“Unveiling the Extraordinary: Rune Manufacturing Facility’s Guardians of Azuma Drops Stunning New Trailer Ahead of May Launch”

Incredibly, or perhaps not, it has been four years since Rune Factory 5 finally made its debut on Nintendo Switch. While we have enjoyed the fantastic Rune Factory 3 Special, a remastered version of the original DS classic, we have not witnessed a new installment in quite some time.

However, that is about to change: Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is set to debut on Switch (and Steam) on 30th May 2025. Check out the release date trailer above.

Initially announced as Project Dragon, Marvelous officially unveiled Guardians of Azuma during the Nintendo Direct Indie World and Partner Showcase in August 2024. Touted as a “reimagined” approach to Rune Factory — which originally stemmed from the Story of Seasons series — you’ll play as either Subaru or Kagaya, childhood friends from a rural village in northern Azuma who suffer from memory loss. Eventually, they become the Earth Dancer, a being destined to return life to Azuma and rejuvenate the world.

Guardians of Azuma retains many familiar elements — romance is definitely back, along with farming (would it even be Rune Factory without crops?) and combat. Yet, we are introduced to an entirely new realm and a plethora of fresh features to look forward to this May. Let’s delve into the details in our special Western update.

Villages & Village Development

Your journey commences in Spring Village, a community suffering from decay in the aftermath of the Celestial Collapse, a past disaster that caused the gods and runes to vanish from the land.

Spring Village is just one of four settlements — the others aptly named Summer, Autumn, and Winter Village. Like previous Rune Factory games, Guardians of Azuma will implement a similar yearly cycle, but you won’t have to wait an entire year for a season to return. In Winter Village, for instance, it is always winter, which means all four seasons remain unchanged, allowing you to cultivate crops year-round. Hooray!

How do you restore the villages? Well… with the new Village Development feature! While you can kick off your journey by growing crops and nurturing the land, you can also create new buildings in all four villages, as well as reorganize the environments to suit your preferences.

The more you develop a village, the more villagers will be eager to assist you. They’ll help with farming, mining, logging, and also operate shops that you set up for them.

Dances

As an Earth Dancer, you will bear numerous responsibilities, yet you also possess many abilities to make life easier for yourself and those you encounter.

Three dance abilities you can access early in the game have varied effects depending on whether you use them in the fields or throughout the world. We have discovered three of them, and we eagerly anticipate uncovering more, but let’s highlight the ones known so far.

Sacred Drum, for example, will encourage your plants and trees to flourish and can help revive withered plants. Sacred Sword, on the other hand, is utilized to harvest high-quality seeds. Sacred Parasol acts like a large rain shower, dispersing water across a much broader area.

All of these dances have different effects in the world, too. Sacred Drum can function as a healing spell, or as a means to push back enemies. In contrast, you can primarily use Sacred Sword or Sacred Parasol to inflict significant damage on foes. The parasol can also be used to leap and discover hidden locations.

Combat

Speaking of exploration, Azuma is a brand-new locale for Rune Factory fans, which means there are many fresh areas, characters, and adversaries to encounter.

You will assist numerous villagers from the four regions throughout the game, and some may join you in battles. You will ultimately be able to bring up to 6 characters with you — three will accompany the protagonist in combat, while the other three will remain in reserve, and you can switch between them at any time.

You also have two new weapons to experiment with: Bows will enable precise ranged combat, making it much easier to target enemy weaknesses and deal with foes from a distance. Talismans, meanwhile, can focus your attacks directly on opponents.