Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma marks the latest chapter in Marvelous’ beloved hybrid series, blending action RPG, life simulation, and farming gameplay into a cozy, immersive experience. Published by XSEED Games, this title introduces a fresh twist to the franchise with the addition of village-building and management mechanics that elevate the series to new heights while retaining its signature charm.
After sinking 50 hours into the game on Nintendo Switch, I’ve found it to be a delightful, time-sinking adventure with a vibrant cast of characters and a world that’s easy to get lost in. However, while Guardians of Azuma innovates in exciting ways, it also stumbles with some quality-of-life (QOL) changes and a combat system that, while improved, still doesn’t reach its full potential. The game’s visuals are a step up from its predecessor, Rune Factory 5, but they don’t quite compete with the Switch’s best. Despite these setbacks, the game’s cozy atmosphere, engaging village-building mechanics, and lovable characters make it a standout entry in the series.
Developer & Publisher // XSEED, Marvelous
Platforms // Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
MSRP & Release Date // $59.99, June 5th, 2025
Reviewed On // Nintendo Switch
First Moments — You Win Some, You Lose Some
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma kicks off with a surprising omission for longtime Rune Factory fans: no anime-style opening sequence, a staple of the series known for its catchy tunes and vibrant visuals. This absence is a letdown and sets the tone for an entry that carves its path, for better or worse. Instead, Guardians of Azuma dives straight into a serene title screen.
Starting a new game lets you choose between two protagonists: Subaru or Kaguya. I chose Subaru, which started the story with a dramatic clash—Subaru on a white dragon, Kaguya on a black one. After Subaru and the dragon are defeated, the game fast-forwards six months after Subaru awakens in Spring Village. At this point, he has no memory of his past, a staple Rune Factory trope.
Premise – A Story of Seasons
In Spring Village, the sacred tree, said to be home to the village’s goddess, is dying, driving residents away and creating a hazardous blight. The village chief, Sasaki, plans to cut it down, but a mysterious woman visits Subaru in his dreams, granting him a Sacred Treasure: a Drum capable of restoring blighted flora. Upon waking, Subaru finds the Drum beside him and sets out to save the tree and the village.
Subaru completes the ritual, reviving the beautiful goddess Ulalaka and restoring Spring Village’s prized cherry blossoms. Grateful, Ulalaka explains that rebuilding the village will restore her strength, allowing her to use more of her godlike abilities to assist Subaru. Sasaki, ashamed of his rash decision to cut the sacred tree, graciously appoints Subaru as the new village chief.
As Subaru strengthens Spring Village, Ulalaka reveals the event that locked her away: the Celestial Collapse, a cataclysmic event caused by a colossal object crashing into Azuma, fracturing the land and bringing unbalance to its four seasonal villages—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Subaru’s journey becomes a quest to restore all four villages, save their gods and goddesses, and bring harmony back to Azuma.
Along the way, he’s joined by Woolby, a talking Wooly who claims to be the descendant of Azuma’s great dragon. Woolby can transform into a dragon, allowing Subaru to ride him across Azuma’s fragmented, sky-island-like terrain.
Narrative & Setting — Edo-Infused World with a Simple Folktale
Azuma’s setting evokes a Japanese folktale from the Edo period, with lush environments, cherry blossoms, and traditional architecture that create a warm, inviting atmosphere. However, the story is fairly basic, serving as a vehicle to move you from one village to the next. The narrative’s writing isn’t strong, but it shines in character-driven moments where the cast’s personalities bring the world to life.
Cutscenes, unfortunately, are a mixed bag. The series has moved away from its traditional 2D character portraits and has begun to utilize fully 3D models, which is a welcome change, but the execution feels stiff. Most cutscenes feature characters grunting or muttering random words, with only a few story-critical scenes fully voiced. I played primarily with the Japanese dub, which I found solid, but the English dub was lackluster. Characters like Woolby feel entirely different in English, with a jarring shift in tone that doesn’t match their Japanese counterpart.
