Honestly my tier list would basically be the same as yours for the same reasons. Except I would switch frontier with 4. Even though frontier was also my first ever rune factory game, and I love so much about it. The over world, the characters, and the overall presentation. I have to rank 4 above it, because nothing beats me finally being able to play as a girl, without me having to beat the game as a guy first 😅 and the bachelors they gave us where top tier. Leon dylas and Doug will always hold a special place in my heart. Great video by the way ❤️
I'm a bit of a late bloomer and just getting into the Rune Factory games. I have 4 on the 3DS (bought it years ago) but really didn't play past the 3 hour mark. I am just now realizing that if I had stuck around, I would have witnessed one of the most complex crafting systems in a game aside from the atelier series (maybe even more complex). I purchased RF4S and RF5 on PC a few weeks ago. Started playing RF5 but decided it was probably best that I start with the older game and work my way up. I've been having a blast so far. I can't wait for RF3 to come out next year (I will probably wait until PC release but might get too impatient). Btw, side note, portraits are a make or break deal for me. I love Story of Seasons but refuse to buy PoOT because of the lack of portraits. I've seen videos and the characters feel too stiff without the portraits tbh.
Hey, great tier list. Thanks! Edit: As a constructive tip: I definitely understood the general feel of why you rated each game what you did, but I'd love to hear more of your solid reasons. You clearly enjoy the series.
Portraits ARE important. They give so much character and charm (and most of the time the characters are not even facing forward do we wouldn't know how they looked otherwise) And the winner in my heart is always RF3. Nothing beats living in a giant magical tree and being around wacky villagers. I really wanted to marry Gauis though
Rune factory 3 is very short and the story is pretty meh but the characters and character development is peak rune factory in my opinion. They are just so good, lovable and there are so many funny dialogs in the game. The game has so much charm in the character department. I really feel conflicted about Frontier. I love the graphics, the characters, the dungeons, the overall feel of the game but I hate the whole runey system with a passion. It really drags down the game for me and it is a good that they never used this system again.
My first Rune Factory game was 4. I fell in love! My friends noticed how I loved farming simulations like Harvest Moon and now Story of Seasons and handed me # 4. I’m looking forward to getting the 5th one. Have you played the Story of Seasons Trio of Towns? You’d love the twins in there. If the info you gave during the marriage candidates vid was true. Lol
It's about time we got a list like this if I had to rank the series from worst to best it would be 1.Rune Factory 4 Special 2.Rune Factory 5 3.Rune Factory 3 4.Rune Factory 1 5.Rune Factory Tides Of Destiny 6.Rune Factory 2 I haven't played Frontier so I can't rank it.I started the series with 1 liked it for the time still like it despite it's issues.The dungeon crawling was a little more engaging then the newer ones .You had a limited amount of RP and limited bottles so you had to use the farm land in the dungeons to have a steady supply of RP you couldn't just load up on a stack of potions and food so it was a little more challenging. I think the worst part of 1 was how long it took to unlock crafting and making one of the main story dungeons only available in winter. I hated 2 played it back in the day and never finished it I didn't like it as much as 1 so I benched the series after that I only managed to complete a couple of years ago because I wanted to experience all the games stories. I played 3 and 4 in the same year I regretted dropping the series after 2 because 3 was a huge step up from 2 and played 4 Special on the Switch and put 400 hours into it and almost 💯 it.Rune Factory 4 Special is now one of my favorite farming sims of all time it's up there with even the best Harvest Moon games. 5 is a good game,but it doesn't outclass 4 for me it added new features that I liked,but 4 plays so much faster then 5 and the days are too long in 5 I was we had an option to have a faster time speed of 24 minutes instead of 48. One day I will have to get around to Frontier to fully complete the series.
My tier list would be pretty much identical to yours. The only thing I would probably change is putting RF4 to RFF in the top tier because both games are the absolute pinacle of the series. RF4 refined the combat and brought a number of qol improvements that make it very hard to play the older titles. It's only shortcoming is how farming doesn't feel like the central gameplay focus anymore since there are many far quicker ways to turn a quick dime. As for RFF .. it did everything RF1 started and improved on every single bit of it without changing the basic formula too much. Farming is essential to progress but not in a contrived way like it was in RF1, combat is less clunky, time progression feels just right, the dungeons are fun, the difficulty scales nicely and bosses are challenging and it even offers pretty extensive character development with some of the cast. Hence why it easily deserves the top spot.
