous hat or the Cheep Cheep Sandals which makes every step they take do a high-pitched squeak.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The noises the babies make are absolutely adorable.
  • The Skill Up and Level Up jingles are still a delight to hear.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks the story is good, but will admit that the gameplay is at least the better aspect in comparison.
• Polished Port: The PC release fixed many of the performance issues that plagued the original Switch release.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Enemies that have the Faint attribute. There's no way to tell which ones have it without being punked by them meaning you'll either have to reset or stomach a (possibly) big money loss due to being sent to the clinic. Normally enemies with Faint attacks are left to late, around very endgame, but here you can face ones as early as Lake Yumina (Sirens and Amphibitees).
  • The lack of Invisible Stone can be this for people who dislike how intrusive and immersion breaking the head accessories can be. Previously you could "hide" them by upgrading one with an Invisible Stone, but this material isn't present in the game, so if you don't like a certain head accessory you'll have to make do with Light Ore forging hairpins or something else.
  • The Level 3 stores renovations. All of them require ridiculous amounts of lumber and material stone to build, 2,500 Material Stones and 4,000 Lumber for each building on top of a hefty price in money and points as well.
  • Buying Material Stones and Lumber from Heinz's rotating stock is tedious. Since you cannot buy them in large bulks you have to keep the button pressed until your inventory is full, chuck everything in the material bin (having one stationed in Heinz's shop helps), rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
  • The Record Player allows you to hear music from previous games which is nice, but the problem that is that if you enter any location, be it a shop or elsewhere, or even warp inside Rigbarth, or even Ride monsters, the music will reset to its default theme which is pretty inconvenient.
  • The furniture placement mechanics in Rune Factory 5 have left many players frustrated. Even placing items next to each other requires exploits and a bit of skill to pull off due to pieces of furniture having a notable Invisible Wall around them. ^note One such exploit is that items destroyed via weapons and tools lose this wall, allowing furniture to placed right next to each other without issue. Furniture destroyed this way (and not through the "destroy" menu option) regenerate when the protagonist leaves and re-enters the room, so the "destroyed" furniture is not lost in the process. Furniture also can't be placed against the wall at all, for some reason. Furniture in Rune Factory 4 could be placed against the wall and right next to each without trouble.
  • When buying furniture at Palmo's, you can only send home one item at a time since you need to free the spot it gets sent to. If you want to buy exactly two items, you can send one and carry the other, but once you try buying three or more at once it starts to get seriously inconvenient. The Earth Farm Dragon gives a second furniture-sending location relatively near home, but even with that there's only so much you can do without having to fast travel back and forth.
• Scrappy Weapon: Hammers/Axes. In this game they lost the very useful a spinning dash attack that could be used to clear tightly packed groups of enemies, its charge attack is still unimpressive and its slow attack speed doesn't match the DPS of Short Swords/Dual Blades. There's very little reason to use them other than to create them for party members or train the skill to unlock new recipes and crossforge a Hammer/Axe into another weapon type in late game.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Combat is much more lenient and merciful compared to Rune Factory 3 and Rune Factory 4, since you have Mercy Invincibility, enemies are generally less aggressive this time around making you much less prone to getting beaten from every side.
• Sequelitis:
  • Over all, the reviews for Rune Factory 5 are lower than its predecessor, Rune Factory 4. Websites such as Metacritic support this view, with Rune Factory 5's combined score being 70 (out of 100) from critics and about 6.6 (out of 10) from users. In comparison, Rune Factory 4 for the 3DS has a 78 critic score and a 8.1 user score, and Rune Factory 4: Special Edition on the Nintendo Switch has 81 critic score and a 8.0 user score. Reasons given for the comparatively low reviews include the game feeling too similar to its predecessor and failing to stand out, the game's struggling to run and dropping frames randomly, the game's lack of stability / glitchiness, the game's unimpressive in-game graphics compared to other games on the Nintendo Switch, and/or the game leaving many reviewers with the impression that it was either rushed or unfinished. Rune Factory 5 isn't generally considered a "bad" game, but it is widely considered lackluster compared to what came before it.