If you’re looking for a deep, narrative-driven experience, Rune Factory isn’t the best pick for you. The story is serviceable but unremarkable, existing primarily to frame the game’s true strengths: its characters and cozy gameplay.
Life Sim & Characters — The Power of Friendship
The heart of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma lies in its life simulation elements and its memorable cast of characters. Spring Village serves as your home base, where you’ll meet most of the game’s characters, though you’ll encounter a few additional ones in the Summer, Autumn, and Winter villages. The cast is diverse and engaging, with a mix of romanceable and non-romanceable characters. Although the “best girl” Tsubame is not romanceable—a crime that must be corrected—the overall roster is one of the strongest in recent memory.
There are lots of characters with different personalities such as Mauro, a goofy foreign treasure hunter who’s grown fond of Spring Village; Hina, a returning character from Rune Factory 5 who’s now grown up and exploring the world; and Matsuri, the hot-headed goddess of Summer and sword who only knows how to solve problems through battle.
Bonding with these characters is a core mechanic, achieved by chatting or hanging out with them daily, taking them to the teahouse for dango, or taking trips to the mountains. Completing their requests—consisting of simple fetch quests—also strengthens your bond. As you deepen these relationships, you unlock character-specific quests that reveal their backstories and struggles. Some are lighthearted, like Iroha’s quest to make her teahouse the best in Azuma, while others, like Murasame’s curse-afflicted journey, delve into darker territory.
Side Characters — Quirky Inhabitants and Strange Quests
The game also features quirky quest characters like Croakie, a frog-obsessed boy who tasks you with finding and tasting frog statues across Azuma, and a mysterious underground being who sings cryptic songs about Onigiri. Rolling the correct Onigiri down their hole earns you gifts, adding a whimsical touch to the experience.
These interactions, combined with the depth of the main cast, make Guardians of Azuma’s characters some of the most enjoyable in the series. While I didn’t have time to completely explore all romance options, the interactions were so engaging that choosing a partner felt like a tough decision. Here’s hoping for a harem route!
Exploration — Always Somewhere to Be
Exploration in Guardians of Azuma revolves around curing blight across Azuma’s regions, whether by healing trees or dispelling Blightblooms, Poisonblooms, and other obstacles using your Sacred Treasures. You’ll also gather resources like wood, stone, ore, fish, plants, mushrooms, and monster parts dropped in combat.
Frog Statues scattered across the world provide recipes for food, decorations, and weapons. Meanwhile, Jizo Statues reward you with Onigiri for cleaning them, with mysterious beings gifting you items while you sleep. You can fast travel to any dragon shrines you come across on your journey, and the map marks all key locations, which streamlines exploration but reduces the sense of discovery found in games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Each of Azuma’s four villages boasts a vibrant hub area with its own charm. These locales are packed with resources to gather while hordes of colorful enemies challenge your combat prowess. Every hub feels distinct, with Spring’s cherry-blossom trails and Autumn’s golden groves offering unique atmospheres to explore.
Dungeons & Sky Islands — A World of Wonder
Tucked within each village lie one or two dungeon-esque areas. These paths are usually pretty straightforward, however, later areas can offer puzzles and maze-like paths to spice things up. The end of each path culminates in boss battles against towering monstrosities or blight-corrupted guardians. Defeating these foes rewards you with rare loot, and you can replay the fight once a day to farm those resources.
The Skies of Azuma form a fragmented tapestry of floating islands that you’ll soar across to connect the four seasonal villages. This shattered world, born from the Celestial Collapse, is dotted with dozens of smaller isles, each brimming with its allure. Some teem with Azuma’s quirky inhabitants, offering new quests, while others conceal rare resources, hidden treasures, or formidable enemies waiting to be challenged. Though not as sprawling or ambitious as the vast skies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the Skies of Azuma carve out their charm. Mounting Woolby, your dragon companion, and gliding through the dark clouds connecting Azuma is a great touch that makes the world feel grander in scale.
