Ignore the playtime, ive got like 200 hours in this game on the Switch. This is the first Rune Factory game I played. I specifically started with this one because people said 4 was better, so I didn't want to "downgrade" by playing 4 before 5. I really love this game!

Pros:
• the characters are so cute and I love that you can get married and have kids, and bring your whole family on adventures. As part of this, the kids grow up (time fast forwards at a certain point so they are actual kids not just babies the whole time). The characters are romanceable whichever gender you pick. This is not the case in the older games that I'm aware of. Also, in some of the older games there is only a male protagonist. I don't want to go back to that. I hope they continue with the options like this.
•the combat is fun to me! I like the combos, the spell seal, the link attacks all great.
•crafting and leveling your gear, while kind of grindy, seems fun and feels rewarding to me. Same (mostly) for upgrading the town buildings.
•monster buddies!
•looks and runs better on Steam Deck than switch, for sure. Way better.
Cons:
•some of the romanceable characters are waaay too young appearing. I'm talking about you, Cecil and Priscilla. Gives me the ick.
•if you play on steam deck, there's a little mouse pointer icon and the in game action labels have keyboard keys on them even if using a controller layout.
•festivals are hard. After playing this long I still got 2nd place in the fish variety festival. I got so many damn fish types so that one hurt my feelings lol.
•no character creator. I just think that would be so good in these games. Along this line, I wish there were cuter outfits. Outfits are kind of ugly and even when you upgrade the bakery, they are still ugly. On the switch if you have rune factory 4 I believe you get those character outfits free. Idk if that's the same on steam (haven't rebought 4 on steam) but I had to buy a DLC to get an outfit that was okay enough to play the whole game with.

Tldr, super fun game. Will totally buy the next one too.

Not as good as RF4, not as bad as RF3.

Seems like they focused more on the romance part since those are pretty good.

Bean contest is easy this time around.

its cute, but it has less dialogue lines than skyrim and a worse design.