Verdict
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a great time filled with farming, decorating, and forming friendships. The game really is fun, with an interesting story and plenty to do, but the performance on Nintendo Switch can leave a lot to be desired due to muddy graphics and pop-ins.
June 9, 2025: We added a performance evaluation of Rune Factory on the Nintendo Switch 2 at the end of our review!
I love farming games. I really do. I've never played a Rune Factory game, though, so I jumped at the chance to review Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, and I wasn't disappointed. Well, mostly. The game offers a huge range of things to do and quests to keep you occupied, but it looks a little lacking on my OLED Nintendo Switch.
Guardians of Azuma is packed with your standard cozy, wholesome, farm game fare. You can fish, furnish your villages, build them up, move people around, and of course, farm a vast variety of crops. You can head out into the fields and hit some enemies, and take down some bosses while you're at it, then head back home and whisk away that special someone for a date at the teahouse.
The most important thing I want to address first is the performance of the game on Nintendo Switch. It runs fine, but it looks iffy. I've had no crashes, screen tearing, or any real frame rate issues, but the aesthetics did suffer somewhat. Bushes and furniture items pop in as you approach, and NPCs are very jittery until you're close to them. Textures can take a moment to load, leaving the paths, mountains, and rock faces looking blurred and flat. Overall, loading times could also be quicker.
The Switch 2 version of Rune Factory may fix some of these issues, and there may be fewer on the PC version, too. However, if you only have a Switch - especially an OLED - it is playable. It won't look amazing, but it's a really fun farming and management game that sucked me in, and should have the same effect on you if you're a fan of those genres.
A quick note on the screenshots in this review - anyone who's ever moved Switch screenshots to their PC knows how crispy and low-res they get, so the game isn't as bad as the screenshots make it look, but you can see the lack of textures and muddy graphics.
Now that that's out of the way, let's dive into the gameplay. You start out as a mysterious Earth Dancer who's crash-landed in Spring Village, with a serious case of amnesia. Soon, a small, high-pitched sheep introduces itself to you and follows you around. It's not quite Genshin Impact's Paimon, but it's close enough. You're pretty much set to work immediately to gather materials and fix up the town, along with making friends with people and then, y'know, saving the world.
You're made village chief really quickly - while this may be a daunting promotion, it's clear that Spring Village needs your decorative touch. You get a sizeable plot to fill with houses, business buildings, and farms. The more you farm, the more money you make. But don't forget to assign your villagers to other jobs, too. They can collect materials, man the stores, and further down the line, ranch and fish for you.
I really got into the village management side of this game. I felt drawn to it when I went to do a Guardians of Azuma preview earlier this year, but oh boy, did it get its claws into me. From laying out waterways and rice paddies to making sure every village has a general store, saltern, and at least one udon cart, I've got my hands full.
There are a lot of tutorials at first, with cutscenes interspersed. Guardians of Azuma lets you take it all in stride, and drip feeds new mechanics so it's not overwhelming all at once. That is to say, you eventually have a whole wheel of tools to use, but you get them gradually over time, so you're not dropped right in wondering what on earth the parasol does, or the flaming sword, or the drum… they each give you special skills and have different uses in combat, from healing to blowing enemies away in a strong gale.
I haven't touched on the combat much yet, as it isn't the main focus of the game, but you do need to take down bosses to progress the story. Thankfully, you get teammates to take with you. Hitting bond level one with characters unlocks the ability to have them as teammates who can attack, heal, or debuff.
You can easily improve your prowess in all areas by upgrading your weapons at the blacksmith and unlocking new skills in the numerous skill trees. I'm not going to lie, I forgot about this until about eight hours in, then had so many points to spend I barely knew where to start, but now all of my skill trees are healthily padded out. There's also a difficulty option if you want easy combat, or particularly hard - the story, beginner, and hard modes will suit different players.
The story unfolds as you play, of course, but I won't spoil what happens - that's up to you to reveal. While I am really, really enjoying this game, I'm very eager to see what it looks like on the Nintendo Switch 2 - or even on PC. The original Switch's performance isn't great, and while I'm pushing on with it, I can't in good faith recommend it if better options are out there.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Switch 2 performance
The first game I tried on my shiny new Switch 2 was Rune Factory. While there is a big improvement in how the game runs and looks, it wiped a few hours of my progress, for some reason. No matter, I'll just rebuild my villages while playing at a higher frame rate and with no jittery neighbours walking past.
As you run around, your character looks crisper, but some trees and rock formations in the overworld are still very smooth-looking, and not in a good way. There's still a small amount of texture pop-in as you approach stone statues and other detailed items, but it's not the most noticeable issue.
Above, you can see a screenshot comparing the same area as in a screenshot of the game on the original Switch earlier in the review. Guardians of Azuma runs a lot better, so if you have the game and a Switch 2, the $10 upgrade is worth it.
This may yet make it onto our list of our favorite cozy games, and if you're thinking of swapping to the Switch 2, you can see which other upcoming Switch games are releasing alongside Guardians of Azuma.