[[2026 Games#^3b9d07|2026 Games]]  ## 2026-08-20 [[Fields of Mistria]] came out of early access recently. I hopped into it, played it for maybe half an hour, then went "man you know what this game is making me think of? **Rune Factory 4**". I then proceeded to put 45 hours into a fresh **Rune Factory 4** save file. Now don't get me wrong, **Fields of Mistria** is great and I do plan to get back to it. I'm sure with enough time I'll enjoy it just as much. But **Rune Factory 4** is like chicken noodle soup for my soul. It's one of the few games that I replay all the time. It has one of the most satisfying gameplay loops I've ever experienced, which makes it a high bar to clear when it comes to other games. I think what it comes down to is how quick and snappy everything is in **RF4**. Your farmer moves fast, combat is fast, dialogue is fast, farming is fast. The town is condensed to the point you can move from one end of it to the next in 10 seconds, which amounts to about 10 minutes on the in-game clock. You can teleport anywhere instantly, meaning you can handle your farms on the other side of the map in a second. And you're constantly making progress on *something*. **Rune Factory 4** takes a page, weirdly enough, out of the Bethesda open-world games, where doing something will simply level it up. That includes stuff that makes sense - cooking, fighting, using magic, etc. - and stuff that makes no sense at all - eating, sleeping, and using the hot springs(!?). It's the kind of incremental progress that has you go from "okay I'll just do a few days and then hop off," only to look up and see 3 hours have passed somehow. Everything feeds into everything else in the game's loop perfectly, so it becomes nigh impossible to put down. The other thing that makes this game stand out to me is the dialogue and localization. Xseed did an incredible job with the translation work, and it's extremely impressive how much the NPCs comment on literally everything. 50 hours in and they'll have new things to say about the game's overall plot, the skills you've been leveling up, the area you're in, and so on. If you're around multiple characters, you'll sometimes see them interact as well. I have to assume that **Fields of Mistria** was directly inspired by this part of **Rune Factory**, because they feel extremely similar in this regard. If you like farming games even a little bit, you owe it to yourself to play **Rune Factory 4**. And hell grab [[Rune Factory - Guardians of Azuma]] too. You won't be disappointed.[^1] [^1]: unless you play **Rune Factory 5**…we don't talk about **Rune Factory 5** in this house…