Video Game / Rune Factory 5

Fight! Farm! Fall in Love!

The 7th Rune Factory game, and the first new entry for the Nintendo Switch ^note Second overall, counting Rune Factory 4 Special. It was announced in the February 2019 Nintendo Direct and launched in Japan on May 20, 2021, with a scheduled Chinese/Korean release September 2, 2021, and an international release on March 22, 2022. The game is the first in the series to be fully developed by Marvelous AQL after the series' initial developer, Neverland Co., filed for bankruptcy in November 2013.

After collapsing in the middle of a journey, the bewildered protagonist awakens to the sound of someone screaming for help. All around them rise the trees of an unfamiliar forest, and they realize they've forgotten everything but their own name. Another scream brings them to their senses. The protagonist rushes toward the voice and saves a young girl from a monster attack. Before their strength gives out, they manage to bring her back to a nearby town called Rigbarth. After learning the protagonist has amnesia, the grateful townsfolk invite them to work with a peacekeeping organization known as SEED until their memories return.

And so Rigbarth's newest ranger starts their life in this idyllic town. As they strive to protect Rigbarth from threats great and small, the protagonist becomes embroiled in a conflict that could change the fate of the world itself...

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Tropes:

• 10-Minute Retirement: For Ares/Alice at the end of Chapter 1. They decide to leave SEED once they learn Warden Gideon has been using the organization to further his plans and are unsure if they can be trusted to recover their memories. By the end of Chapter 2, after they spend some time working for Terry, they decide to return and confront Gideon.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: The Axe/Hammer Link Attack will launch the enemy to the sky complete with a *ding* sound effect.
• Aborted Arc: The game slowly but surely gives hints of Ares/Alice's past with a possible cause and even how they were involved in events in Rigbarth years ago during their childhood, but unfortunately it goes nowhere and the story ends with said mystery largely unsolved and their memories still lost save for the incident of Livia's resurrection and Priscila, but you get to see it only if you choose to date Priscila.
• Adventure Guild: "SEED", an organization of peacekeeping rangers that the protagonist becomes a part of. It was originally formed by vigilantes trying to aid victims of the long-lasting conflict between the Norad Kingdom and the Sechs Empire.
• Alternate Character Reading: 亜人, normally read as ajin and typically translated as demihuman, is specifically noted to be read as were-animal in regards to characters like Fuuka or Murakumo.
• An Economy Is You: Misasagi mentions how important the protagonist is for Rigbarth's economy. Given how much money you bring by shipping all sorts of items and how much you might spend on farm tools, renovations for the town, food and basically every other need you feel like, she isn't exaggerating.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The time in-universe between Rune Factory 4 and 5 is left intentionally vague, however, dialogue from Doug and Margaret imply that at least a few decades have passed.
  • How and why Misasagi turned into a monster and whether being able to is normal for were-animals is never addressed.
• And Your Reward Is Parenthood: As is tradition for the series. Like in Rune Factory 3, you can have up to three children with your spouse—the first child can be either male or female, but the second and third will always be male and female fraternal twins. Their personalities can be determined by Dialogue Tree options before they're born, or you can leave it up to chance. Like in 4, the children can also be potential party members.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Rune Factory 5 keeps and adds several small, but important quality of life changes to its gameplay:
  • One of the biggest complaints about Rune Factory 4 was that the events occurred completely at random, with no real indication that they were going on. Rune Factory 5 adds icons that indicate both character events and story events, leaving out a lot of guesswork.
  • You now have access to 2 quick slots to swap between a farm tool and a weapon of your choice which alleviates menuing a bit when exploring dungeons, or anywhere you'd need to constantly swap between weapon and tools.
  • The quick menu can be customized so you can quickly access things like Equipment, Food, Medicine, Rune Skills for any slot. You can choose what you want to see and want you don't so the quick menu doesn't get too cluttered as well.
  • You can quickly pick up items of the same type by holding a button. This helps alleviate harvesting crops and getting items since the backpack stashing animation is noticeably slower than before. Speaking of picking up items, most items dropped by monsters, lumber and material stones are picked automatically by walking over them as well.
  • You can drop all lumber/material stone into the Material Bin, likewise you can put all weeds (but not colored grasses nor Medical or Antidote) into the Fertilizer Bin and all fodder into the Fodder Bin instantly without having to pick one stack at a time.
  • All storage types (Storage Box, Refrigerator...) are interlinked and you can access all of them without having to physically go to them which helps a lot when storing many types of items.
  • You no longer need to have a monster/townsfolk into you party for the Cure All spell to work on them. This helps a lot in keeping monsters healthy while they perform farm work if you don't have enough food for them.
  • AI allies will refrain from attacking Gates, they'll usually only hit them by accident as collateral damage if they're fighting something that's too close to them. This helps prevent issues if you want to farm enemies in certain locations.
  • Unlike the previous game, environmental damage will not affect the AI allies which helps immensely in keeping them healthy since most dungeons have at least one or two hazards that can be difficult to avoid even for players.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Critical Hits and most Grapple Moves from Fist weapons will ignore the defense from enemies, even if your attack wouldn't do any damage at all.
• Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation: Seemingly all of the character portraits and in-game character models have at least one major inconsistency between them, with the most obvious being hair colors being wrong, such as Lucas having either gray (portrait) or pitch black hair (model) and Gideon either being a regular blond (model) or a platinum blond (portrait). Another common place for errors are eye colors being off, such as Beatrice's eyes either matching the shade of blue in her crown (portrait) or being distinctly cyan instead (model), or make-up or markings being absent. Naturally, once the game came out on Steam, a bunch of mods on Nexus Mods sprang up to fix some of these inconsistencies one way or another.
• Ascended Glitch: Rune Factory 4 had certain party members who would heal the player by throwing items at them. However, it was possible to, with good timing and a little luck, dodge the thrown items and pick them up instead, some of which were rare end-game items that could then be used or sold at will. Rune Factory 5 not only included characters who heal the player this way, it made dodging the thrown items much easier to do, turning it from a tricky exploit into a secret early-game grinding technique to reward long-time fans.
• Auto-Revive: If you get knocked out while having the Ayngondaia Lawn^note "ain't gonna die alone" item you'll revive on the spot and use it up.