Honestly RFF is my first introduction to the series but also to the farming life genre, my older brother would play it and sadly he couldn't beat it since back than it was abit hard for us to know what is what especially with the whole Whales island gate, and also fire dungeon, that is where he stoped, years after that I decided to finish the game.for him and honestly even though I wasn't good at farming life or any life simulation games, I manage to beat it and also manage to married Mist at the end. But after that it was a type of game that I haven't played despite getting them but always still kept in my mind ever since, and honestly its still in my mind and just recently finish playing RF1, but honestly I want to start playing more when I have the time
rune factory frontier was also my first rune factory game I played, and also my favorite. I agree though that 4 is better, that game is amazing but frontier has such a special place in my heart 💞 I played 5 for a while but couldn’t get into it that much, maybe I need to play it more. Overall though I agree with your tier 100%
great video i feel the same about frontier even if rune factory 4 might be objectively better when it comes to the main plot i could never get lost in this world like in rune factory frontier mostly because of the color palette and design choices. i also think frontier has one of the best soundtracks in the whole series. i didn't like 5 tho i think it's about as good as oceans/tides of destiny
rune factory 4 is sooooo good. it's my absolute favourite. i waited for so long for 5. 5 isn't very well optimized and it's hard to really play it. the lag and slow downs are tough to deal with.
10/10: RF3 (it's short and sweet, has easy to understand mechanics, has a great cast of characters and is generally very loveable) Loved/Memorable: RF4 and RF5 (Both of these games I really enjoyed, the cast and story of RF4 are fantastic but the full game is long af so it can be hard to replay, whereas RF5 felt quite lacking in the story department and I would also argue in the character department as well, but there were many improvements to game mechanics and the concept change was ambitious) Good Entry: RF2 (honestly I really loved the story of RF2 and the idea of playing across two generations, there are definitely some game mechanic issues but if you can look past it, I would say it was still a good entry) Could Skip: RF1 (the RF lore is strong in this one and it definitely set up the foundation for later games, however, to anyone that doesn't love the RF series there is no way in hell I'd recommend it as the mechanics are incredibly outdated and honestly frustrating if you don't have patience) Would Not Play Again: RF Oceans (I played this for around 5-10 hours and honestly I was so incredibly lost and unsure what to do in this game I couldn't play past it. Personally, I really didn't like the changes to game mechanics, maps and character portraits that they made in this entry) Haven't Played: RF Frontier
Rf2 is the only one i have played so far and i loved it back then, i am currently watching videos about the others to see which one i would like to play. Rf4 sounds neat and affordable, and i am glad to hear that one would not have to play as a girl to romance the guys in the new one. I hope that this is also possible in the next game that got announced recently :D
1- Rune Factory 5 2- Rune Factory 4 Special 3- Rune Factory 3 4- Rune Factory 1 5- Rune Factory 2 I've played RF4 for 93 hours but 5 is cozier in my opinion, this game has the same upgrade systems as 4 which for me are absurdly addictive, and the graphic is more my style, similar to My Time At Portia. Villagers are as good as 4, just don't talk too much with each one a single day, they'll repeat, the same as RF4, I don't understand why they complain so much about this game, yes, there is a bad first impression but give some time and you will see the game is better than it looks... of course, I play it on PC, without the switch performance issues, it must be a pain to play something with so many fps drops.
I love all these games they are all great and they are all number one in my book although I'm probably wearing nostalgia glasses but through those glasses I see Waifus
I would love to play Rune factory tides of destiny or oceans because that is the name I am familiar with. But I don't own a ps3 and I don't want to buy one just for this one game.
