My Rune Factory 4 experience, 15 hours in
A while ago I was trying to decide between Rune Factory 4 and Harvestella (https://www.reddit.com/r/CozyGamers/s/ClPtpwB4YY) and I went with RF4, on many of your recommendations. Here are my initial thoughts 15 hours in:
I enjoy the sheer range of things there are to do. Adventuring outside of the town walls, cooking, fishing, farming, fulfilling requests, crafting, etc. I like being able to go at my own pace. There's no set timeline for progressing the story, and no penalty for taking your time. If you have enough food to replenish Rune Points you don't have to sleep either. I usually take half a dozen in-game days to do anything because I get distracted, haha.
The festivals are a lot of fun and give a small amount of "structured activity" amidst a broader, free-form world.
Unfortunately:
Right from the start I felt railroaded into my dialogue options. The very first thing you are asked is to pick between two dialogue options (how you'd react to a situation) and if you pick one of them you are assigned a male character, and if you pick the other you are assigned female character. I was so thrown off because I picked the dialogue option which is how I would intuitively reply and the game goes "this will give you a male character" like what??
One of my initial concerns was that RF4 "felt juvenile" and unfortunately the dialogue thus far has confirmed my worries. I just played the "sleepover scene" where the female characters in the town are invited to a sleepover, and the dialogue made me genuinely confused if they were supposed to be children or adults.
It feels incredibly grindy at this stage. The premise of my initial post – wanting to try a farming sim – seems to have taught me that farming is just not my thing at all. (Maybe the grindiness will improve once I rank up my monsters so that they can do my farming).
Overall, I'm intrigued by the overall plotline (why are these people turning into monsters?) and I enjoy the gameplay loop, but the characters and dialogue are not particularly compelling at the moment. Of course, these are just my personal observations and thoughts – it's clearly a beloved game in this sub, and I'm still keen to play on and see how my experience changes as the game progresses.