  • Multiple threads on Reddit had the original poster asking which game to try first: Rune Factory 4 or Rune Factory 5. In response, most users recommended Rune Factory 4 over Rune Factory 5 for one reason or another. Many of those reasons are on this YMMV page. Another reason is that, simply put, a digital copy of Rune Factory 4: Special Edition on the Nintendo Switch is cheaper than a new copy of Rune Factory 5. ^note In USD and ignoring discounts, Rune Factory 4: Special Edition is priced at about $40, while Rune Factory 5 is priced at around $60.
• Shipping: Outside of the dating sim aspect, many fans like to image which characters might pair up if the game had a "rival couples" feature like earlier titles.
  • Many fans have noted that Reinhard and Beatrice make a fairly obvious couple, given their Lady and Knight dynamic, the fact that they live together, and the fact that Reinhard already acts as Beatrice's platonic House Husband.
  • Lucy and Priscilla's canonically close friendship has many fans see them as a natural choice for becoming more than friends.
• So Okay, It's Average: General consensus is that even though Rune Factory 5 suffers from a degree of Sequelitis, it's still a good game— far from exceptional, but also far from being a plain bad game.
• That One Boss:
  • Medusa from Thundering Wastes. This is a boss that you face pretty late in the game, but it's much stronger and more aggressive than anything else you've faced before and the boss has several attacks that can hit you just in the right timing as your post-hit invincibility ends. If you're careless here this boss will make short work of you.
  • Warden Gideon of SEED. After so many easy bosses you face one that's very aggressive and doesn't give you much breathing room to dodge attacks, let alone land a few on them. It's a fight where you have to fight smart and trying just to throw attacks might get you killed very quickly.
  • Arachne in Rigbarth Maze 16F. It's a boss with far more health than anything else you've fought, hits much harder than any other enemy up to this point and it has a nasty poison attack that hit multiple times and does so much damage it can knock you out before you even have a chance to heal up if you don't get out of the way in time.
• That One Level:
  • Everlasting Darkness. This area will constantly drain your RP, faster the deeper you go inside it. The first time you enter, you're not able to bring the Rigbarth townsfolk with you ^note you can bring your monsters, however. Some of the enemies here are pretty tough and this is the first area that has Hell Ghosts, enemies with Faint attribute.
  • Thundering Wastes has lightning strike the player similar to Kelve Lava Caves' fire geysers and Meline Crystal Caverns stalactites, however, the lightning will zap wherever you're standing if you're not constantly moving whereas the geysers and stalactites positions are fixed.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Terry's "Tame 50 monsters" sidequest. Not only it's going to take a lot of time, but it will also take a lot of money and materials to build enough Monster Barns.
  • Fully renovating every building takes an enormous amount of wood and stone, enough that it's impractical to gather them all manually. It's far easier to purchase them from Heinz's rotating stock, which still takes an enormous amount of money (over 3 million to buy enough for one level 3 renovation).
  • Any weapon or crafting recipe that requires Rune Crystals, Rune Sphere Shard, General's Orb, or Null Symbol. Rune Crystals are found by smashing the rune ores you find around the game, the rest are dropped by Gideon and the Fathomless Dread but are extremely rare even with methods of increasing item drops.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The drop rate for monsters was lowered between Rune Factory 4 and 5, making drops from boss monsters in particular lower than in Rune Factory 4. This change encourages grinding and use of the newly-added Seal spell, but quite a few fans would rather not have to grind, especially since boss monsters only show up once a day — and the Seal spell is a huge RP sink when used for item farming, even if you've been using it regularly.
