Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Welcome to the eastern nation of Azuma! In this fresh take on Rune Factory, use your powers as an Earth Dancer to restore the land, its people, and even its gods. Along the way, battle corrupted monsters, rebuild seasonal farms and villages, and form bonds with the colorful locals.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a rpg, action and adventure game
developed by Marvelous Inc.
and published by XSEED Games, Marvelous USA, Inc. and Marvelous Europe.
Released on June 04th 2025 is available only on Windows
in 7 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 2,228 reviews of which 1,968 were positive and 260 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.5 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 59.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 27.26€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 and 11
- Processor: Intel Core i5-10400
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 20 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
8.8/10 - I so badly want to give it a 9 because this is one of the most enjoyable Rune Factory games I have every played (I have been here since the release of the first Rune Factory game and have played every game since), but a series of small gripes that piled up during the late-game hold me back. PROS: -Game is gorgeous! I often feel sad about the lack of 2d portraits in these types of games, but I actually didn't notice it at all in this game! The 3D models are very expressive and nice to look at. The world is pleasantly populated between the NPCs, villagers, and townsfolk, without being overwhelming. -SO MUCH QUALITY OF LIFE like seriously. Warping is convenient, building is convenient, the map shows you right where all of the characters are. Almost everything you need is right at your fingertips at all times, and even if it's not, it's just one quick teleport away. The game has built-in records for monsters that includes what region they're in, what they drop, and lots of other useful info. -frogs :) -Collectibles are not ridiculously hidden, and give frequent rewards that help them not to feel like a slog. Normally I hate collectibles, but I felt these were incorporated into the world very well and were very satisfying to complete. I didn't need any guides to finish them, either. -The characters are very diverse in personality and SO lovable. I can't say TOO much without giving spoilers, but I really enjoyed the bond quests of even characters I didn't think I would like! The interaction between characters is also MWAH *chef's kiss*. The characters' personal stories have a nice mix of light-hearted banter and more serious moments, that help to give the characters more depth without breaking the overall cheerful vibes of the game. -I enjoyed the majority of the story! Though it wasn't especially moving or hard-hitting, it was engaging and the characters are so well done that it's a pleasure to watch them interact every time. HOWEVER... See cons for my one complaint about the main story :( -Exploration is fun without being overwhelming. Maps vary from pretty big (outside towns) to small, dungeon-like areas. There's no need to check every nook and crevice, but there's still some fun environmental puzzles like "how do I reach that!?" that take advantage of the various mechanics in the game. -I love checklists! Yes! Tell me about how I completed 15 requests and check it off the list!!! Half-jokes aside, I do like to have nice clear-cut goals and requirements for progression. Events are logged, main story quests are logged, and your villages' progression... yeah, that's logged too! You can choose not to look at it if you don't want to, but it's there if you lost track of something. -Building is really fun! It's much easier to use than house furnishing in previous games, and honestly looks pretty good too. Making little themed areas feels cute and satisfying~ Min-max type players might hate it though, as important stats such as max RP are affected by your buildings/decorations. -Each weapon and sacred treasure feels very different to use. The combat isn't deep, but it's smooth! NEUTRALS: -this is entirely dependent on how you play the game, but I... have done very little farming in my farming rpg!? The villagers handle just about everything for me. This is really nice in that it allows me to skip the daily chores and focus on exploring, talking to people, etc. but as the game progressed I found myself missing that daily routine. In post-game, I have made the active choice to remove all villagers from the farming role so that I can get that feeling back, and it's been really nice! I also choose to water and plant my crops directly, rather than through the much faster and impersonal overhead view, but I really enjoy how this system allows for so much flexibility in play style. -I find the music in most areas not very memorable. However, the music isn't bad, and in some areas I did quite like the music! In many ways, it's just pleasantly unobtrusive, which might be perfect for some people. -accessing post-game is locked behind a