Rune Factory 5 Standard Edition

My first ever Harvest Moon experience was with Harvest Moon 64 in the late 90's, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I spent many a night dreaming of Harvest Moon 64 incorporating fantasy action adventure with HM64 farming. When the first Rune Factory released for the NDS about 10 years later, I was over the moon with anticipation and excitement. Then I played it and was crushed that instead of Ocarina of Time or Super Mario 64 DS level graphics and gameplay, I was getting GBA Friends of Mineral Town and GBA 4 Swords level graphics and gameplay. I didn't make it past the first month in that game. Fast forward over 10 years later, I hear about this fully 3D Rune Factory being developed for the Switch (I didn't have a Wii nor play any of the 3D Rune Factories that released before this), and become extremely excited at the thought of being able to experience my childhood dreams again. I forget about Rune Factory 5 until the price drops to $30 and then pick it up. Gaming background/street credentials/tragic villain origin story over. Having given this a sincere attempt and chance, I just couldn't get into it; Rune Factory 5 feels downright unpolished, unfinished, and unimpactful. Do you lack money? Intuition initially informs you to farm some crops and sell them. No. Farm the right crops, pick the right herbs, make medicines and cook dishes to sell. Complete task board requests or get some good drops to sell from attacking monsters for your initial capital, hope for some toyherb seeds, get chemistry set for 1000g, make toyherb+green grass medicine to sell for 280g or something, make pickled turnip with turnips, etc. By Spring 12, I earned more than 20,000 currency. I discovered this without any help from the internet, too, but afterward I read that earning money becomes even more broken after unlocking corn crops. The farming/money earning system is poorly thought out, meaningless, and broken. Nothing means anything anymore. AND, the most I can spend my money on are bland furniture and house/shop upgrades for OTHER PEOPLE? Now that I think about it, why am I even trying to earn money in Rune Factory 5 in the first place? Why are we still here, just to suffer? The farming mechanic poses no challenge at all, nor offers any sense of achievement whatsoever. Instead of owning your own farm and land, you farm on other people's land and somehow on the backs of perpetually flying dragons that is forever tethered to the land with a single rope that you instantly climb up to board your ship - I mean farmland dragon. But the combat feels even worse than the farming. Input lag or delay makes attacking slow, unresponsive, and incredibly unfulfilling. Why play Rune Factory 5 for the combat, when you could just play Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom? The first 2 dungeons are completely devoid of things to do, other than wasting time running around and attacking monsters. The dialogue is inconsistently voice acted. The quests feel insultingly spoon-feedy and extremely uninteresting. The main story is inconsistently paced and frankly just boring, uncaptivating, and uninspiring. The townspeople's personalities are so incredibly bland and severely lacks interesting dialogue. Rune Factory 5 is essentially an unrefined, unpolished, unfinished game that was abandoned mid-development and forced to be released to try to recoup losses - and it shows. Nothing I did in Rune Factory 5 felt impactful, or felt like I was accomplishing anything at all or carried any weight, and just unequivocally felt like I was wasting my time. I just couldn't bring myself to go on by Spring 14. I played so far into the game without finding a single gameplay mechanic interesting or fun, that I seriously question: what is even the point of Rune Factory 5? The most charitable answer is that Rune Factory 5 tries to provide something for everyone, however unsatisfactorily. My personal answer is that there is none - Rune Factory 5 has no point and has no meaning, and is most certainly not worth investing any time in. I sincerely and heavily regret spending money, energy and time on Rune Factory 5. The most generous I can be with my review/rating is that I give Rune Factory 5 an additional star, one more than it truly deserves, for the 3D graphics for that nostalgia/childhood dream fulfillment factor. The 3D graphics are by no means revolutionary - it's actually outdated by around 5-10 years - but it does look kind of nice. Save your $30 and steer clear from Rune Factory 5: 2/5 stars at the very most.