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More Than Just a Gimmick – Mouse Controls in Rune Factory

When Nintendo announced that Mouse controls via the Joy-Con 2 was coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, people were of two opinions: either this was a gimmick that was going to fall flat, or fans salivated at the idea of playing their favorite sim-management game, may be something like a Two Point Museum in the future. Add me to the group salivating, because I was truly excited about mouse controls the second they were rumoured and when they were officially announced. And while we haven’t played a game that uses this new feature exclusively – we may get Civilization 7 at some point, stay tuned! – we did use it extensively in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. Let’s take a look.

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Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma from Marvelous and XSeed is a new entry in the long-running Rune Factory franchise. This release, however, takes the tried-and-tested formula that made Rune Factory so popular, and laid a bit heavier into the cozy-farming-simulation side of things. Each village in the game has a bunch of different development zones, and players can place buildings, grow crops, decorate and more.

I’ve only briefly played Stardew Valley on my PC via Steam, and so most of my cozy game playing has been done on console. Over time, I’ve become accustomed to controllers, so playing management and simulation games on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch has become second nature to me. In Rune Factory, once you enter these development zones, you can set the Joy-Con 2 controller on its side which triggers a top-down view and full control for players to build, demolish, and move to their heart’s content.

Unfortunately for me, perhaps I missed a prompt that told me this was possible, but I had NO idea this could be done until a viewer during a stream pointed it out to me. And now that I know I can use that feature when doing a lot of work in a development zone, I won’t go back. The flow of doing the work and the ease of use is fantastic – it’s the ideal way to build out your development zones, including the exact placement of buildings, farming, etc.

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What was more impressive to me was how much I loved using my Joy-Con 2 as a mouse. There probably should be some long term concerns for me, like if I used it for more than 30 minutes, would it cramp my hand? But in small spurts – 20-30 minutes – it worked so well and I don’t really have any major faults. Obviously, you’d like to see a different layout of controls when put in mouse mode, but it’s worth remembering that this is a Joy-Con controller first, and a mouse second.

I’m impressed. This is a really great feature that Nintendo added to the Nintendo Switch 2, and if and when simulation management games hit the console, or older games get updated controls, I’ll be checking those out and probably using the mouse mode of the Joy-Con way more often.

 

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blank Adam Roffel has only been writing about video games for a short time, but has honed his skills completing a Master's Degree. He loves Nintendo, and almost anything they have released...even Tomodachi Life.

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Twitter: @AdamRoffel