• Autosave: The game autosaves upon starting a new day or moving between floors in dungeons.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Starfall Crops. They sell for a good amount of money, but you need to find meteors the day after a very rare weather event, the meteor shower, and you're not even guaranteed to get starfall seeds from said meteors. They'll never be sold in stores and you cannot level them up with the sickle either. Even as gifts they are superfluous since there are always easier gifts to please those who like them or recipes that use these crops.
• Back Stab: Attacking an enemy that's unaware of your presence will guarantee a Critical Hit on them. The Sneaking Shoes enforces this helping you to get closer more easily to get that powerful first strike in.
• Beef Gate: You're free to explore all of Phoros Woodlands as early as your first day proper while geared up with only your humble Broadsword and Claymore, but if you venture a little too deep into it you'll face enemies that you cannot deal damage against and will knock you back to Rigbarth Clinic in one or two hits. If you're careful enough you can find some chests with powerful food for early game and maybe even magic or other stuff inside.
  • A good sign that you're at a region you're not supposed to visit yet is seeing monsters with red names. If that happens it'd be best for you to simply run and avoid combat as much as possible.
• Big Damn Heroes: During normal gameplay you can ask for a generic SEED member in the Silo for backup. If you do that said member will show up to heal you if your HP falls too low or you're affected by a Status Effect. This backup won't work for the duration of Chapter 2 since Ares/Alice will have left SEED by then.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Happens when speaking to Fuuka, although the game is kind enough to also translate her words directly to you instead of leaving you guessing.
• Black Bead Eyes: How character's eyes are in their mini-map portraits. Not all of them are black, though.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Short Swords are the easiest weapon to pick up and fight with since they don't have any tricks or quirks you have to get used to. Together with a good shield it makes for a good balance between offense/defense.
  • Spells like Cure and Cure All do just exactly what they mean: they heal you, and if you're close enough, your allies. Far from being flashy and awesome, but vital to keep your party alive and well.
  • Some foods are easy to make and while not giving a lot of stat bonuses they recover a ton of RP: One of them is Toast; it can be easily made with Flour and Oven and a Cooking Skill of 21 will recover 800 RP which is a lot for early to mid-game.
    • Another one is Hot Milk that can be made with a Pot and Cooking Skill of 17 and recovers even more, about 1000 RP at Level 1, if you've tamed a Buffamoo and raise its FP you'll get higher-leveled Milk for a stronger Hot Milk which recovers even more RP.
    • Similarly, Boiled Egg takes only one Egg and a Cooking Skill of 18 and is a great item early on to restore RP and heals considerably more than Hot Milk; which is good for you and to keep monsters from tiring out when doing farm work at early game.
  • Using recipes that use one item, or commonly found ones, and require a higher level than you have in Forging, Crafting, Cooking, or Chemestry is a good way to level your skill up, even more so if you have plenty of RP restoring items.
  • The Heart Pendant is a simple accessory that only increases your skill growth. Is it boring? Yep. Is it useful? Extremely.
• Boss Bonanza: Bandit King's Old Base, Basara's Hideout and SEED Floating Fortress are dungeons in the main story that have boss on each floor instead of at the very end.
• Brainwashed: Happens to a lot of characters, including most of Rigbarth, during the story, with Radea being a notable case, as her brainwashing is essential to the main conflict. All cases result in the Brainwashed acting differently from their usual selves in way that makes them more sub-servant to the Big Bad and the Big Bad's plans. Radea's brainwashing by Gideon causes her to act more rashly, thoughtlessly, and violently than she normally is, and the mass brainwashing that affects the whole town makes everyone affected lethargic, weak-willed, and depressed.
• Bowdlerise: Fuuka in the original Japanese version communicated with barks, howls, and purrs, because the were-animal language is the same that some monsters speak, such as the farm dragons. ^note  Misasagi also turns into a monster, implying a close connection between monsters and were-animalsThe translators for the English version completely made up a non-monster language for her to speak instead, because Fuuka is also the darkest skinned bachelorette in the cast and having her constantly bark in addition to her clunky, immature manner of speaking could be seen as insensitive.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Rigbarth Maze, inside the Guiding Tower. It's full of powerful enemies and holds the materials to craft the best equipment in the game, but becomes available only after the main story is completed. The order to unlock it becomes available immediately on new save files at the steep price of 3000p, but going inside it is not recommended at all since every monster there is more powerful than the ones you face at the last dungeon of the main story.
• Cast from Hit Points: Run out of RP and you'll start spending large chunks of your health for RP-consuming actions instead. The amount of HP used is fixed at 25%, give or take, so you can do things like using high RP consuming actions, like a fully charged Hoe or Watering Can, and recover RP later.
• Challenge Run: After finishing the main story you unlock Extra Directives that carry to new games. One of them make you earn no EXP meaning you can leave yourself stuck at Level 1 on a new game file and another one can make you get no Skill EXP if you really want a truly insane challenge.
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: Wouldn't be Rune Factory without it. One day you'll be focused on farming, on the other you might want to focus on dungeon exploring, on another maybe fishing, or monster taming, or items farming, or maybe you just want to kick back relax and walk around Rigbarth giving gifts and chat with the townsfolk.
• Charge Attack: Once you improve your Farm Tools you can charge them to cover wider areas. For weapons you must level up the skill with each one of them enough, the sole exception are Magic Staves which have it enabled by default.
• Character Customization: Just like previous games there's an inordinate number of skills your character can get better at to increase their HP, RP and reduce RP consumption. Once you expand the bakery Yuki will sell different types of clothes too. Headgear will show in every character, no matter how silly it looks.
• Combat Pragmatist: Fighting by throwing hazardous items on enemies or attacking them before they even realize you're there are two common tactics that can be used not only by the player, but the party allies will do the same if given the chance.
• Combination Attack: Link Attacks allow the player and a villager to perform a special move when the villager's Link Meter is full. Each weapon type has its own special move... sort of. The animations are all completely different, but they're all functionally identical — one big attack to one target.
• Competitive Balance: Most weapons fall into one category or another.
  • Glass Cannon: Dual Blades and Fist weapons are powerful and hit very fast, but you won't get any benefits from shields.
  • Jack of All Stats: Short Sword and Spears are fairly quick, balanced and easy to use.
