izigame.me

It's Rune Factory 4!
I love this game, so much that I actually own it on 3DS, Nintendo Switch, and now on Steam.
But let me tell you why I love Rune Factory 4.
At a glance, this is 100% not my type of game. Its a farming sim, a dating sim, a grind fest, and an RPG. One of these things I thoroughly enjoy, and the other three I hate. I originally went into Rune Factory 4 with a closed mind because I was told it is similar to games I hate, including Harvest Moon (rebranded to Story of Seasons in its later years due to publishing disputes) and Stardew Valley. People who adore these games told me I probably would hate Rune Factory 4.
And yet, I remember those first 20 minutes turning from "eh, whatever" into "I can't put this down".
I was writing a thesis and stayed up until 4AM playing this game instead of writing my thesis. After all, this was a stupid free game for my NTSC-U 3DS (PAL region gang!), this wasn't meant to consume my life. But it did. And it did again when I said I'd support the devs when it came out on Switch. And it will probably consume my life at a random point again, like right now.
But why?
I think its the magic of the setting because no other farming sim, nor dating sim, catches my attention like this series has. The music is fantastic and I hum these tunes to myself at work over 8 years later.
I love the interactions, I love watching the townsfolk grow as people from Dylas being less shy to Porco's love of food (and me, damn you let me marry Porco!) to learning more about Venti and her actually fairly sad story. Or maybe its the found family aspect that your character and others go through - Doug and Blossom; Margaret, Dylas, and Porco; Dolce & Pico, Nancy, and Jones.
For gameplay, it has a lot on offer, and it gives you the freedom to chose for the most part how you spend your day. It has farming aspects, quick combat aspects, time management, gear grinding (both for items to create and upgrade and just to upgrade your skill), and of course, the dating elements. You can play without dating however it is highly encouraged by the game and it is heterosexual in nature. You can swap your sprite to be male or female at the end of the game or afterwards in a new game but to be clear, this is only once you've finished the game's 2nd arc. I personally am not a fan of this style of option as I feel its a low effort as the characters will still refer to you as whatever you started as not your appearance, but its an option if you would like it. You may be able to download a completed save from someone else and automatically unlock this feature as you could do this with a hacked 3DS (I transferred my save between 2 consoles), however I only can verify from a hacked 3DS perspective that this works, and not the Steam perspective.
I also want to quickly touch upon arc 3, which could take literal in-game years on the 3DS to start; that has been fixed in all versions of Rune Factory 4 Special. You will not have to sleep literal days away, not tend to your farm, friends, animals, and love interests to get arc 3 to happen. Rejoice!
I'll also give it a little bit of a negative for Steam Deck users as its nearly impossible to change names for anything. But I really don't care that my farm is named Selphia, my characters are Frey & Lest, and my barn monsters are just whatever the game defaulted to as I prefer games where they tell the story of a character vs your self-made character. It plays fine a part from that, though I find the control layout for the "XBOX controller" that it registers as as not as comfortable as the Switch/3DS layout.
And I also will say to those who prefer the lighter controller that the Switch Pro and Playstation controllers offer to stay away as the game does not recognise these controllers and instead displays only the XBOX layout (So A and B instead of X and O for example, and inverted A/B). It says its compatible with the Playstation controller on the store page, but it did not work for me when I tested it on desktop, instead showing "XBOX 360". You might be better off getting the game for Switch or PS4 if you prefer those controllers.
I don't recommend this game to people who don't like farming sims and dating sims. But if you like RPGs, this actually might be your cup of tea despite that. If you're willing to give it a go, get it on a sale, because its a great game that I never expected to be so invested in.
If you like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Cat Tails, you'll probably like this, and its a great entry point in the series if you haven't previously started. Also, based on the 3DS bundle I got years ago, Shin Megami Tensei IV fans also seem to be fans of this game for some reason, so if you want to step out of your comfort zone, I think its worth it.