Progression & Quests — Treasures & Trinkets
Combat progression follows a classic Zelda-like structure, with each seasonal village granting a new Sacred Treasure from its god or goddess. There are 8 Sacred Treasures in all, with different abilities that will be needed to save Azuma. Some examples, like the Drum, Parasol, and Fan, serve dual purposes in combat and exploration. The skill tree is divided into Weapons, Sacred Treasures, and Practical Abilities, with progression tied to usage, similar to The Elder Scrolls.
Using a weapon or Sacred Treasure earns XP, which you can spend to extend combos, unlock special attacks, or increase their reach. Special attacks, powered by Spirit Bars that fill during combat, can devastate groups of enemies or stagger bosses. There are also a few different weapon types. Starting with a Short Sword, you will gradually unlock Long Swords, Bows, Talismans, Dual Blades, and more as you progress.
Quest boards and villager requests offer basic tasks, such as killing a set number of enemies or collecting specific materials. These quests repopulate daily with increasing difficulty and better rewards, but they lack narrative depth and feel repetitive. Fortunately, quest-related items and monsters are marked on the map, making them easy to complete alongside other tasks.
Traversal — A Smooth Operator
Traversal is a highlight, with an automatic parkour system letting you climb ledges and leap obstacles without button inputs, resulting in smooth, fluid movement. Ride a monster to get to your destination faster (or slower, depending on the type of monster). The Sacred Treasures also add some great traversal mechanics. The Parasol doubles as a glider, offering a Breath of the Wild-esque sense of freedom when floating across Azuma’s hub areas, and the Fan increases sprint speed, further enhancing Subaru’s mobility.
Combat — One Egg Short of an Omelet
The combat is straightforward but more engaging as you unlock new weapons, Sacred Treasures, and skill tree upgrades. It’s flashy enough, with combos and special attacks masking its repetitive nature. You primarily mash the Y button for standard attacks and use X for Sacred Treasure attacks, which consume Rune Points (RP). Unlike Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, the two don’t combo seamlessly, limiting the depth of the combat system.
Dodging at the right moment triggers a Bayonetta-style Witch Time effect, slowing enemies and allowing you to deal heavy damage. This mechanic is generally great, however, you can’t dodge mid-attack, which makes the mechanic feel less fluid than in other action games.
Party System — Squad Up
As you deepen your bonds with the vibrant cast of Guardians of Azuma, you can recruit up to three main characters to join your party in battle, each bringing their unique flair to the fray. Tamed monsters can also fill these slots. These creatures aren’t just companions—you can hop onto their backs, riding them across Azuma’s landscapes, or steering them in combat for dynamic, mounted attacks that add more to combat and exploration.
Each party member carries a distinct role: Attackers unleash devastating strikes, Defenders can take more damage without falling in battle, Healers keep the party’s health topped up, Buffers enhance your abilities, and Debuffers weaken foes with cunning status effects. The system promises rich strategic depth, encouraging you to craft a balanced team to tackle any challenge. However, the game’s low difficulty slightly dims this shine as most encounters feel so manageable that I rarely needed to strategize. Instead, I picked companions based on who I wanted to bond with most or prioritizing the dialogue interactions over tactical synergy, which, while fun, left the party system’s full potential untapped.
Difficulty — Make It Look Easy
Normal difficulty is a breeze for anyone remotely familiar with action games, with little risk of death unless you’re like me and constantly force Subaru to stay up too late, causing his health to drain. Considering Guardians of Azuma strives to hit the cozy player audience, this isn’t much of an issue.
Bosses are also a piece of cake, but can be a little more fun as you get to try out all of your special attacks and party builds. They also have pretty cool defeat animations. Hard mode offers a bit more challenge with enemies packing a punch, but I still don’t think this is enough to satisfy players seeking a true test of skill.