  • Mighty Glacier: Long Swords and Axe/Hammer weapons hit hard, but are pretty slow. Staves can have potent attacks, but are painfully slow and requires you to charge them, which is cancelled if you dash.
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the accessories you can create is Anette's Necklace. It's even acorn shaped like hers and its effect? Makes you run faster, a nod to how fast she used to run in Trampoli/Fenith. It even makes you kick large clouds of dust like she did too.
  • Magic Shot is also back, and still shaped like Marian's trumpet-like syringe tool. Bonus point for being a staff weapon that actually works like a spear (or syringe) instead.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • There are DLC costumes of characters from previous games for Ares and Alice: Raguna and Mist, Kyle and Mana, Micah and Shara, and, Aden and Sonja. If you have a Rune Factory 4 Special save Doug and Margaret will also visit Rigbarth and an early quest from them allows you to get Lest and Frey's outfit as well. Additionally the Deluxe Edition makes clothing from Rune Factory 4 bachelors and bachelorettes available for the player.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses are mostly immune to Status Effects: Poison, Seal, Paralysis.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Kelve Volcanic Region and Kelve Lava Cave. Unless you touch the geysers spitting hot lava you won't take any damage here.
• Covers Always Lie: Like Aaron and Aria in Rune Factory 2, the only time Ares and Alice coexist is in the animated opening; in the game proper, the unchosen player character doesn't appear.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Certain items, like Sweet Powder, will decrease the defense against elements.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Get knocked out and you'll be sent to Rigbarth Clinic, but the treatment cost gets very pricey.
• Dialogue Tree: Some random conversation has the person letting you chooose how you'll answer a question or an opinion they have. Like previous games, you're free to repeat the dialogue to see every answer and their reactions.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The "Perfect Dash" mechanic. If you dodge at the moment you were about to be hit everything will slowdown for a moment and you'll be able to avoid all incoming damage and use a powerful attack to retaliate. This also works in environmetal hazards like the lava geyser in Kelve Lava Caves and you can use it to pass through them without having to wait.
• Difficulty by Region: The Tag-Team Fishing minigame was made significantly more difficult in the English release compared to the Japanese version. The target area is about half the size, the bar moves twice as fast, and you get half as much progress for Perfects. It does, however, gradually become closer to the Japanese version as your skill level improves.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Upgrading a weapon or armor with the same material will result in this. You can end up with a paltry bonus or on more extreme cases no bonus at all.
• Disc-One Nuke: The first boss monster, the Nine Tailed Fox, is incredibly easy to tame. She only requires the fox bell item that she drops either on defeat or by use of the SEED catch spell. As a boss monster, she has very high stats all around and can easily make mincemeat of any enemies, even other boss monsters.
• Distaff Counterpart: This game introduces the Fleecy monsters, pink versions of the Wooly.
• Distant Sequel: This game takes place several decades after Rune Factory 4.
• Eat Dirt, Cheap: You can feed the Farm Dragons big crystals to improve their farm fields.
• Early Game Hell: Rune Factory 5 keeps the tradition of a rough early game well and alive. You'll barely have RP do to the minimum necessary for farming, but it does get progressively better as you become stronger and require less RP to perform actions. Especially once you get a kitchen and access to RP recovery recipes.
• Eldritch Abomination: Fathomless Dread came from outside of the game's world. Livia even outright calls it by this trope.
• Eldritch Location: Everlasting Darkness. A place so foul it will constantly drain your RP just by being there. It's where Ares/Alice must travel to finally confront Radea and stop her from absorbing the runes from Rigbarth which is severely affecting its population.
• Encounter Repellant: The Rosary accessory. It will prevent enemies from spawning which can be very helpful in places like Rigbarth Maze.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Characters rely much more on their equipment than their levels, which only gives them a modicum of status necessary for combat. Late game the only reason levels are still important is so they'll increase HP high enough to endure the large amount of damage enemies will dish.
• Equipment Upgrade: Like previous games you can upgrade weapons, armors, accessories at their proper crafting stations up to level 10. Magic (not Rune Abilities) can be upgraded as well, but it requires the Crystalabra to be upgraded and giving your magic spell to Lucas who will do so if you have the money or right materials.
• Everyone Is Bi: The bachelorettes and bachelors are attracted to the protagonist regardless of gender, so the protagonist can choose between opposite or same-sex marriage.
• Evolving Title Screen: And Loading screen. As you befriend the townsfolk of Rigbarth you'll be treated to them saying the game's title (sometimes with a joke) and when you load a file one random friend will greet you back.
• Experience Booster: The Star Pendant increases experience gain for the one wearing it.
• Fluffy Tamer: You can tame some really scary looking monsters, including bosses if you have the right items. There are actually very few monsters you cannot befriend in the game.
• Fusion Dance: You can fuse properties from different items (not chemestry or cooking, though) into one using the inheritance mechanic.
• Gameplay Automation: You can asign up to three monsters to help you tend each of your fields on Farm the Dragons, sans your starting field in front of the SEED Silo. They'll water your plants, harvest them and, if your FP with them is high enough, even plant random seeds (as long as you pay them in fodder and money).
• Game-Breaking Bug: Due to being written in Unity^note which is more difficult to optimize for Switch specifically, but easier to release cross-platform the Switch version has major performance issues, usually in the form of lag, and may crash randomly. There is an autosave feature, but a failure to manually save often can easily put players back a day, forcing players to make up lost progress. Patches have been implemented to address these issues, but some problems persist and more patches are on the way.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • It is perfectly possible for characters to refer to you as a SEED ranger in heart events even if the player character has already left SEED in the main story.
  • The cut-scenes don't take into account shop upgrades and unlocked items. For example, one of Reinhard's events features him buying a cucumber from the general store when it's quite likely that the general store in-game neither sells cucumbers nor cucumber seeds.
    • Events in general are isolated from each other and the greater world. This can result in the events screen mentioning that Julian is missing, while Julian is with his family in front of the player.
  • In-game, the player has access to a teleportation spell that is quick, easy to use, and not implied to be able to tracked, with its only limitation being that it can only take the main character to previously visited places. The events and cut-scenes act like this spell doesn't exist, as it would make things such as patrolling the town's borders pointless when someone can just teleport away from the town without physically crossing the town's border in an instant.
