If you’re a big fan of Rune Factory, you’re already scouring pages for informational tidbits on the first PC release of the Rune Factory series: Rune Factory 4 Special, wondering if you should play it for PC even if you have it for Nintendo Switch. If you’re new to Rune Factory, you might wonder why you should invest in this version.
I’m going to lay out exactly why both fans and newcomers will enjoy RF4S for PC.
Game Basics
From world exploration to basics of combat and farming, there’s plenty of ways to immerse yourself in Rune Factory 4 Special and the world surrounding Selphia. If you’ve already played the game, you’ll have experienced these yourself, but for newcomers this is just an introduction into a memorable gaming experience.
Combat & Weapons
You can engage in combat in whatever fashion you prefer with a large array of weapons to choose from. If you prefer long and pointy, the Short Sword, Long Sword, and Dual Swords will be your favorite go-to’s. Blunt and heavy, you can’t go wrong with Axes or Hammers. The Spear allows fighting with a bit of room between you and your opponent, and the Staff allows even more room with the advantage of magic tied into the weapon. Enjoy punching? Fighting with just your fists is an option as well. Staff magic is a fun addition, and you can train in Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, Dark and Love magic to aid you in battle. Once you’ve befriended someone, regardless if they’re a marriage candidate or not, you can take them along with you on your adventures and they’ll fight in battles as well.
Farming & Monster Taming
It wouldn’t be fantasy farming without grabbing a hoe and planting some turnips. Rune Factory 4 Special allows you to live the green thumbed dream. Every season brings more crops to plant, and you can work towards being perfect in your field by adding weeds and other plants to the composting bin, leveling up your farm tools, and leveling your skills. There’s also additional items to increase the quality of your produce, and Runey Days where the cute Runeys rain down and bless your plants.
Monster Taming works by giving a creature their favorite item until you’ve become friends, and then you invite them back to your Monster Barn on your property. They’ll produce various products you can then ship or use in recipes.
Exploring Maps & Dungeons
Maps are relatively stationary, with the monsters rotating and treasure chests randomly appearing. Setting and atmosphere strength are shown in the terrain of Rune Factory 4, ranging from mysterious to creepy and everything in between (Obsidian Manor’s haunting vibes still pull me in, even after multiple run throughs!). Every single area has a personal touch and is fun to explore as the story advances.
Recipe Collecting
There’s a ton of recipes to collect in Rune Factory 4 Special, and they’re not just for Cooking- you have recipes for creating Tools and Medicines as well. It adds a nice buffer to your gameplay by trying to find recipes to make your life a little bit easier in battles or farming, or even finding the perfect recipes to befriend your favorite townsfolk. It feels like there may be a crafting table for everything, but instead of just buying things from a shop, it lets you learn how to make it yourself and possibly for a bit cheaper than you can get it in a store.
Stat Leveling & Item Collecting
Besides your general level, you also have skills to level between 1-99, and there’s a ton of them. We’re talking about skills for searching, fishing, walking, eating, bartering, throwing – even sleeping. At first you might wonder why do I want to level something as boring as sleeping? But as you reach different levels, different things happen, like townsfolk randomly observing and commending you on your progress. Item collecting is a great side-hobby as well, as you can eventually open a shop and barter with people to buy your items, both ones you find and ones you create at your crafting tables.
Farm, Town Building & Royal Duties
You can upgrade your living quarters to add on room, which is necessary if you want to have more space for all the activities- those crafting tables take up quite a bit of square footage. You also can exert your royal input by issuing orders to develop some of the town’s stores, add festivals to the festival roster, or simply increase the size of your inventory – both mobile and at your residence.
Romance
Rune Factory 4 Special comes in first in the series so far when it comes to romancing your favorite candidate, because of the recently added content of Newlywed Mode and Another Episode in addition to a game chock-full of dialogue. We learn so much more about our favorite characters with the added content. It’s fun to experience it after you’ve played through the game, which is necessary if you want to experience Newlywed Mode.
Game Mechanics
A portion of this review covers general reasons why you should play Rune Factory 4 Special; now we’ll be exploring why you should play specifically the PC version. It offers a lot of customization for general gameplay.
Controller Adjustability
Learning the default settings for keyboard and mouse setup had a bit of a learning curve, but after a while the configuration made a lot of sense. Most people will find it preferable to set up a controller of some sort, however, and this is possible by going into the Controller settings on Steam, where you can manually adjust for whatever controller you prefer to use. The great thing about it being on Steam is how you have a choice of what controller you want to use, and how you want it configured.
Detectability of Device & In-Game Instructions
When going screen to screen, it was fascinating to see that the game sensed what was being used to play the game and implemented directions for it on screen right away. The change was subtle, but it was spotted when wandering through the screens for Another Episode and Newlywed Mode.
While learning the new controls for Keyboard & Mouse, there wasn’t a lot of guesswork involved. During explanative segments that are woven into the story, the controls are described very pointedly, as seen in the screen capture below.
While these are small observations relative to the actual game itself, it helps immensely with getting right down to what you want to be doing in-game: experiencing Rune Factory 4 Special.
Ease of Streaming & Screen Capture
What’s better than playing Rune Factory 4 Special?
Playing Rune Factory 4 Special and being able to share it with everyone you know. Especially when you want to convince friends to get into the series!
A big part of gaming is whether the medium allows for easy screen capture/shareability with one’s potential audience, whether sharing with a large crowd or just friends. And one thing many have been excited about is how Rune Factory 4 Special allows for easy screencaps to PC, and with Steam, the ability to stream with minimal extra equipment needed. This is extremely advantageous when sharing the game with others. Even if Rune Factory 4 Special is single-player, this opens it up for more people to share the game that they love.
With a game like Rune Factory 4 Special, there’s countless events and lines to encounter, and every person’s gameplay will be different. There’s an intriguing plot, great character development, and puns galore – you just want to preserve pieces of that sometimes and show it off to your friends.
Steam Bonuses
There’s 38 achievements available to unlock and 7 trading cards to collect. The trading cards also offer an interesting speculation on pairings if rival marriages existed in Rune Factory 4 Special.
Overall Conclusion
If you’re a fanatic about Rune Factory 4 Special, you’re going to want to experience it on PC. If you’re new to the series and enjoy fantasy RPGs, it’s definitely worth the ride. Even after playing Rune Factory 4, and then Rune Factory 4 Special for Switch, playing Rune Factory 4 Special for PC was a wonderful experience because of the captivating story-telling, fun dialogue and lovable assortment of characters encountered.
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