Alright, so this is all opinion formed while playing on the hardest difficulty - Hellmode - which you get to pick upon entering your first dungeon in this version of the game. Everything else comes with the assumption you know the basics of the J- Farmsim genre.
Pros:
- A great multitude of skills to cultivate throughout the playthrough, both farming, social, and combat oriented. More than I've ever seen in any game of this type
- Same goes for weapon types, each with their own moveset, strengths, and weaknesses.
- A plethora of various special weapon skills and spells, each corresponding with particular skills.
- The ability to recruit, train, and equip almost any member of the town to accompany your dungeon and world exploration (up to two can join at a time).
- Huge amount of equipment to craft, with materials and skill having a large impact on their outcome.
- Huge amount consumables to craft, with ingredients and skill having a large impact on their outcome.
- Ability to tame and raise any monster in the game, including bosses at a certain point.
- Increasingly challenging dungeons and exploration that requires attentive resource management to pull off efficiently.
- Surprisingly challenging boss fights.
- All of the above culminating in rewarding progression you can actually feel, and that is not at all grindy if you learn and master the above.
- Mix in the relaxing elements of your J-Farmsim genre, including attention to things like crop rotation and fertilizer building to grow the best crops, and sometimes even use these crops as weapons.
- A likeable cast of characters once you get to know them, each with their own routines and relationships with one another.
- A game made by remnants of the Neverland studio, a number of key developers of some of my favorite SNES era RPGs, particularly Lufia 2 and Chaos Seed - Fuusui Kairouki, and Energy Breaker. These influences shine through in RF 4.
Cons:
- Ultimately a game originally made for the 3DS in 2012, with all that might imply.
- They did the best they could to upscale the sprites and backgrounds, but it's not a pretty game up close. Still has its charm though.
- Besides the nice difficulty of the combat on Hell difficulty, the dungeons could use a bit more interactivity and sense of exploration.
- Some awkward UI elements far from the modern standard.
- A little too sacharrine at times, but what do you expect. You get what you see.
It's the most challenging of these types of games I've ever played, with rewarding progression and a nice relaxing town to farm in and spend your time. Probably the most mechanically and systems dense game of this type. I have yet to feel a grind 20 hours in, and suspect those who do have self-imposed it.