The moment you rank RF1 worse than RF2 and 3 I know for a fact something is wrong with this ranking... The best RFs are RFF and RF1, the worse are RF2 and 3, followed by ToD. RF4 is fairly good again, 5 is cool, but still lack some key features that we had back in the first few titles and RF4 is a bit better... OC you gotta consider the platform they are in, RF1 limitations are all due to being a DS game, versus RFF being Wii, this is the only reason I consider RF1 pretty close to RFF and definitelly much better than 2 and 3. That and the fact it was the first, 2 and 3 had the obligation of being better and they simply were not... The generation barrier thing was terrible, you had to change your character int it's son to progress... Bad feature... Also the games were too tied to the mission board, everything else was secondary... RF1 is much much much better than both 2 and 3 they aren't even in the same league... ToD killed farming, I liked the story and being a PS3 game also means a lot since PS never had a good HM game (only a pretty bad one), but you don't destroy "farming" on a marvelous' game, people like that stuff, and so the game was a flop, matching RF2 and 3... One of the key features that made RF better than most HM and SoS is taming the monsters and having them help with farm chores, unfortunally they ruined this in the later titles, any monter doing every chore sucks... I'm playing RF5 and is is so bad that I don't even want monsters to help at all, they are basically loot machines that help in combat... Also, where are the minigames? that was a pretty cool feature for a chance of an extra level while creating stuff or a better fish... Fishing became quite dull without it... To be fair forging and upgrading as well as soil quality stuff were a huge improvement. I also like the dragon farm stuff thou I wish the dragons had seasons related to their elements. Still none of those is an excuse for removing specific monsters doing specific chores, like why can an Ignis water crops? why would I want my watering team harvesting the crops I want to 'giantify'? Nope, they might as well remove monsters helping as a whole, I really miss that feature...
I really don't understand the hate for RF1, it is a DS game, oc the 3d is wonky, but the mechanics were there and it is a much better RF game than most if you consider the release date and platform limitation
I started with rf1 back when it came out and ive loved the series staring there 😂 but tides of destiny is very skippable imo. That being said, it is a good game in its own ways, but removing the farming almost entirely kinda ruined it for me
Honestly my tier list would basically be the same as yours for the same reasons. Except I would switch frontier with 4. Even though frontier was also my first ever rune factory game, and I love so much about it. The over world, the characters, and the overall presentation. I have to rank 4 above it, because nothing beats me finally being able to play as a girl, without me having to beat the game as a guy first 😅 and the bachelors they gave us where top tier. Leon dylas and Doug will always hold a special place in my heart. Great video by the way ❤️
I played rune factory 3 first and i fell in love. it will always be my favorite because its so nostalgic to me hahaha
I'm a bit of a late bloomer and just getting into the Rune Factory games. I have 4 on the 3DS (bought it years ago) but really didn't play past the 3 hour mark. I am just now realizing that if I had stuck around, I would have witnessed one of the most complex crafting systems in a game aside from the atelier series (maybe even more complex). I purchased RF4S and RF5 on PC a few weeks ago. Started playing RF5 but decided it was probably best that I start with the older game and work my way up. I've been having a blast so far. I can't wait for RF3 to come out next year (I will probably wait until PC release but might get too impatient).
Btw, side note, portraits are a make or break deal for me. I love Story of Seasons but refuse to buy PoOT because of the lack of portraits. I've seen videos and the characters feel too stiff without the portraits tbh.
Hey, great tier list. Thanks!
Edit: As a constructive tip: I definitely understood the general feel of why you rated each game what you did, but I'd love to hear more of your solid reasons. You clearly enjoy the series.
Portraits ARE important. They give so much character and charm (and most of the time the characters are not even facing forward do we wouldn't know how they looked otherwise)
And the winner in my heart is always RF3. Nothing beats living in a giant magical tree and being around wacky villagers. I really wanted to marry Gauis though
First time I played it I was so upset I couldn't marry some of the attractive male villages, but at least we can have gay options now starting with 5
Rune factory 3 is very short and the story is pretty meh but the characters and character development is peak rune factory in my opinion. They are just so good, lovable and there are so many funny dialogs in the game. The game has so much charm in the character department.
I really feel conflicted about Frontier. I love the graphics, the characters, the dungeons, the overall feel of the game but I hate the whole runey system with a passion. It really drags down the game for me and it is a good that they never used this system again.
My first Rune Factory game was 4. I fell in love! My friends noticed how I loved farming simulations like Harvest Moon and now Story of Seasons and handed me # 4. I’m looking forward to getting the 5th one.
Have you played the Story of Seasons Trio of Towns? You’d love the twins in there. If the info you gave during the marriage candidates vid was true. Lol
Also I love Evelyn the one who makes clothes! But she’s sadly not a bachelorette lol…
Didn't she had a crush on that blacksmith dude? Lol anyway, one thing that RF3 has is Raven. Probably best bachelorette in the whole series imo.
