Monty Huus

I've loved Harvest Moon since the Super Nintendo games, and Rune Factory 1-3 are still some of my favorite games of all time. The characters had so much life, so much depth, personality; and they genuinely made me laugh and smile. Rune Factory 3 is definitely the best, and Pia is the greatest. I can't review Five without comparing it to the previous games, and the more I think about it, the more I realize; it's just not very good. The story so far is a copy of the previous ones, protagonist has amnesia, starts working the farm to get his memories back while defending against the evil army of invaders, and that's fine; it's worked for all the others. More and more I realize, they just didn't really take any risks with this game, it's so generic, I just can't get in to it. I'm still holding out hope that the characters have a little more personality than what I've seen, but so far they're all just so boring and cliche. Fuuka being the only exception, in that she's got this feral animal aspect about her. All in all, I'd probably rate the game a 4/10. It's not bad, but it's just not very good either. And the lag is just constant, which makes the already slow pace of the game seem all the more tedious. I want to hold out hope for the franchise, that they're not just going to keep milking the name and putting out these uninspired shells of games, but as it stands; I can't recommend this game as it is now. Full disclosure, I haven't played through the whole game yet, so I could be mistaken about some things (aside from the lag, there's no excuse for how much lag there is in this game.) But even playing through it feels like a chore with how sluggish it is. The combat is good, not great, but improved from previous games to be on par with mobile games. That's about the nicest thing I can say about it.