Salt Man

So... I walked out of the theaters last night both satisfied and... somewhat confused.

SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

(( TADC THE LAST ACT SPOILERS BELOW, TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT ))

Wow, it's almost as if Rune Factory 1 to 3 were years of trial and error into perfecting the formula and setting up the foundations for 4. It's almost like 5 was developed during COVID with most of the original devs from 4 gone.

Rune Factory 4 was lightning caught in a bottle. It was the byproduct of years of trial and error going from RF1-RF3. It's been stated that RF3 was when the formula was "perfected" following RF1-RF2's clunkiness and their experimenting with RFF. Then RF4 further refined what RF3 got right. RF5's problem wasn't it being fully 3D. It was that it only considered what RF4 got right while failing to understand just exactly what RF4 had to learn from RF1-RF3 to get to that point.

That and there was also the pandemic that threw a wrench into development. In effect this resulted in cut content and poor performance. People vilify RF5 like it was some rug-pull scam and not an unfortunate set of circumstances. Even if it wasn't quite RF4, they've proven that they can make a newer RF game that's stellar even with its experimental elements. RF Guardians of Azuma is proof of that. And RF6 will probably use the lessons from that and RF5 to further refine the experience.

Also, just going "it was better when it was all top-down" is a generic blanket statement because the key assumption is more focus will go back to dynamic town events and npc dialogue.

Here is Elrentaros Wanderings / Rearsekai, a game developed by Hakama and published by Bushiroad with Hashimoto leading the helm with zero interferance from Marvelous and with Minako Iwasaki designs.

It uses the top-down formula so it means more budget and effort should have gone to character stories and gameplay, right?

... Oh. Oooooooh.

I get it. RF4 is beloved. I've spent hundreds of hours across the JP 3DS version, the US 3DS localization and the Switch remaster. But the fact that the series is still alive and that GoA did successfully despite the backlash and loss of trust over how RF5 turned out is a miracle in of itself.

I'm glad Marvelous is still trying to thrive somehow amidst the era where 3D Open World Action Gacha games overshadow everything.

I think about how a single Hoyoverse character will have more fan-content than RF combined and that is scary to think about but alas.

Then cue QRTs and comments who recognized Xiao Pai forgetting this wasn't a popularity poll and saying things like "Not Meg, not Dolce, not Forte?" or "Meg over Xiao Pai any day" and HOLY MEDIA LITERACY.

It's a rhetoric I see on Twitter that's usually done to clap back at chuds and incels in gacha fanbases who overly project or self insert into male protags while lionizing them as some harem protag; but I always find it wild whenever Hoyoverse/Genshin/Honkai/ZZZ players say shit like "The male protag looks like a twink, he is NOT wooing or pulling any women" and idk how they'd react to how Rune Factory male protagonists are designed in a series where you can romance, marry, and start a family lmao