  • In Rune Factory 4, players could force shopkeepers to sell items by adding a shopkeeper to the player's party and bringing the shopkeeper to his or her shop during its open hours. In Rune Factory 5, this useful trick no longer works. Fans in particular miss this feature because Rune Factory 5 also has an issue with shopkeepers not opening their shops on time or leaving their posts, which prevents the player from using shops. Murakumo in particular has an issue where he will go to take a few-hours-long bath during his working hours, limiting what the player can do at the bathhouse until he returns to the front of the bathhouse. The original Japanese release of Rune Factory 5 also had this issue to such an extreme that there were some days he would be gone for almost all business hours and you could only reliably get to use the bathhouse on rainy days as that would keep him indoors, but it was fixed in a patch.
  • Mining and Logging is slower since you cannot use the three quick strikes like in previous games. You can't use repeated strikes with the charged Hammer or Axe farm tools either which largely diminishes their utility when clearing areas with lots of Stones/Stumps or large clusters of mineral rocks.
  • There is no longer an option to disable things like rocks, weeds and branches from spawning on your farm.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: SEED was a unit created to help people caught in the fallout of the conflitct in the dissolution of the Sechs Empire, and Doug mentions he's been helping people too as a form of atonement for his past actions. This could've been used as the setting for more characters like Lynette, Kross and Brodik and maybe a way to really showcase more of the former Sechs Empire, now known as the Sechs Republic. But nothing of this is really explored besides some very occasional handwaves.
• Tough Act to Follow: Rune Factory 4 is often lauded as the best game in the series for its more serious story, a charismatic cast and a lively world with many little secrets scattered around it. While Rune Factory 5 makes a valiant effort to follow up, it's still generally considered a weak to average entry in the series.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The Seal spell you gain from SEED is purely optional and you can spend most of, it not the entire game without using it save for Wanted monsters which are also optional. Boss battles indicate this could be used for more strategical approaches, but it hardly makes a difference since most of them are easy enough you don't have to rely on it.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Reinhard if he's your lover. The main conflict is his loyalty to Beatrice and dedication to his job, while giving little thought to the protagonist. Nearly every resident in Rigbarth gives him a hard time for putting Ares/Alice second. His behavior towards them is chided by Simone and Beatrice while Yuki criticizes him for acting heartlessly cold towards them (for a granny who never judges, that certainly felt judgmental). Later on, Ludmila and Scarlett outright threaten him. Considering his backstory is that he lived in poverty and only escaped when Beatrice's father, the king made him a knight and only wishes to repay his generosity, it's understandable why his job and Beatrice are more important to him than anything else.
  • While not portrayed unsympathetically, Fuuka's residence in Rigbarth is the result of her getting kicked out of her village for breaking the rules of the no-no vase, no looking, no touching, no opening, and unleashed a monster that would eat happiness. The authorities of her old village clearly didn't secure it well enough if tribe members can't even look at it.
  • Martin. He's supposed to be equally responsible for every squabble he has with Ryker, but they're always due to Ryker knowingly messing with Martin. An example being their fight in the Great Tree Plaza with Ryker openly mocking Martin that he hasn't achieved his goal despite his work ethic and it means he sucks. It gets highlighted on both of their wedding days where if the player marries Martin, Ryker initially makes it clear his good wishes are only for Ares/Alice. When Martin initially thanks Ryker for snapping him out of his funk, decides he would've figured out the same advice eventually and retracts his thanks. Ryker somehow has the gall to get upset and questions who the childish one is now. Ares/Alice intervenes telling them to pretend to get along for today. If the player marries Ryker, he complains about dealing with Martin "straight out of the gate" despite Martin deciding its best "get the worst part out of the way first" as a way to be considerate only for Cecil to chide them both. While he could stand to nag Ryker's laziness less, he's really just talking back after Ryker provoked him.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Many fans question the speedo-short (tights/underwear???) things that Misasagi and Radea wear. Radea's outfit in particular seems to be mishmash of things and has the skimpiest speedo-short thing of the bunch. She also garnered a few redesigns on Reddit (and a mod on Nexus Mods) for her strange outfit, most of which give her proper shorts or pants.

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