function ( having a kid ) not all players may wish to engage with. Although this will not be a problem for the vast majority of players, I think it is worth noting. -contests are something that you schedule, rather than fixed events. It's... an interesting idea, at least, and certainly makes it more convenient for the player. However, it trivializes them as "contests," because there is no impetus not to wait to hold the contest until you can guarantee a win. On the one hand, it takes out the stress that contests could cause... on the other hand, it almost feels like "what's the point." CONS: -I have a few gripes with the main story, particularly the ending feels quite rushed, and unfortunately I feel some of the characters fall into the same pitfall that Rune Factory 5 had - not enough development of the characters and issues at stake, leading to an underwhelming conclusion. The setting, as well, sometimes leaves something to be desired - many of the bad things in the world are glossed over or swept under the rug in order to maintain the game's cheery atmosphere, but I wish they would have acknowledged and explored more of it. -Managing villagers is a bit of a chore, as it's one area of the game that lacks some QoL. Moving villagers between towns requires an empty space (no way to swap villagers), and villagers cannot be sorted or filtered by job/trait/anything. -There is so many recipes that I spend a lot of time scrolling through lists trying to find something, even with the recipe lists broken down by type. Some kind of search or filter function would have been really nice, but overall it's a minor complaint that's just symptomatic of how much stuff there is lol -I played on normal, and the combat was pretty much trivialized by the sacred treasures. Even bosses melted once I became more liberal with using spirit dances. Although I'm not looking for a challenge, I do wish that the regular weapons didn't feel so useless outside of killing low level mobs. -Seasons don't matter. The calendar is really just a formality in order to have birthdays and festivals. There is no "neutral zone" where the seasons changing affects crops or changes how things look. Each area is fixed to the season of its god, and what season you're in on the calendar changes nothing. -no polearm/spear weapon, which was my favorite in previous RF games :( -can't date Yachiyo... Or Kusatsu... guys do you think they know I love Rune Factory?
Expand the review
If you want the quick and dirty, Guardians of Azuma is a good Rune Factory game with an incredibly good base-building gameplay loop held back from being awesome by several cracks in the story and Digital Deluxe DLC package. In more detail: Guardians of Azuma is a spin-off of the mainline Rune Factory games, akin to something like Tides of Destiny which has its own cult following within the already small cult following Rune Factory has. It takes place after Rune Factory 5, and has some lore ties to that game, but it's not completely necessary to enjoy the story. Instead of being primarily focused on farm management, it is instead a side activity that can be automated away with proper village management, which is the main gameplay loop. Skills have also been completely reworked. What's new: [*] You can craft more than just furniture, including entire buildings and shops to place in the four season themed villages. These items contribute to your stat total, and while you can get by without them, the game becomes much more difficult without them. Multiple in one village do not increase stack stat bonuses, but one across different villages do. [*] You can request to hang out with a character, exchanging some in game time for a possible boost to bond EXP, shortening the time it take to farm bond levels. Certain actions are disliked by certain characters, and will reduce Bond EXP depending on the level of the action or if the character isn't at a high enough bond level to use that action. Certain actions also cause new cutscenes if preformed at the right level and time of day, and a skill tree is dedicated to unlocking new actions. [*] Generic NPC villagers can help preform tasks, such as mining, logging, fishing, maintaining shops, and farming. Each come with special skills that give them boosts or banes, or allow them to maintain certain kinds of shops. A farm can run completely fine without any player input. [*] Bosses have stun bars, which need to be filled up in order to deal significant damage to them. Charge attacks deal the most damage to the bar, and Ultimate attacks allow you to immediately chain into one once unlocked. [*] A successful dodge causes you to enter a slowdown stage, where stun gauge damage is boosted and Spirit Gauge gain is boosted, allowing you to quickly down and then burst a boss. What has changed is: [*] Weapon, Sacred Weapons and Crafting life skills now use a skill tree system. You gain EXP by using each, and unlock nodes using their specific EXP points or General EXP Points. [*] Fishing, walking, cooking, farming, gathering, and other life skills not represented by the skill tree system now earn General EXP Points, so doing them