This morning's Nintendo Direct Mini presentation saw the announcement of a ton of great third-party releases coming to the Nintendo Switch. Titles including Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Monster Hunter Rise, and others will help flesh out Nintendo's Switch release schedule in 2020 and 2021. One of those big announcements came as an exciting surprise. It's Rune Factory 5, the latest RPG/life-sim from developer Hakama.
It's hard to believe that its been 8 years since the release of Rune Factory 4 on the Nintendo 3DS. But Japanese Marvelous must have simply had other priorities. Regardless of how long it took, Marvelous and Hakama are ready to start talking about Rune Factory 5 now. And it's clear that the time has been well spent. Rune Factory 5 is near incomparable to its predecessors. It's now fully using 3D graphics and is unique to its own in many other ways.
To start, players in Rune Factory 5 will awaken on the beach of a mysterious island, their memory entirely gone. From there, they'll start on an incredible adventure. They'll join a band of peacekeeping rangers, explore the entirety of an island filled with fantastic people, monsters, and more, and build a life of their own. And on the other side of the equation, players will be able to farm, fish, and settle down with a romantic partner. Rune Factory covers a broad range of experiences.
One area of Rune Factory 5 that attention is being drawn to is the game's combat system. Rune Factory 5 features a style of straight forward action-RPG combat, but it's also going to have a new feature compared to previous games. In Rune Factory 5, players will be able to perform combination attacks with their party members. If it worked in Chrono Trigger, it'll probably work in Rune Factory 5.
But the most striking change is definitely the full 3D traversal. In fact, it conjures similar feelings to how Pokemon Sword and Shield transformed the franchise for the Nintendo Switch. Rune Factory 5 players will be able to run around the game's island setting, even using monsters that they tame to travel faster than usual.
The only bad news for Nintendo Switch players is that, despite already waiting 8 years for a new Rune Factory game, they'll have to wait a while longer yet. Rune Factory 5 doesn't have a firm release date yet, but it is tentatively planned to launch worldwide in 2021 following a spring launch in Japan. It'll be the first main Rune Factory game that isn't released on a pure handheld console.
Rune Factory 5 releases 2021 on Nintendo Switch.