The Rune Factory series has firmly established itself as more than just a mere "Fantasy Story of Seasons. However, with every series—and every season—there must come a time of growth and experimentation. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma notably avoids counting itself as a numbered Rune Factory release, and it's evident why once you spend some time with it. Instead of the series-typical Earthmate, you play as an Earth Dancer: a character who uses special ritualized dances in combination with sacred relics to channel the power of Runes.

The change to an Earth Dancer isn't just a cosmetic change to justify a more "Japanese" aesthetic; Rune Factory bucks a number of established series trends. For starters: your Rune Points no longer represent a general pool of stamina—they're now simply pools for using your Sacred Relics. This can be anything from using your Sacred Drum to quicken the growth of your crops to swinging your Sacred Sword to burn down an ice block. The upside is that now it's a lot easier to do your generalized tasks—farming, watering crops, getting rid of debris in your fields, and so on. And because your Rune Points slowly restore over time, you don't have to worry about suddenly passing out in your fields due to tilling too many tiles of earth. On the other hand, you have way more to do, so it's easier to save your Rune Points for just when you need the fancy effects in the field or to attack enemies. Time is now your great equalizer.

Moreover, your farming is now a function of Guardians of Azuma's true central mechanic: being village chief. Instead of bespoke fields for sowing, you now manage the buildable areas of Azuma's villages. While fields for crops are still important, you also need to construct locations like tea shops, blacksmiths and other locations in order for your villages to have the necessary facilities—as well as a source of income. It's an experience curiously along the lines of a long-lost ActRaiser sequel; placing new stores, assigning villagers to man them and managing their placement in order to improve your village. Proper decoration and maintenance of your village grants you points that improve your village's standing, necessary for accessing new facilities or development areas. Better still, each edifice boosts your Earth Dancer's stats. As village chief, you are also responsible for managing and scheduling the many in-game contests and celebrations, albeit at your discretion. The upside is that you don't have to worry about missing one by accident. you'll have quite a lot else on your plate.

The downside is, you'll be stretched so thin you'll have no choice but to delegate certain tasks to your villagers. Every day, a new villager might come to one of your towns and offer their help. Each Villager can be assigned to one task: manning the field, serving as the owner of a local store, gathering materials for carpentry or blacksmithing, what have you. The system is honestly fun, but can feel cumbersome. Many villagers are, frankly, rather useless; they make odd decisions when it comes to crops (they are absolutely sloppy when planting seeds), and they can't attend certain facilities without the appropriate skill (you could theoretically spend days in-game with empty Carpentry stalls because you can't get a villager with the Journeyman Carpenter skill). Also, each Villager incurs a daily fee to cover their wages, which is thankfully broken down for you at the end of each day so you can track your income. You can end up with a lot of useless villagers, with no real way to improve them. You can swap villagers between villages, but your only real option to potentially get better villagers with better skills is by evicting older villagers. Look, man: we live in the middle of a housing crisis, I don't want to contribute to the problem, even in a video game.

Now, how do combat and exploration fare? Pretty well! The combat system is largely unchanged from Rune Factory 5. The lock-on system needs work (swapping between targets is a pain), but it's simple and approachable. Maybe a bit too simple—combat always did feel rather toothless and button-mashy, especially if you travel with a full party. But there are enough details to keep things interesting, like activating bullet-time if you time a dodge properly or having a new aiming mode for ranged weapons. Curiously, Guardians of Azuma also revamped your skill system; instead of increasing a meter with use, it'll grant you points for your various weapons or practical skills. Each weapon and skill has their own bespoke pool of points, along with a pool of generalized points that can be used to supplement them. It's a lateral change from the original system, but an addicting one, with the resulting point-based skill trees making it easy and fun to plan your upgrades and skill progression. I just wish there were more sophisticated upgrades we could earn; after a certain point, there don't seem to be any combos more intricate than the upgraded four-hit maneuver.

At the very least, the Sacred Relics tie into exploration swimmingly, pulling double duty as weapons in combat as well as tools. Every so often, you'll find various Blights in the field that impede progress; your tools can purify them, revealing new treasures or areas to explore. You can also find minor shrines or frog statues, which can grant you new cooking recipes or equipment blueprints. Exploration is satisfying and the fields are a joy to wander through. It's also easy to track enemies that are necessary for certain side-quests. But I do wish it was easier to track which Frog Statues have already been redeemed.

Now, the important part: what about the romantic options? The good news: they're better than Rune Factory 5's! The bad news is, they could be better. You can still put in work to improve your bonds with your platonic friends, and there are plenty of worthwhile benefits to this like unique cooking recipes or unlocking new attacks for your friends. Engaging with people is now more involved than just talking to them and giving them items; you can now choose how to spend your time with each friend, with each person preferring different activities. The romantic options are all engaging, too, with a great selection of personalities and designs. There is even a bit of fanservice, with one romantic option being a returning face from Rune Factory 5. But at six options per gender, with three each being one of the six deities, it feels a bit limited. What's worse, you might find that certain fascinating characters are not romantic options. I was particularly taken with the raven-haired shopkeep Tsubame—only to find she wasn't a romantic option, presumably because she's a smidge older than the rest of the cast. (I am begging Marvelous to realize that the age of 30 is in demand.) Worse still, certain romantic options are locked behind DLC: the Ainu-esque huntress Pilika and the reserved puppet-maker, Cuilang. On the one hand, at least we get more options (and they're great characters). On the other hand, it would've been nice to have these options at the start, plus a little more. As a side-note: many thanks to the translation team for giving us subtitles for the incidental dialogue, it's very charming and very helpful.

Many will be concerned over Guardians of Azuma's performance. Sadly, I did not have a Switch 2 in order to test fidelity on the new console. And unfortunately, Guardians of Azuma on the Switch demonstrates a few instances of framerate drops—especially in the Village of Spring, with all of its fluttering cherry blossoms. The camera can also decide to position itself in completely bizarre locations. Also, character models will sometimes jitter awkwardly if they're positioned on awkward geometry. It's a beautiful game, with the new art style richly bringing the land and people of Azuma to life. And it runs well enough. But I'm definitely looking forward to Guardians of Azuma on new hardware.

Long-time Rune Factory fans are used to the games having a fine degree of jank. Guardians of Azuma approaches jank from the opposite direction; while the performance issues are simply a matter of platform, everything else is at least the result of trying something new. As frustrating as the new villager system might be, the other new systems are entertaining enough to make up for it. Curating your own villages and planning their growth is fun. I can forgive simple combat in the name of new weapon types and the new ranged aiming system. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma gets a "B" as a result of some uneveness, but series fans will definitely appreciate the evolution of long-time mechanics, and newcomers will definitely enjoy the cast and building mechanics