isn't completely pointless. [*] Because these lifeskills were removed/changed, unlocking new recipes is tied to specific collectables and chests. [*] Crafting does not use RP, only Gold. [*] Woodcutting axes, fishing rods, and mining hammers are now a key item, and the recipes for their upgrades are locked behind village levels. [*] Only Sacred Weapons use RP, and their functions are similar to that of farming tools, such as the fire sword being able to cut crops to get back a potentially higher level like the Scythe. [*] Weapon arts don't exist, being completely replaced by Sacred Weapon special attacks. [*] Seasonal changes only progress the calendar, and don't change any of the villages. Seeds now have a preferred village to be planted in rather than a preferred season. It makes sense given the lore of the game, and the older RF titles had small plots within the permanent season areas in order to let you plant anything at any time regardless. I expected to be turned off by the changes to gameplay between this and the main games like RF4 and 5, but it was actually quite pleasant. A lot of the time I would have spent farming was instead spent basically city planning, determining what buildings and decor I needed to build to both improve my stats and improve village output, grabbing the necessary Lumber and Stone needed to build them. Needing gold instead of RP was a bit irksome, but that was because my usual strat of chugging Hot Milk for RP as I blitzed through crafting to power-level life skills or farm gold from shipping endgame equipment wasn't available anymore. The new hangouts are an incredible addition to the relationships in this game and they should 100% continue doing it, just with the addition of some more dialogue that triggers when you preform them and not a brief, silent cutscene (P.S. You get character swimsuits by inviting them to the river or beach!). Whoever did the models did an incredible job as well as they are very expressive and detailed, and I wouldn't mind them replacing the hand drawn portraits (though please don't fire artists for this, I love the old RF artstyle too). The combat is also pretty good with the ability to switch between two weapons, although RF5's combat wasn't great since you could trivialize everything with Fists, picking and throwing mobs into rooms like mini-nukes while having incredible single-target DPS arts for bosses so it's good just by comparison. Now, I want to talk about the story. It's got the potential to be good, but is significantly held back by: [*] Two bosses that appear out of nowhere, with little explanation as to why, and the disputes are very quickly resolved. One of them is literally the first time you meet a certain romancable character, whereupon after defeating them they join your cast then disappear from the story immediately after. It feels like they were added as bosses just to hit a quota. [*] The above is a more general issue with the writers seemingly just forgetting story threads in-between arcs. Something will be brought up that seems relevant but then never gets addressed ever again. A good example is Subaru/Kaguya being your MC's betrothed before they went on their separate journeys. This should be a significant factor when you choose to save them but it literally never comes up in the story and pre-bond level 7 quests make hardly any mention of it. [*] Romanceable characters that aren't the seasonal gods or Hina/Mauro have zero story presence. They feel like afterthoughts, which is a shame since older titles did try to make most of their characters relevant. [*] Town events are GONE. Really not too happy with this one since it adds a lot of characterization for the cast and helps flesh out ones that didn't get much attention within the main story. Certain pairs of characters will have special dialogue between each other when out in the field, which helps a little, but again the lion's share is taken up by the gods and Hina/Mauro. [*] You can permanently kill off your MC's gender opposite (Subaru/Kaguya) by refusing to sacrifice anything to revive them. In story, this is played and set up as though it were a major decision that would have negative ramifications for the story going forward if you did make the pact, but there are literally no consequences for doing so. All that happens is a few minor dialogue changes and the Mikoshi Habaki Heart fight allowing you to fight with Subaru/Kaguya and Clarice, instead of just Clarice. There is no change other than locking yourself out of a possible romance partner if you do kill them. Just a major missed opportunity overall. The Deluxe DLC package is required to unlock Pilika and Cuilang's bond stories and marry them. If you do not have the package, they remain in-game but without the DLC content. I would understand if these were characters added in some sort of additional story add-on, but them being included in the base game for characters that already have some story involvement feels like a bad omen, especially since we know Rune Factory 6 is in the works. It's sort of like that on-disk DLC controversy back in the 2010s, if you can remember that.