  • The were-animal language apparently incorporates a lot of gestures and non-verbal communication, but none of it is seen in game due to limited animations.
• Gentle Giant: Farm Dragons are freaking huge, kinda cute, and allow only a few chosen people, usually Earthmates, to work on their fields.
• Gay Option: Unlike the previous games, this is the first game that features the option to marry a bachelor or bachelorette of the same gender. It was originally developed specifically for the international versions of the game, but was patched into the Japanese versions in a free update.
• Giant Food: The Giantizer crop supplement can make any regular crop or flower grow into titanic proportions. Conversely the Minimizer brings a giant crop to its regular size.
• Giant Mook: Bigger and stronger versions of common enemies spawns in fixed locations of regions. For example, you'll most likely face a giant Wooly at the entrance of Meline Crystal Caverns.
• Grapple Move: Fists weapons allow you to grab a stunned enemy and perform different types of attacks. Some monsters, mainly bosses, cannot be grabbed, however.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: If you grab an enemy using the Fists weapon you can throw it on another enemy or the gate.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Monster taming isn't really explained in depth and most of times you'll be just flinging items and hoping for the best. What else you can do: you can use the Brush tool up to 15 times, lower the monster's HP, hit it a bunch of times with a Love element weapon and use specific items to increase the odds of taming a monster. One thing to note is that boss monsters will accept only very specific gifts for a chance of being tamed.
    • Tamed monsters have their "favorite" gifts just like villagers. Unlike villagers they never speak to you, so the only way to find out is trying and guessing. Usually what they drop/produce is a safe bet, but not all of them are like this.
  • Ever noticed that subtle padlock icon when you lock-on to bosses? When it goes away it means you can use your Seal spell to paralyze and maybe get an extra item from them.
  • Do you want a fast charging Farm Tool? Forge a Rod with Sweet Potato (yes, seriously) and then forge the Farm Tool with the Rod and a Light Ore^note and the quick charging effect do stack with a Magic Ring for an even quicker charge. Don't expect to hear about it anywhere in the game.
  • Learning the unintuitive inheritance mechanic when crafting equipment on your own is a lesson in masochism. Even more so when stuff like Light Ores and Magic Staves are involved.
  • Creating a decent Magic Staff takes a lot of trial and error and the game makes no effort to let you know what materials will give what effects to them.
  • How Rare Cans and 4-Leaf Clovers aid in increasing item drop chances can be very confusing. Rare Can and Clover effects stacks, but multiple of them do not and each party member can have equipment that aids with item drop rate, which includes the Happy Ring. With you and three party members with Rare Can in their weapons, Happy Rings on each (including you) and other piece of equipment with a 4-Leaf Clover (Giant Clovers make no difference), you can bring the drop odds of the Null Symbol from an abysmal 0.2% to 18.8%.
• Happy Ending Override: The collapse of the Sechs Empire after the end of Arc 2 in Rune Factory 4. Like the fall of any major power in the world, the resolution was not peaceful and the foundation of SEED, which unified several town guards/watches, was a necessity to bring order back to these territories. Even decades later Doug still mentions many places need help and many people are still affected by it.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can (re)name Ares/Alice, give name to monsters you tame, name monster barns and even the Farm Dragons. You also can meet a NPC in Rigbarth aptly called The Renamer to change any name for no cost.
• Holler Button: The Greeting spell. It slightly increases FP of townsfolk close by which is oddly useful at festivals.
• Homosexual Reproduction: Same-sex couples can have children by praying to the giant tree in the center of town, and having a baby float down from a flash of light. Hetero couples have kids the normal way.
• Horse of a Different Color: Some of the monsters can be used as mounts to move faster. Ones like Buffamoos can carry two people, but others like Sirens and Palm Cats can only carry one person.
• Hub City: Rigbarth, where the game takes place. It's stated to be somewhere between the Norad Kingdom and the Sechs Republic. The town is located in the central area of the region.
• Idle Animation: If you invite someone to your party and ask them to stay still some of them will make a small commentary and do things like check their surroundings, stretch, yawn, doodle on the ground, etc., if they wait long enough.
• Improbable Weapon User: Keeping the tradition alive you're allowed to create things like cooking utensils, giant vegetable and even fish for weapons. They have an appropriately wacky noise if you hit something with them too.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: At Ares/Alice's own choice. They'll refuse to enter the portal to Calamity's Edge if any townsfolk is following them. But like in Everlasting Darkness you're still allowed to bring monster companions.
• Interface Spoiler: Mild example: The Record Player that can be bought in Studio Palmo can play music from late to endgame areas and can spoil how further you have to go in the game.
  • There are a few ways to notice whether the chest is a real one or a Chest Monster: 1) Check the mini-map before opening a chest. Does it have a red dot? If it does, beat the living crap out of it or, 2) try to lock-on on it, if it does then it's a monster, 3) Check if the chest has a golden arrow icon above it, if it has, it's safe to open, or 4) look at the keyhole, if it has an eye instead it's a monster.
• Item Caddy: Throwing detrimental food items like Failed Dishes and Object Xs at monsters is one way to fight them (and can be quite powerful against bosses), and the game includes items such as the Throwing Ring to support this playstyle. Elsje and Simone also fight like this— Elsje throws powerful food at you to heal you (and it's possible to farm rare food off her in an Ascended Glitch), while Simone throws poisons like Object X at monsters to harm them.
• Item Crafting: A staple in the series. It's divided in several categories: Cooking, Forging, Crafting and Chemestry. Item crafting is also surprisingly complex having an "inheritance" mechanic which allows you to build equipments with combined effects of other pieces. Using and mastering the crafting system is mandatory in order to create the truly game-shattering equipment.
• Jumped at the Call: Sometimes the townsfolk you're friends with will ask if you're free and join your party on their own.
• Kids Raiding the Wine Cabinet: You can give Hina, Julian, and your own children wine and grape liqueur.
• Kid Sidekick: With sufficiently high friendship, even Julian and Hina will party up with the player's character.
• Kill Enemies to Open: Dungeons often lock players in a room and force them to destroy the gate and defeat all monsters to proceed. Alternatively you must deal with them to reveal a switch in the room.
