Rune Factory 4 has very good ratings, but it was not advertised very well and suffered as a result. The company who made it filed for bankruptcy, too.
Pros
- It's basically Harvest Moon where you fight monsters. The first game was literally titled Rune Factory : A Fantasy Harvest Moon.
- There's 6 girl love interests and 6 male love interests who you can date, marry, and have children with.
- There's a lot of humor and the item descriptions are usually really funny.
- The characters are all wacky and kind of silly but that doesn't stop them from having real personalities and issues that make them really well fleshed out characters.
- The combat system is really fun and you can choose between lots of different weapon types and magic and even improve them to make them better or have extra effects.
-You can tame monsters, even the boss monsters. They can even help you with watering your crops or by gathering materials.
- There's a lot of references and characters from the older games but they're more throwbacks than anything important so you're not really missing anything if you don't get them.
Cons
- The plot can fall pretty flat sometimes and people are pretty unsatisfied with the very last dungeon for this reason.
- While the goofy characters can be a plus for some people (like me) it can also be a bit cringy at times.
- No same sex relationships.
- You take the role of a prince/princess and have to develop the town. You don't start with all the shops or festivals.
- Farming can get pretty repetitive and boring.
- It can get pretty overwhelming since there's so much to do ; farming, dating, monster fighting, fishing, cooking, crafting, and later you can even run a store.
- The tutorial is pretty long, and a lot of features require you to unlock them.
