One of the most charming games of last year was Neverland’s Rune Factory 4, a game that focuses not only on farming, but clearing dungeons and progressing the story through your relationship with the townspeople. The Rune Factory series has never been as popular as Harvest Moon which is a shame, because the series often does a lot of the basics of what Harvest Moon tries to achieve and does them better.
It was announced earlier last year that developer Neverland filed for bankruptcy shortly after the release of the game in North America. This led many people to question whether a European port would ever be available and unfortunately, it was announced that the game would not have a European release. Today, the US publisher XSEED shed some light on the situation as to why this game will never receive a European release:
“Wish it was that easy as obviously everyone involved in the project would love to see it released in Europe, but it’s very difficult from a technical aspect since the people closest to the code are all gone (the Forbidden Magna team does have people from Neverland, yes, but for example the main programmer for RF4 is not one of them).”
It looks like the bankruptcy hit Neverland at the worst time, since the European version wasn’t finished and with the developer dissolved, there’s no chance of it being completed in a timely manner. If region-locking weren’t holding people back, you could import the US version. Alas, that’s also a pipe dream.