• Killer Rabbit: As per usual in Rune Factory universe don't mistake cute for harmless. Especially the fairy enemies that can mess you up real quick with their magic spells.
• Lag Cancel: Some attacks can be cut short with a dash. This is a necessity when using magic given their lengthy ending animation.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The protagonist, and Lucas, start the game with amnesia, but still recall their names, basic knowledge of the world, and, in the case of Lucas, knowledge of gems and ores. In Kelve Lava Caves Scarlett suffers from mild memory loss after touching a Rune Circle created by Oswald which clues in what could've happened to Ares/Alice...
  • At one point in the story, the villain uses a weapon that, among other things, causes almost everyone in the game to forget things, such as the names of other people.
• Leaked Experience: Monsters in your monster barn will get some of the EXP and level up even if they're not in your party. This is important for Woolies, Cluckadoodles and Buffamoos since higher level means they'll produce larger versions of their items.
• Level in the Clouds: Cloudheim. Which can only be reached (at first) with use of Lucas' powers. The fact you can actually walk on the fluffy clouds does not go unnoticed.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Played straight with monsters, they will become stronger the more friendship they have with you. Downplayed with the townsfolk, having higher FP, at 5, means they'll stick with you even past 7PM.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: It can jog Lucas' memory back, though this might only be a quality of the lightning of a particular location.
• Like a God to Me: Once Lucas opens a portal to Cloudheim, a path to the final dungeon, when Ares/Alice was out of options and had no idea how to reach it, they do start believing he might actually be a god.
• Little Bit Beastly: This entry introduces a new race of people called were-animals, who have canine-like traits.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Enemy random drops, especially from bosses, which can be fought only once a day, is purely based on chance. So, if you want a material for that powerful weapon you might need to do a lot of Save Scumming or be very patient.
  • Monster taming is based purely on chance. You can do a few things to increase the odds of taming them, but in the end all you can do is gift them an item and hope they'll accept.
  • Most stores have at least a few items that are on a rotating stock, so, for example, if you want a fish that's out of season from Hina's, or one random item from Heinz's shop, it might take a few days (or day resets) to get exactly what you want.
  • This is also how the item inheritance mechanic functions. For instance, if you want an accessory with 4 properties you'll need craft it with the accessories you to inherit its abilities then have Darroch/Martin check on it and hope the newly crafted one got all of them. The chances of it happening are rather low, so prepare for a lot of reloading...
  • Sword and Shield plants have random status upon being harvested. You may get a plant sword that's as weak as your first weapon, or something that far outclasses anything you can currently craft, and the same goes for the plant shield, you could get something like a useless shield with almost no status, or something that grants you a massive STR/INT boost. Higher level Sword and Shield seeds grant a chance to receive bigger boosts as well.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields start off rather unimpressive with only small boosts in Def, but later shields give a lot of defense and, sometimes, great resistance against status effects. Two-handed weapons will make the shield give only half of its bonuses and Dual Blades/Fists will not give you any bonus at all^note Unless you crossforge it with a Light Ore.
• Mage Killer: Anything that has the Seal status effect, weapons or upgrade materials, will shut down enemies that rely on magic.
• Magikarp Power:
  • The "Catching" skill which you train by using the Seal ability starts off unimpressive using a lot of RP to keep an enemy paralyzed only for a second or two, but as you level it up it can be a life saver if you want to keep a dangerous monster you can't quite deal with yet or to keep a monster you want to tame out from the battle until you clean up the area.
  • Magic Staves. At the start they're clunky and difficult to make due to the need of always finding materials to upgrade them. Late to endgame they have great damage potential and staff wielding party members can nuke enemies, or use party heals very often.
• Mercy Invincibility: Something unusual for the games. There are actually not many attacks that can hit you multiple times.
• Metal Slime: Gemsquirrels, previously known as Mineral Squeeks, are back and still yield the coveted Double/Tenfold Steel materials.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: One of the actions when grabbing an enemy with a Fist weapon is to simply bash it on the ground and you can do it several times over.
• Mind Control: Runes are part of every living being and by manipulating this one can control their feelings and minds with the possibility of making them submissive or aggressive. At one point Gideon attempts to do this with the entire populace of Rigbarth using their soulsphere data and Radea. Radea herself had her runes manipulated which made her far more violent especially towards Ares/Alice after being fed the lie an Earthmate like them killed her sister.
• Money Sink:
  • Once you've unlocked the upgrades for it, the Crystals for your Farm Dragons can become this. Crystals affect an entire field when used and since your fields can be expanded and become so large it can become cumbersome to maintain all of them manually at late game. Each Crystal comes at a 50.000G each and you need from 1 to 6 to trigger their effects.
  • The level 3 expansions are this. You need thousands of Lumber and Material Stone and it's very impractical to get them on your own, so you might use a lot of money to buy them from Heinz's rotating stock and upgrade everything.
  • Flowerstruck has permanent stat boosting items for sell when you renovate it twice... But they come at a ridiculous prices with the cheapest one costing over a million gold.
  • Heinz's rotating stock might be a huge money sink since he'll sell almost anything (with a few exceptions), including rare boss items, the ones that buying more than a handful can easily get you to burn millions of gold.
• Mook Maker: Gates, as always will create monsters indefinitely until destroyed. Some of them are bigger and tougher to break while others will absorb certain elemental attacks.
• More Friends, More Benefits: Most of the love interests have their stories locked behind dating and usually within the last event before marriage (meaning that the player has to do all of the events before marriage). Some of this love-interest-specific information is introduced as part of the main story to boot, so players are required to see it, only for it to seemingly be completely dropped should the player not date a certain character, outside of the player looking it up outside of the game or playing another save file. Please note that the game does allow players to date multiple characters at once, but, once the protagonist is wed, all of these events become no longer accessible. The Steam version also has achievements for dating everyone.
  • Fuuka's first event in particular confused players due to how abrupt and seemingly out-of-place the last 2 days of it was. The last two days feature a dark spot, the kind bosses appear from, appearing in 2 places on the map outside of Rigbarth. The scenes before this were Fuuka showing the player character the forge and eating cupcakes, with seemingly nothing connecting these events to the dark spot. Some players even mistook what was happening as part of the main story. The full context of what is happening is only revealed by dating Fuuka and getting all of her events.
