It IS better than the previous installments, but in my eyes it only highlights the shortcomings of them all. The characters are swallow. Yes they have a lot of dialogue over the years, but they rarely ever surprise you with something you didn't know about them or a new personality trait. Their archetype all scream that they are someone's fetish and they do repeat themselves a lot, especially when you come talk to them everyday, like you are SUPPOSED to, to increase their opinions of you.

I still feel that graphically, this game should be a lot better. Most of the game is 3D and looks like a damn PS1 game with a lot of polish. The rest is 2D, very anime style, and quite good looking... But you'll only ever see it on the character portraits and a single animated cutscene for each bachelor/ette. Each of them has two questlines you can do for them, but those don't deserve a cutscene.

The combat isn't very good. It's mostly your stats against the enemies' and if you're not high level enough, you can dodge and attack all you want, your attacks do nothing.

The agriculture is pointlessly overkill, it's clear most of the budget went into the backend of this system... but if you're not going to spend hundreds of hours raising giant golden vegetables, you would have been just fine with a "plant, water for X days and harvest" system, that will seem to be anyways.

Rune Factory as a whole is just a tropey mess of bad combat, ugly 3D and agriculture overkill.