It's about time we got a list like this if I had to rank the series from worst to best it would be
1.Rune Factory 4 Special
2.Rune Factory 5
3.Rune Factory 3
4.Rune Factory 1
5.Rune Factory Tides Of Destiny
6.Rune Factory 2
I haven't played Frontier so I can't rank it.I started the series with 1 liked it for the time still like it despite it's issues.The dungeon crawling was a little more engaging then the newer ones .You had a limited amount of RP and limited bottles so you had to use the farm land in the dungeons to have a steady supply of RP you couldn't just load up on a stack of potions and food so it was a little more challenging. I think the worst part of 1 was how long it took to unlock crafting and making one of the main story dungeons only available in winter.
I hated 2 played it back in the day and never finished it I didn't like it as much as 1 so I benched the series after that I only managed to complete a couple of years ago because I wanted to experience all the games stories.
I played 3 and 4 in the same year I regretted dropping the series after 2 because 3 was a huge step up from 2 and played 4 Special on the Switch and put 400 hours into it and almost 💯 it.Rune Factory 4 Special is now one of my favorite farming sims of all time it's up there with even the best Harvest Moon games.
5 is a good game,but it doesn't outclass 4 for me it added new features that I liked,but 4 plays so much faster then 5 and the days are too long in 5 I was we had an option to have a faster time speed of 24 minutes instead of 48.
One day I will have to get around to Frontier to fully complete the series.
My tier list would be pretty much identical to yours. The only thing I would probably change is putting RF4 to RFF in the top tier because both games are the absolute pinacle of the series. RF4 refined the combat and brought a number of qol improvements that make it very hard to play the older titles. It's only shortcoming is how farming doesn't feel like the central gameplay focus anymore since there are many far quicker ways to turn a quick dime. As for RFF .. it did everything RF1 started and improved on every single bit of it without changing the basic formula too much. Farming is essential to progress but not in a contrived way like it was in RF1, combat is less clunky, time progression feels just right, the dungeons are fun, the difficulty scales nicely and bosses are challenging and it even offers pretty extensive character development with some of the cast. Hence why it easily deserves the top spot.
Honestly RFF is my first introduction to the series but also to the farming life genre, my older brother would play it and sadly he couldn't beat it since back than it was abit hard for us to know what is what especially with the whole Whales island gate, and also fire dungeon, that is where he stoped, years after that I decided to finish the game.for him and honestly even though I wasn't good at farming life or any life simulation games, I manage to beat it and also manage to married Mist at the end. But after that it was a type of game that I haven't played despite getting them but always still kept in my mind ever since, and honestly its still in my mind and just recently finish playing RF1, but honestly I want to start playing more when I have the time
rune factory frontier was also my first rune factory game I played, and also my favorite. I agree though that 4 is better, that game is amazing but frontier has such a special place in my heart 💞 I played 5 for a while but couldn’t get into it that much, maybe I need to play it more. Overall though I agree with your tier 100%
is your bachelors/bachelorettes tier list video got taken down?
1. Rune Factory 4
2. Rune Factory 3
3. Rune Factory 5
4. Rune Factory Frontier
5. Rune Factory 2
6, Rune Factory TOD
7. Rune Factory 1
great video i feel the same about frontier even if rune factory 4 might be objectively better when it comes to the main plot i could never get lost in this world like in rune factory frontier mostly because of the color palette and design choices. i also think frontier has one of the best soundtracks in the whole series.
i didn't like 5 tho i think it's about as good as oceans/tides of destiny
rune factory 4 is sooooo good. it's my absolute favourite.
i waited for so long for 5. 5 isn't very well optimized and it's hard to really play it. the lag and slow downs are tough to deal with.
10/10: RF3 (it's short and sweet, has easy to understand mechanics, has a great cast of characters and is generally very loveable)
Loved/Memorable: RF4 and RF5 (Both of these games I really enjoyed, the cast and story of RF4 are fantastic but the full game is long af so it can be hard to replay, whereas RF5 felt quite lacking in the story department and I would also argue in the character department as well, but there were many improvements to game mechanics and the concept change was ambitious)
Good Entry: RF2 (honestly I really loved the story of RF2 and the idea of playing across two generations, there are definitely some game mechanic issues but if you can look past it, I would say it was still a good entry)
Could Skip: RF1 (the RF lore is strong in this one and it definitely set up the foundation for later games, however, to anyone that doesn't love the RF series there is no way in hell I'd recommend it as the mechanics are incredibly outdated and honestly frustrating if you don't have patience)
Would Not Play Again: RF Oceans (I played this for around 5-10 hours and honestly I was so incredibly lost and unsure what to do in this game I couldn't play past it. Personally, I really didn't like the changes to game mechanics, maps and character portraits that they made in this entry)
Haven't Played: RF Frontier
Rf2 is the only one i have played so far and i loved it back then, i am currently watching videos about the others to see which one i would like to play. Rf4 sounds neat and affordable, and i am glad to hear that one would not have to play as a girl to romance the guys in the new one. I hope that this is also possible in the next game that got announced recently :D
1- Rune Factory 5
2- Rune Factory 4 Special
3- Rune Factory 3
4- Rune Factory 1
5- Rune Factory 2
I've played RF4 for 93 hours but 5 is cozier in my opinion, this game has the same upgrade systems as 4 which for me are absurdly addictive, and the graphic is more my style, similar to My Time At Portia. Villagers are as good as 4, just don't talk too much with each one a single day, they'll repeat, the same as RF4, I don't understand why they complain so much about this game, yes, there is a bad first impression but give some time and you will see the game is better than it looks... of course, I play it on PC, without the switch performance issues, it must be a pain to play something with so many fps drops.