  • After beating the boss in Belpha Ruins Depths, Priscilla appears briefly when the player character remembers a bit from before getting amnesia that is related to Livia being resurrected/unsealed. Outside of part about Livia being resurrected/unsealed, the scene is dropped almost immediately after and won't be picked up again should the player not date Priscilla and get all of her events.
  • Somehow, Ryker knows the location of Basara's Hideout, which the protagonist needs to find for the main story for progress. The game won't explain why nor will he ever go back there unless you date him.
  • Beatrice's reason for staying in Rigbarth is only stated in the main game as being important and top secret, and her introduction is mandatory for the plot to continue. You only find out what it is and what's at stake if she fails if you date her and get all of her events.
• Mythology Gag: Misasagi has a monster form and must be defeated before she moves to Rigbarth, just like the Guardians in Rune Factory 4.
• Nerf:
  • Object X no longer counts for raising your status effect resistances, so no more drinking a dose every night before bed to easily grind them all.
  • The Greeting spell, of all things, has been heavily nerfed. Due to an exploit in the previous game of using it for easy Lag Cancel, it now has a lengthy animation lock.
• Necessary Drawback: Just like in previous games Foods are powerful but can be tough to consume in the middle of really big fight, but Recovery Potions of all types are instantly used preventing this issue, it also prevents you from overriding one food buff for another, especially if the meal is difficult to make.
• Never Say "Die": This entry insists that Livia and Radea did not die - they were just sealed for so long that they were reduced to bones, which is not the same as dying. Likewise, they were not resurrected from their skeletal remains, but unsealing them somehow returns them to a fully living state instead of a skeleton or, in Radea's case, a skull.
• New Game Plus: A strange example where you cannot carry any items or progress, but you can start with Extra Directives enabled which allows you to, among other things, disable EXP and Skill EXP gain and increase the level of enemies.
• Next Tier Power-Up: Every next weapon, especially when the "main material" is different, like Iron, Bronze, Silver, is usually more powerful than the one that came before it. The leap in power between one weapon to another endgame weapon can be mind-boggling and that's without taking upgrades in consideration.
• No Hero Discount: No matter how much you do for Rigbarth you'll still have to pay full price for goodies (unless it's a Friday). Early in the game Murakumo is the sole exception to this giving you 5 free baths in gratitude for saving Hina.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Party members that get knocked out tend to say one last thing, like how tired they are, or that This Cannot Be!, or shame of letting you down, or that "they'll remember this".
• Not Completely Useless: Scrap Metal+ (rarely gotten in failed Forging) when used as material makes all weapons deal 1 damage. But if you use a Love Crystal to forge another weapon with Scrap Metal+ it can create a helpful weapon for taming monsters, especially weaker ones. Additionally they're great for farming Double/Ten-fold Steel from Gemsquirrels^note previously known as "Mineral Squeeks" since they have abysmally low HP and drop these items when they get hit, so dealing 1 damage is actually a good thing against them.
• Not Rare Over There: Once a next tier ore starts showing up (Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.) they usually stop being rare or scarce by the next dungeon. Usually.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Talking to characters has an unintended benefit early on in the game. Your RP slowly recovers over real time while standing still, and talking with someone pauses in game time. Livia, who is always downstairs from your room, can be used as a free RP refill while crafting if you don't mind waiting a couple real minutes and only costs you the few minutes of game time for moving between her and the crafting tables. The effectiveness of this wears off the higher your RP is, as the wait will be much longer, but by that point making food in large amounts to keep your RP up should be simple.
  • Object X is prone to this. Normally, it's a Poison Mushroom you get by failing at mixing medicine, which rather nastily inflicts all the negative status effects in the game on the drinker. Which should make it trash... except for the fact that it can also be given to monsters to cripple them. This is intentional, but what makes it more unusual it also counts toward the gift threshold for taming them, and can be mass-produced quite easily, which makes it surprisingly useful as a general monster-taming tool. And since Object X can be made from almost anything, it tends to push this trope onto other items as well.
  • Some weapon skills like Gust are meant to attack enemies, but can be also useful as a way to quickly dodge enemies if your dash wouldn't cut it. This time even Gust's item description mentions it.
  • Failure in any sort of crafting is meant to be a waste of resources, but if you use something common like Iron to fail you can stack things like Object X, Scrap Metal+ and Disastrous Dishes which all have their strange uses. Additionally you can fail so many times a high level recipe you can push through the next skill level if you don't have any materials to craft it.
  • The Rosary accessory is meant to despawn enemies and give you a break, but you can unequip and re-equip it to make enemies spawn faster^note don't break the Gates as they won't respawn if destroyed, though. This is particularly useful to farm items faster, especially with Gates that slowly spawns only one enemy at a time.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Rigbarth is stated by many people, Captain Livia included, to be a backwater town where very little happens. With that said, Rigbarth seems to attract a bad deal of people trying to scam its populace^note (Murakumo's, Lucas', Cecil's events).
• Notice This: Items on the ground will occasionally sparkle brightly to make sure you know they're there. If you're wearing the Foresight Crest, this will include hidden items.
• Noob Bridge: Everlasting Darkness forces players to step up their game and will teach them to prepare themselves if they want a reasonable chance of clearing it. This area constantly drains your RP and you might be out of it in no time meaning you won't be able to use any magic, punishing player's overreliance on Cure Alls, rune abilities or ultimate attacks. This part of the game might also force the player to prepare themselves with plenty of food and be careful with combat as there are enemies that will punish them with hard hitting defensive magic or downright One-Hit Kill.
• Noob Cave: Whispering Woods, the first dungeon. It's a small, straightforward dungeon with very little danger and low level enemies. It's mostly there to teach players the ropes of the game and make sure they're getting comfortable with the combat system.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Each save file has a reminder to where you should go next to progress in the story "To: [name of place]" so you don't feel lost if you stop playing the game for a while. If you have no active story quests (or have finished the game) it just says "To: Wherever you want to go".
