izigame.me

This has been my first foray into Rune Factory, and it's been a lovely time so far! The game is an impressive blend of action RPG (ARPG) and farming/social life sim in a fantasy setting. As someone who bounced of Stardew Valley multiple times for reasons I can't really explain, I've been pleasantly surprised by Rune Factory.
Please take into account I've only hit the end of the second arc of the three that the game contains, so I haven't even seen everything yet (and at 52 hours that's a hefty amount of grind/content for the price). Consider watching a stream/VoD of the gameplay loop to confirm it's your type of game. I got it on a sale and it's been more than worth the price I paid for it so far.

The characters are fairly charming, the story is fine/serviceable but also has some strong moments that really resonated with me (but never really fleshes out more interesting concepts it brings up, sadly), the combat is good - with the exception of a handful of boss fights, and I've enjoyed my time with the game up to this point for majority of my time played. Town Events that happen not-quite-sporadically help flesh the characters out and bring a little bit of that "I wonder what's going on this week" wonder/charm to the game. The voice acting that's been added is good, and the little "hello"s you get from just bumping into folks are a cute touch that help make the town feel a bit more alive and natural.

The dating/marriage mechanic is cute, though without using guides you'll be doing a lot of guesswork on gifts, if an F. Level is required for a confession to work, and so on. I have not touched the Newlyweds Mode available from the main screen's menu, so no opinion or thoughts on that.

Biggest gripe might be just the *amount* of grind the game contains in some respects. Progressing skills gives you the ability to eat Recipe Bread for said skill (i.e., cooking, medicine, forging, crafting, farming) so you can learn to make more advanced things and progress your skills further by making the more advanced things. Without knowing some efficient ways to raise some of these stats, you might get "stuck" being unable to craft better gear, cook better foods, etc to help you with the ARPG portion of the game until you grind it out a bit. Some of these stats are more annoying to raise than others (Farming compared to Cooking or Forging, for example) and can raise the feeling of tedium sharply.
When you *do* catch up, you can also unlock recipes for gear/food that you can't source the materials/ingredients for yet. This will happen somewhat often, and some of it is just locked behind story progression (fair) or seasons (just have to wait it out) or development of the town (grind those Prince Points).

But also, the grind is at least partially the draw/point of the game so I can't harsh it too much. At worst, take a break from the game from a day or two and come back refreshed if you start feeling burnt out on chopping stumps or upgrading basic swords with turnip seeds. If you're playing this for only a couple hours a night, this game will last you a long while.