hey dude, are you doing all right? are you still alive?
Yaaaaay! Can’t wait to watch!
Rune Factory Frontier is easily the nicest art style and art direction
Don’t know why Rune Factory 5 looks so ugly in comparison to that older game
My list is basically the same just swap Frontier and 3😭🤝🏻 I just adore 3's campy ass characters so fucking much. They fr changed my life
It makes me sad that I couldn't connect with other runer factory or harvest moon like I did with RF3
I love all these games they are all great and they are all number one in my book although I'm probably wearing nostalgia glasses but through those glasses I see Waifus
I would love to play Rune factory tides of destiny or oceans because that is the name I am familiar with. But I don't own a ps3 and I don't want to buy one just for this one game.
I feel like runefactory 5 doesn't have a lot of dialogue, wish the days weren't so long
Frontier is king 👑
Sim Sala Bim!
Tides of destiny is my fav 😭
I can’t watch this lol all his favorite games are the ones I’d probably put at the bottom of my list
Dolce best girl
The moment you rank RF1 worse than RF2 and 3 I know for a fact something is wrong with this ranking...
The best RFs are RFF and RF1, the worse are RF2 and 3, followed by ToD. RF4 is fairly good again, 5 is cool, but still lack some key features that we had back in the first few titles and RF4 is a bit better...
OC you gotta consider the platform they are in, RF1 limitations are all due to being a DS game, versus RFF being Wii, this is the only reason I consider RF1 pretty close to RFF and definitelly much better than 2 and 3. That and the fact it was the first, 2 and 3 had the obligation of being better and they simply were not... The generation barrier thing was terrible, you had to change your character int it's son to progress... Bad feature... Also the games were too tied to the mission board, everything else was secondary... RF1 is much much much better than both 2 and 3 they aren't even in the same league...
ToD killed farming, I liked the story and being a PS3 game also means a lot since PS never had a good HM game (only a pretty bad one), but you don't destroy "farming" on a marvelous' game, people like that stuff, and so the game was a flop, matching RF2 and 3...
One of the key features that made RF better than most HM and SoS is taming the monsters and having them help with farm chores, unfortunally they ruined this in the later titles, any monter doing every chore sucks... I'm playing RF5 and is is so bad that I don't even want monsters to help at all, they are basically loot machines that help in combat... Also, where are the minigames? that was a pretty cool feature for a chance of an extra level while creating stuff or a better fish... Fishing became quite dull without it...
To be fair forging and upgrading as well as soil quality stuff were a huge improvement. I also like the dragon farm stuff thou I wish the dragons had seasons related to their elements. Still none of those is an excuse for removing specific monsters doing specific chores, like why can an Ignis water crops? why would I want my watering team harvesting the crops I want to 'giantify'? Nope, they might as well remove monsters helping as a whole, I really miss that feature...
I really don't understand the hate for RF1, it is a DS game, oc the 3d is wonky, but the mechanics were there and it is a much better RF game than most if you consider the release date and platform limitation
My first games is 5 😁
Do you like it ? I dont know which one to take between 4 and 5 spécial éditions
@@Oggre do you like both? I suggest buy the RF5 and down load the RF4 ROM , you know the emulator for 3DS(Citra) right? 😁😁😁
I started with rf1 back when it came out and ive loved the series staring there 😂 but tides of destiny is very skippable imo. That being said, it is a good game in its own ways, but removing the farming almost entirely kinda ruined it for me