I remember seeing the box art for Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA) in a GameStop as a child, and I *instantly* picked it up. The cute art with a dog on the cover was pretty much guaranteed to pique my interest. That was all the way back in 2003 – and I’ve been a fan of games with farming in them ever since.

Fast forward four years to 2007, and yet again the box art sold me on the first Rune Factory on the DS. I remember the plot seemed fairly decent for the time, and I enjoyed the farming – and the combat, even though I’m very unskilled at action RPGs. The first Rune Factory only allowed you to play as a male, and you could only marry women. I don’t remember as many of the marriage candidates from that game, but I still enjoyed it so much that I’ve played every game in the series that was published on portable consoles.

Rune Factory 5 is coming out on March 22, 2022, and from what I’ve seen, it looks fantastic! There are a variety of features in the Rune Factory series that I have really liked over the years, and here are some I hope will be in future entries in the series:

Sleeping Bag

In Rune Factory and Rune Factory 2, we were able to sleep in dungeons to restore our HP. Unfortunately, to the best of my recollection the feature was removed in later entries in the series. You’re able to teleport home to sleep despite the lack of sleeping bag, but I liked the convenience of sleeping in the dungeons.

Playing As The Next Generation

One of my favorite features in the Rune Factory series is the ability to play as your own child in Rune Factory 2. In that game, your adult character has a child; one night, he leaves to do something incredibly important. You then continue the game as either Aaron or Aria (depending on your child’s gender). It was a neat way of continuing the game. Aaron/Aria are also able to “get married” in cute little fake ceremonies with their friends. I’d love to see this feature again in future Rune Factory titles.

Visiting Another Town

In Rune Factory 3, you were able to visit the Univir Settlement, separate from the town of Sharance. I don’t remember Univir being a particularly large settlement, but I thought it was cool to be able to visit another town. I particularly enjoyed Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns (3DS), and think it would be interesting to see a future Rune Factory game with rival villages of sorts. (Inter-village combat tournaments, perhaps?)

Marriage For Everyone! (Kind Of…)

Marriage and relationship equality are incredibly important, but in the first 3 Rune Factory games I played, you could only play as a male and heteronormative relationships were the only possibility. We finally got a female option to play as in Rune Factory 4, but despite having the ability to play as either a male or female protagonist, it wasn’t possible to marry a character of the same gender. However, there was a workaround in the game. In RF4, you are able to enact “orders,” which will let you unlock festivals, shops, and other functions. Once you reach a certain point in the game, you’re able to enact an order from the “Extra Orders” that become available, and the specific order is simply called “change appearance.” You can change your appearance to look like other characters in the game, including the protagonist of the opposite gender. It will even change the voice to that character’s voice. The game technically doesn’t allow you to marry anyone regardless of gender, but you can at least mimic it by changing the portrait, voice, and sprite of your character. Hopefully future entries will continue to be more inclusive. 🥰 (5 is confirmed to have same sex marriage!)

Decoration & Costumes

Customization is one of my favorite features in games – whether it’s for my character’s appearance or my character’s house. Rune Factory 3 let us place cute little plushies in our character’s bedroom. There were also plush options in RF4. Decorating the house is so much fun, and I hope to see some more decoration options in future games!

Starting with Rune Factory 2, we had some basic clothing options. In RF3 and RF4, you can purchase even more outfits for your character. It’s nice to change things up with different clothing options – perhaps at some point the Rune Factory series will also allow us to customize our character’s appearance down to hair color/style, skin color, and more? 🤔🥰

Bossy Minions!

Taming monsters has been a basic function of the Rune Factory series since the beginning, but Rune Factory 4 finally allowed us to tame boss monsters we had faced by letting us fight those bosses again. It takes a decent amount of effort to grow or acquire the items that the boss monsters love, which you can then throw at them until they’re satisfied and decide to join you. It’s a bit of a fun power trip to have a former boss following you around and helping you in battle, and I also really like most of the boss monsters’ aesthetically. I hope that we’ll be able to continue to tame boss monsters!

Recurring Characters

Just as Anna from Fire Emblem continues to appear in that series, Raven and Barrett are recurring characters in the Rune Factory series. Raven first appears in Rune Factory 3 as a marriage candidate. Unfortunately, she’s not a marriage option when she appears in Rune Factory 4. In 4 she occasionally appears in the town of Selphia and will sell items like minerals and monster drops. Barrett originates from Rune Factory 2, where he would not have been a possible marriage candidate due to the lack of same sex marriage in the first place (you only play as a male in 2). But in Rune Factory 4, Barrett makes an appearance in Selphia and examines your character’s equipment. To the dismay of many, Barrett was still not possible as a marriage candidate in 4. Maybe someday… 😢 😂 I really liked both Raven and Barrett, and like the interconnected world of Rune Factory. I hope that we will continue to see characters from past entries in the series.

Rune Factory 5 is one of my most anticipated games for 2022. I cannot wait to farm, fight, and make friends once again. While I’d love to see all of the above mentioned features in this list make it into RF5, I know that not all of them will, but I know I’ll still enjoy the game and am really looking forward to it. 🥰