Village Building — A Leading Experience
The standout feature of Guardians of Azuma is its village-building mechanic, which sets it apart from previous entries and feels like a natural extension of the series’ best elements. As village chief, you customize each seasonal village by placing buildings, shops, farms, and decorations to increase the “scenic score” and fulfill villager requests. These tasks level up the village through unlocking new buildings and allowing you to recruit more villagers.
Villagers can be assigned to roles like farming, woodcutting, mining, herding monsters, smithing, or running shops, with their stats and skills determining their effectiveness. Some villagers have been transformed into powerful monsters throughout Azuma and can be recruited by defeating them in combat.
If you hit the population limit, you can evict less capable villagers to make room for better ones. Certain jobs require the villager to have a specific skill, like carpenters, blacksmiths, and chemists, and they are frustratingly rare. I still hadn’t found an additional carpenter to run the shops in my other villages after 50 hours of play.
Village Management — Great Responsibility
Managing resources is critical, as you need to bring in gold to keep villagers happy. Running out of gold leads to unhappy villagers who may leave, adding a layer of strategy to village management. Your money is the village’s money, so spending it all on cool new armor and weapons can potentially backfire on you if the village expenses outweigh the income. Buildings and decorations provide stat boosts for Subaru, tying village management to combat progression.
This system can be incredibly engaging, letting you optimize your village’s efficiency and automate chores, freeing you up for questing, combat, and bonding with characters. It’s easy to lose hours perfecting your villages, and it’s a highlight that I hope becomes a series staple.
Missing Links — Doesn’t Feel Like Home
A notable missed opportunity in Guardians of Azuma is the inability to upgrade and customize your home, a feature central to previous Rune Factory titles. In earlier games, you could place cooking stations, forges, chemistry tables, etc, in your home, creating a personalized hub. This is gone in Guardians of Azuma, with crafting stations now integrated into village buildings and managed by assigned villagers.
This ties crafting to the village-building system, adding immersion through villagers’ specialized roles. At first, I didn’t know how to feel about the change, but now I think it’s great. However, the static home lacks the charm of arranging your space, and I wish they could’ve found other ways of making your place feel like home.
Additionally, the limited number of enterable buildings—only your home and the hot spring—ruins the immersion. Unlike Rune Factory 5, where shops and homes had distinct interiors, most interactions in Guardians of Azuma occur outside via signposts or villagers tending to you at the entrance. This streamlines gameplay but makes villages feel less alive, a function over form situation that doesn’t quite work for me.
Farming & Other Chores — Less Focus, More Function
Farming in Guardians of Azuma introduces some cool changes and some that don’t land for me. Unlike previous entries, where you tilled soil directly, you now craft Field tiles using gathered materials before planting seeds. This adds an extra step that feels tedious, especially when you run out of tiles mid-farming.
Another change I didn’t particularly love is the removal of physically carrying items, cutting the ability to throw them, among other actions. Items now go directly to your inventory when picked, which is convenient and makes sense in the grand scheme, but sacrifices some of the series’ tactile charm. On the plus side, when your inventory is full, items automatically transfer to your storage box, eliminating inventory management headaches.
Farming QOL — Less Focus, More Function
Most other QOL improvements shine in Guardians of Azuma, however. Essential tools like the hatchet, till, hammer, and fishing pole no longer take up inventory space or require manual equipping. Instead, they activate automatically when you interact with relevant objects. Interacting with a tree pulls out the hatchet for chopping, pressing A in front of a dry field summons the watering can. This streamlines chores and resource gathering significantly.
Farming tools no longer upgrade traditionally, a departure from genre norms. This was confusing as I looked for ways to speed up the slow farming process. Instead, Sacred Treasures double as enhanced farming tools, adding a unique, contextual twist. The Parasol waters multiple plants at once, the Fan quickly harvests multiple crops with a gust of wind, and the Drum accelerates crop growth or revives wilted crops. These mechanics tie farming to the story and make it feel distinct from other farming sims, offering a satisfying sense of progression. The Sacred Treasures can also be upgraded using specific skill trees that enhance their farming capabilities.