• Old Save Bonus: Players who have a save file from Rune Factory 4 Special can have Doug and Margaret visit Rigbarth. Both have quests on the request board to unlock costumes based on Lest and Frey.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The SEED Floating Castle at the end of the game.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • XSEED Games (the translators) chose to localize Rigbarth's resident dwarf's name (originally Dogu /ドグ) as Darroch, because another Doug (of Rune Factory 4 and whose original name is Dagu / ダグ) is visiting the town.
  • Also happened with two new characters, Luukasu / ルーカス (a mysterious gentleman who has lost his memories) and Ryuka / リュカ (the apprentice of the resident architect, Palmo Creacie de Sainte-Coquille). As told on https://www.xseedgames.com/2021/06/15/rune-factory-5-localization-blog-1/
    XSEED Games: Ryuka can be rendered several different ways in English, including Laika, Luca, and — you guessed it — Lucas. (Fun fact: the Japanese name of Lucas from the EarthBound series is Ryuka.) Since Ryuka has more possible translations than Luukasu, we chose to localize it with an R to distinguish him from Lucas, hence the name “Ryker.”
• Optional Boss: Wanted Monsters. They're not mandatory to finish the story, but capturing them allows you to increase your SEED Ranger Rank and earn new Crests and access more Directives.
• Out of Focus: Scarlett is a prominent character in Chapter 1 being a veteran SEED Ranger that develops a rivalry with the protagonist. After the "Seething Girl" gets involved Scarlett slowly disappears from the story with said girl taking her place in most story events.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Wanted Monsters are powerful and early to even mid-game players can struggle to lower their HP enough to capture them. However, most of them are not immune to Status Effects and you can do something like throwing an Object X or do anything to poison them and let the Poison Percent Damage Attack work until they're weak enough to be captured.
• Palette Swap: Several monsters have different colors. Sometimes they're Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Cloudheim 2F has a spot with an unusual number of enemies which is perfect to grind combat skills and level up you and your party members for the SEED Floating Fortress.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: If Ares/Alice's HP hits zero the camera slow downs as they fall unconscious.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: The Grapple Move from Fist weapons can be only used by you, the player.
• Player Party: You can have up to 3 party members this time around.
• Playing Possum: Cerberus, the first boss of the Belpha Ruins, will pretend to be dead when low on HP.
• Pop Quiz: Every end of season Crop Festival has this in the "appeal time". You're encouraged to play up answering in a way that will please the questioner even if the answer would sound outlandish, only giving a logical answer in case they directly ask you to.
• Post-End Game Content: After beating the main story you unlock Extra Directives which enables you do a few interesting things like, but not only, level up enemies, cut your EXP gain to zero, and unlock the Guiding Tower (Rigbarth Maze) in Phoros Woodlands.
• The Power of Friendship:
  • At the end when the Fathomless Dread possesses Ares/Alice the only thing that stops it from escaping Audea are the prayers from their friends in Rigbarth. It's enough to get Livia and Radea time to recover their energies and expel it from their body.
  • Gameplay wise, having 3 FP with someone, or the Companion Crest, allows you to invite them to your party until 7PM. At higher FP they'll stick around for as long as you need them. Monsters also become stronger the more you befriend them. Early on it can easily reach to the point they will the ones protecting you, not the other way around when you first tamed them. Additionally, for item producing monsters, the more FP you have with them the higher will be level of the item produced by them.
• Projectile Pocketing: A charged Seal spell will catch anything you can't quite reach. It can be useful to grab things that fall just short of your pickup range or items that are pretty much impossible to reach normally.
• Rare Random Drop: In addition of their regular item drops most enemies have a rare drop that's considerably more difficult to acquire.
• Random Drop Booster: 4-Leaf Clover and Rare Cans inserted into your weapon will increase the likeleness of item drops. Especially Rare Cans.
• Rearrange the Song:
  • Kelve Volcanic Region has a rearranged tune from Blessia Island.
  • Bandit King's Old Base and Basara's Hideout themes are rearranged versions of Toros Cave.
  • Every "deeper" dungeon has a remixed theme of their original music.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Not in the game itself, but the Record Player from Palmo's Shop lets you hear music from every past game and 5 itself. Rune Factory 1 to 3 have only its seasonal themes available, but 4 has more options. Frontier and Oceans has most of its soundtrack available to play.
  • Just like in the previous game you can use Directives to change the BGM from the current game to other previous games (only the town's seasonal BGM, though), but you must have the rank of "Expert Ranger" in order to unlock the Directive for them.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Increasing the level from enemies many times (to the point of thousands) will result in this. Your defense, if high enough, will hold up well, but some of the more dangerous enemies and bosses, especially bosses from Rigbarth Maze, will be able to knock you out in a few hits, but since their HP don't scale up very well with their levels they will also go down easily if your gear is strong enough. Fights might end up becoming a matter of who lands the first good hit.
• Save-Game Limits: You can still only save at designated save points, and there are limited save slots... though you're unlikely to use up all two hundred of them.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Fathomless Dread was sealed away long ago. It gets un-sealed at the end of the main storyline.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Once leveled up enough, villager party members can use instantly the ultimate attack of their weapons without needing to finish the long combo you must do to normally perform them. Some of them like Misasagi and Radea also have unique attacks related to their boss forms you cannot learn anywhere.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The same region can have monsters with very different strength levels, so you might end up encountering an enemy that does single digit damage and just a little farther ahead you may face another that hits you up for hundreds.
• Shockingly Expensive Bill: The clinic treatment fee cap if you faint depends on the difficulty you're playing: 10.000G on Easy, 50.000G on Normal and 999.999G on Hard. Sometimes Simone, Lucy or Julian will let you go without needing to pay up, but don't count on it.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the possible default nicknames for mermaid monsters is Ariel.
  • It's possible to suggest to Palmo that he build a "moving castle", to which he responds by saying "Why, that idea makes me want to HOWL with delight..." In case you weren't sure the reference was intentional, he immediately adds "What's that look for?"
• * The item description for the Safety Lance weapon throws in a sneaky reference to the Men Without Hats song 'Safety Dance'.

  We can stab if we want to!

• Status Infliction Attack: The Holy Spore item gives any weapon upgraded with it a decent chance of inflicting three statuses: Poison, Seal and Paralysis. Melody Bottle gives a chance to inflict every ailment possible (including Faint), albeit with lowered chance.
