The Story Mode is the basic game (no surprises there), but Newlywed Mode is unlocked once you marry one of the suitors in town. The game contains two gameplay modes: Story and Newlywed.

It is here where you can replay the festival mini-games, which were a lot of fun in its mindless simplicity. These are placed in the Trophy Room, which is in the basement of your house. Upon winning a festival, you are granted with a trophy. These festivals are much more interactive and entertaining from a gameplay perspective, which is genuinely something that older Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games lacked. The festivals take place as mini-games and upon winning, you are awarded with prizes of seeds, food, medicine, etc. Rune Factory 4 Special‘s festivals are fun and interactive, creating much more depth. The licenses themselves are for various things, such as cooking, crafting, forging and other standard abilities in simulation games. The first time this happened, I simply guessed my way through the answers… I passed, but I didn’t feel like I had earned it. This feels weird when you go to get a license and you weren’t prepared for questions. When you become the prince/princess of a village, you can get a license by taking a test, just like in real life. At times, I felt as though these party members were more a hindrance than anything, adding onto your increasingly long list of responsibilities by being mindful of their health. This is Rune Factory’s version of looking after barn animals, and they can fight alongside you as well (think caring and nurturing your eventual ARMY OF DOOM! Ahem… excuse me).

You can also own a Monster Barn, which allows you to also befriend monsters and look after them. You can increase friendship levels with villager NPCs, allowing you to recruit them into your party and have them assist you in combat. This makes grinding to be strong enough to defeat bosses tedious and repetitive, with little variety to further intrigue progression.

For my first ten levels of the game, I didn’t even realise I was levelling up until I actively looked for it as the game doesn’t touch upon this as much as I would’ve liked it to. Combat can also be clunky at times when engaging multiple enemies at once, providing a less than favourable addition to a farming simulator that also doesn’t do anything spectacular.Īs is to be expected with a game that features combat, you level up and battle bosses to progress onward. The combat is enjoyable at a base level, with the ability to use physical or magical attacks, but it doesn’t do much to break the mould like so many before it. Rune Factory 4 Special is a fun and enjoyable experience, combining farming simulation and combat, much like its predecessors.

Cooking license rune factory 4 review