Villagers, rather than tamed monsters, now handle farming tasks, unlike previous entries. Their performance now depends on their output stats and skills. Less skilled villagers may miss spots or have lower yields, requiring you to clean up after them, so make sure you’re paying attention to who’s tending to your farm.
An overhead view simplifies farming and village building, giving you precise control over tile and building placement. While farming isn’t as big a focus as previous entries, the automation with villagers, Sacred Treasure integration, and QOL improvements keep it engaging and unique.
Visuals & Soundtrack — A Wilting Rose
Visually, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a vibrant leap forward from Rune Factory 5, which grappled with lackluster graphics and sluggish performance on the Switch. The game’s painterly art style brings Azuma’s Edo-period aesthetic to life, with cherry blossoms fluttering across lush landscapes and traditional architecture crafting a cozy, inviting atmosphere.
Framerate performance is notably smoother than its predecessor, delivering a more polished experience overall. However, there are occasional dips, particularly when booting up the game or waking up to a new day, where loading transitions can feel briefly choppy. Thankfully, these hiccups never escalate to the point of disrupting gameplay, keeping the experience enjoyable.
Despite this glow-up, Guardians of Azuma doesn’t rank among the Switch’s graphical elite. Pop-in and texture loading are noticeable while moving, and character animations drop to jarringly lower frame rates at a distance. If you plan on picking up the Nintendo Switch 2 and upgrading your copy of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, I doubt these issues will persist.
While combat animations dazzle with flair, resource-gathering actions, like woodcutting, feel stiff and outdated, with trees showing no visible damage after being depleted of resources. The visuals aren’t flawless, but they mostly do a good job of capturing the game’s charm.
The soundtrack complements the Japanese folktale vibe but falls short of the series’ high standards. The music is pleasant but forgettable, serving as ambient background noise rather than memorable melodies. Battle themes are more energetic but don’t stand out, and some feel oddly out of place. The standout tracks are the whimsical tunes that play during playful villager interactions, but overall, this is my least favorite Rune Factory soundtrack—a disappointment given the series’ history of catchy tunes.
Final Thoughts on Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma on Nintendo Switch is an ambitious evolution of the series, blending action RPG, life simulation, farming, and village building into a delightful, synergized package. The village-building mechanic is a triumph, offering a rewarding loop of customization and management that sets the game apart. The cast of characters is also among the series’ best, with engaging interactions that make getting to know them a joy.
Exploration and combat, while improved, remain the weakest links, with repetitive mechanics and a lack of depth that prevent them from rivaling dedicated action RPGs. While some Farming and QOL changes take a step backward, the majority of changes innovate and make for a unique experience in the genre.
Visually, the game is a step up from its predecessor, but still has some performance and graphical issues that bring it down. The soundtrack, while fitting, is the series’ least memorable. The story is simple, serving mostly as a framework for the game’s stronger elements, and the absence of an anime-style opening stings for longtime fans.
After 50 hours, I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game’s vast content. While it doesn’t excel in every area, Guardians of Azuma delivers a cozy, immersive experience that’s easy to sink hours into.
This is a must-play for fans of Rune Factory or cozy life sims, as it is a step in the right direction and needs a bit more cultivating to truly flourish.
This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the publisher.
Final Score: 8.2/10
Pros
- Village Building Mechanic is a Highlight
- Great Cast of Characters to Bond with
- Azuma is a Great Setting to Explore
- Streamlined Experience
- Unique QOL Improvements
- Fun Traversal Mechanics
- Tons of Content
Cons
- Combat is Improved, but Still Lacking Depth
- Not Difficult Enough For Action-Oriented Players
- Basic Narrative Could Turn Some Off
- Weak Soundtrack
- Deviates From Series Staple Features