• Surpassed the Teacher: People of Rigbarth will comment on your skill growth giving you advice and a few pointers if they're low. Once said skill grows enough they'll mention you're on par with them and, eventually, that they're no longer on your level anymore. A few will even wonder if they should be taking lessons from you instead. For some villagers, this is accompanied by a friendship bonus, as they genuinely want to be your friend at that point.
• Surprise Multiple Birth: Ares (or the bachelors if you're playing as Alice) will be surprised to hear the mother use the plural term and notice there are two babies. Funny and heartwarming to note is that the first child wanted and predicted their mother would birth both a boy and a girl.
  Ares: We have TWO?!
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: If a Save Point that isn't at the entrance of a dungeon is nearby, then typically, so is a boss fight. And if there's Rune Flowers or Rune Crystals nearby, that's doubly the case. (Though that also has the benefit of letting you warp to the book, break the flowers/crystals, and then return home to use your RP up on whatever your task-of-the-day might be.)
• Swordfish Sabre: The Dekash+ weapon is a swordfish and it's a Longsword weapon type. It's decently powerful too.
• Take Your Time: As usual there's no true time limit even though situations may seem dire. It's somewhat forced onto the player when Radea starts affecting the town from inside Everlasting Darkness as that will shutdown basically every function in Rigbarth essentially forcing the player to defeat her so they can return Rigbarth back to normal.
• Talking in Your Sleep: People will mumble about something when they're sleeping. Sometimes it's hilarious stuff like Livia dreaming about chocolate, but sometimes they're underlying fears like Scarlett having a bad dream about being fired.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • Eliza is back here, but they're more snippy and standoffish than they were in Selphia.
  • Woolies are more aggressive in this game. Previously only "naked", wool-less, Woolies would attack you on sight, now even regular ones will try to beat you up if you get close enough.
• Turns Red: Every boss has a secondary phase where they gain a blue aura and get stronger, usually also gaining extra attacks and becoming more aggressive as well.
• Un-Confession: If you don't have enough FP with the bachelor(ettes) and confess/declare your love they won't take it seriously and treat it as some sort of Sarcastic Confession or as a joke.
• Video Game Dashing: You can dash in or out of combat as usual. However this time there's a slight delay between each, so you can't just spam it to move faster than walking. Dashing still gives a decent burst of speed enough to help you dodge dangerous stuff in combat. It's also the focus of the 'Buff-a-Move Contest' summer festival, in which you compete to dodge the charging attacks of some Buffamoo by dashing.
• Video Game Stealing: The Seal ability (not to be confused with the "Seal" status effect) allows the protagonist to stop an enemy in their tracks and possibly get one item from the monster, said enemy can still drop another item if the player is lucky enough. Some monsters need to have their health brought down quite a bit before it works.
• Villain Ball: Gideon utterly defeats Ares/Alice and Radea in his floating fortress, but instead of just finishing off the Earthmate that he himself admits became problematic he just leaves after kidnapping Radea, who no longer is under his control.
• Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Downplayed; while the first child the player can have with their love interest will be either male or female, the second and third child will always be a pair of twins who are a boy and a girl.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Leviathan. It has several hard hitting attacks and it doesn't leave itself open to attacks as much as previous bosses. While not the hardest fight in the game, it makes sure you don't just stand there and tank hits, even with proper elemental protection.
• Warm-Up Boss: The Nine-Tailed Fox is the first boss you'll face in the story. Even though it moves around the arena quickly, it always takes a few seconds to charge up its attacks, giving you plenty of time to dodge and counter.
• Warp Whistle: Warp spell now funcions as fast travel system to get from one point to another quickly. You can travel even to specific floors of dungeons you've visited.
• Wax On, Wax Off: You can level up certain skills like Fire by cooking, brewing potions, Earth by tiling ground and smashing rocks... And also Love by smashing enemies into one another for some reason.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: It doesn't matter if your party is full of healthy people. If you fall in battle it's all over and you'll be sent to the clinic.
• We Buy Anything: From vegetables to weapons to vegetable weapons, minerals, monster loot... Unless it's furniture you can put anything in the Shipping Bin and let it be shipped at 8AM next day.
• We Sell Everything: Heinz in the Crystalabra has a rotating stock which he can sell about anything you can think of: weapons, magic, gemstones, food, lumber, etc.
• Weapon Specialization: Every townsfolk that can join your party starts with a weapon of their preference which allows them to use certain Rune Abilities. You change it (give Martin a Sword for example), but they won't use any Rune Ability unless they have the correct weapon type.
• Wham Episode:
  • The first one comes after defeating the boss of Atohl's End: Oswald sics the Dark Dragon on Ares/Alice and Scarlett, but the dragon turns against him as well with Oswald realizing his "partner" had betrayed him. With nothing else to lose he reveals the one who's been aiding him: Warden Gideon from SEED. The revelation shocks Ares/Alice enough to have them quit SEED until they decide whether or not they can be trusted again.
  • At the end of their mission in Bandit King's Old Base Ares/Alice come across the girl who reveals her true form as the Dark Dragon. Moreover, she mentions they've done something terrible to her sister which is the reason she hates them so much. Later on Captain Livia reveals not only she knows the Dark Dragon, she is also a dragon as well— the sister of the Dark Dragon.
  • The conclusion of Everlasting Darkness has Ares/Alice finally confronting Radea, the Dark Dragon, then learning how Gideon manipulated her and his ultimate goal. It is also when Radea accepts to live in Rigbarth, albeit slightly reluctantly.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: The game features Rigbarth and there are different regions surrounding it you can travel to. Beware of Beef Gates, though.
• The Worf Effect: Once Gideon reappears he easily stomps Radea, in her dragon form no less, and Ares/Alice with no effort, thanks to his power being increased by the Fathomless Dread.
• Wrestler in All of Us: The Fists weapon allows you to grab enemies after hitting them and one of the moves is the Giant Swing.
• You Don't Look Like You: Some monsters like Cluckadoodles and Buffamoos had their designs changed and look pretty different from other Rune Factory games. Cluckadoodles had their combs' size redesigned and Buffamoos have lion-esque manes instead of a "mohawk".
• You Have Researched Breathing: You still have to buy your Pajamas here, even though the sleeping animation shows your character changing into them every night.

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