Expand the review
I've played almost every mainline Rune Factory and spinoff title, but after 5 (which I thought was... okay ), I really wasn't sure what to expect from Guardians of Azuma. But I'm very, very pleasantly surprised so far! I have a terrible tendency to pick up a million cozy games in Early Access and then vow to actually play them once they have a little more time in the oven--usually 3-5 years later--so it's really nice to have a game that's actually complete, polished and fun from the start. The traditional Japanese fantasy setting and themes are new for a Rune Factory game, but I was invested immediately in bringing back the various seasonal gods (who all happen to be hot and single) and reviving the land. I know opinions are mixed on the new art style, but I think everything looks beautiful! Exploration is fun, environments are detailed, and characters are expressive, even if there are no portraits. I'm enjoying the music a lot, too. Farming is definitely simplified compared to past games (or streamlined, as I'd describe it), which may be a drawback for long-time RF fans. But as someone who plays RF games more for the social aspect, I'm more than happy with all the ways we're given to boost affection with love interests and townsfolk. Every day, you can choose a little activity to do with each person, which they can love, like, or even hate. (Sorry about the waterfall, Murasame...) I really like all the characters so far and can't wait to meet the rest. After spending hours upon hours wrangling all 800 tools in previous RF games, I also appreciate being able to interact with fields, trees, mining nodes, etc. and having my character perform the appropriate action without having to whip out a watering can or an axe. It makes doing your daily chores and collecting materials a breeze! But you can also make your villagers handle that instead (or alongside you). The light village management aspect of GoA is much more fun than I expected. It's really nice being able to assign villagers to tend crops, harvest trees or stone, or manage shops; it doesn't mean that you can't do the farming or mining/logging yourself, but at least you always have backup. You'll either rescue new villagers as part of the story or come across them during exploration. And then there's the combat! It feels fluid and snappy, and as always, I love being able to add love interests and townsfolk to the party and have them fight at my side. Each character has their own combat specialty, like defender, attacker or healer. There's actually some fun party banter depending on who you have with you, too. All in all, I'd highly recommend this game for anyone on the fence about getting into Rune Factory for the first time or RF fans open to a new spin on the series.
Expand the review
I don't usually review games, but seeing some of the negative reviews made me want to state just a couple thoughts. For new players: this game is pretty high quality. The visuals, music, voice acting, and plot all feel good. The combat isn't complex but it is satisfying and the farming is much more simplified than the usual RF game. I think this game is a great entry for new players and imo feels more cohesive than the other RF games which sometimes feel like different systems are being piled on top of you. This game focuses more on townbuilding, story, and relationships. If you're looking specifically for in depth farming, crafting, or even combat (if youre expecting difficult or very complex combat), I would say to just be understanding of what you're getting into as while those aspects do exist in this game, they're definitely not the point and are absolutely more simplistic than games which have it as a big selling point. For old time RF fans: this may not be the game you're looking for. Does it still feel like RF? I would say so. But it does take out some systems and simplify others. This is a spinoff. It is NOT Rune Factory 6. They're trying a lot of new things and this one focuses more on the social system while farming is taking a backseat. If you play RF mainly for the farming, I'd maybe recommend looking elsewhere. I absolutely recommend this as a standalone game. It's very good at what it's trying to accomplish and I know I'll spend many hours playing. However, as a RF game specifically, I think it will let down people in some aspects as it is a spinoff and doesn't have all the usual systems and goals. (Edit) Steam Deck users: Steam deck runs very well! I've only been playing on it and having a blast. High settings it still runs okay with only occasional slow down. For maximum performance I recommend medium settings and turning off depth of field.
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Day 1 PC release is enough for me. Don't have to suffer through the absolute performance nightmare that was rune factory 5 on switch
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Frequently Asked Questions
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is currently priced at 59.99€ on Steam.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 59.99€ on Steam.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma received 1,968 positive votes out of a total of 2,228 achieving a rating of 8.46.
😎
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was developed by Marvelous Inc. and published by XSEED Games, Marvelous USA, Inc. and Marvelous Europe.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is not playable on MacOS.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is not playable on Linux.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a single-player game.
There are 4 DLCs available for Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. Explore additional content available for Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma on Steam.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma does not support Steam Remote Play.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 15 July 2025 06:00 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 18 July 2025 17:45 |
| Steam price | 25 July 2025 04:52 |
| Steam reviews | 22 July 2025 16:08 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma compatibility
59.99€
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59.99€
27.26€
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59.99€
31.80€
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59.99€
31.80€
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59.99€
32.99€
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59.99€
35.40€
Game modes
Features
Online players
482
Developer
Marvelous Inc.
Publisher
XSEED Games,
Marvelous USA, Inc.,
Marvelous Europe
Release
04 Jun 2025
Platforms
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