Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Preview – Building a new action-adventure

The Rune Factory series has enjoyed a long life since its debut back in 2006. Now that we’re nearly 20 years removed from its origins on Nintendo DS, it’s time for a new entry using the current generation of technology and a marked evolution for the franchise. To that end, the folks at Marvelous are gearing up to release Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma on May 30 for Nintendo Switch and PC. It’s an all-new adventure, this time taking place in the eastern country of Azuma – a previously unexplored location in the Rune Factory mythos.

Recently, we had a chance to go hands-on with Guardians of Azuma for ourselves, getting a first taste of several new additions to the series including village building, new abilities and weapons, as well as an updated romance system.

Guardians of Azuma kicks off with a focus on its dual female and male protagonists – Kaguya and Subaru – one of which you’ll select for the duration of play, while the other will remain within the story in a major role. While we didn’t get to explore from the beginning of the game, we started with a breakdown of the major elements players will encounter throughout the story – the main tentpoles of the gameplay loop.

The first of these lies in the farming and village-building elements. Whilst minding the farm has always been central to Rune Factory, the addition of more elaborate village building is new and adds another layer to the simulation experience by expanding it beyond simple resource management.

During the demo, we took part in one of the four seasonal villages, known as the Autumn Village, to raise a village from the ground up – as it were. The way this works largely relies on the amount of land available, and you can clear the path of rocks and other debris using tools your character has on hand too.

Once that’s done, you can pull up the Village Builder Mode at the press of a button, and from there, select what you want to place within the squares framed on the map. From the options available, we could have put down a pathway, or a river, but for the sake of this demo, we wanted to set up a Carpenter to help create even more buildings and decorations later on.

With the building placed, the next step is staffing it, which is achieved by going to the main menu and selecting the appropriate Villager, who then can be assigned a job based on pre-existing Qualities like Hobby Woodworker. From there, you can construct those buildings and decorations by speaking with the person you’ve placed – just note that everything costs gold and materials to make, which are listed aside each item.

During this segment, we also played around a bit with special weapons known as Sacred Treasures. These are more than just the typical sword; they all have unique abilities that can be used both in combat and in the building aspect of Guardians of Azuma. For example, pulling out the Sacred Fan can help dispel cursed ruins within the village. There’s also a Sacred Drum that can speed up crop growth should you be pressed for time, and the equally useful Sacred Sword that can harvest a whole lot all at once.

What’s particularly impressive is how intuitive all of these tools are to use, and they all come together to make the life simulation part of Guardians of Azuma an inevitable time-sink.

From there, we took a look at Guardians of Azuma’s action combat system where we jumped to an area along the coast and showed off some of the variety found in the game, along with a dungeon. 

Like a lot of contemporary RPGs, battles in Guardians of Azuma take place in real-time in the open field – meaning, there is no battle transition, and enemies can attack on sight. In equal measure, the protagonist can immediately fight back, along with the CPU-based party characters.

Normal attacks are mapped to a single button and can be swapped between two equipped weapons (such as a set of bow and arrows or a dagger) at a time. The protagonist can also use their equipped Sacred Treasure, such as the Sacred Sword to deal high damage for a small cost.

Because our character is an Earth Dancer, they have unique abilities that can be pulled off during tough battles using those Sacred Treasures to trigger a special attack. It’s all very fast-paced, and from the bit we saw, it does seem like Guardians of Azuma will allow a healthy variety of gameplay styles depending on the weapons you want to play with.

The last part of Guardians of Azuma we were able to experience was the game’s all-important romance system. A large part of the daily life aspect includes furthering relationships with both male and female characters, and there’s no real limit to any of the eligible romance candidates - including the other protagonist you didn’t play as. 

The characters you can actively quest with are marked on the map, and by going on dates with them, or interacting in general, you can delve into longer scenes that flesh out their stories. Building these types of relationships can go further by chatting with them, giving gifts, and partaking in their favorite activities. 

What we played only represents the surface of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, but it’s a promising start. The cel-shaded graphics, full voice-over, and breadth of gameplay make this one to watch heading into the middle of the year. While we didn’t get to experience much of the story, it’s clear Marvelous is putting forth plenty of effort and there’s no doubt both Rune Factory and simulation RPG fans alike will have something new to enjoy when the game drops in just a few short months.