@BananaSplit²
What's this image about?
The blonde petite woman (Rivia) is the police chief of the town station, and the purple-haired girl (Redia) is the dragon deity in human form, similar to the other dragon character in RF4. As
@woowie queen pointed out, they were popular characters that the japanese audience wanted to have as DLC partner characters, prior to the official release, but XSEED prevented that to happen.


Can't remember if those three characters (in respective order: Erushie, Misasagi and Simone) were planned to be partner DLCs as well. I know this is a game aimed for teens but even my younger self would have preferred these
mommy substitutes mature ladies over the main heroines, so I don't doubt there was a like-minded bunch as well.
According to this
japanese wiki (in the "issue points" -問題点 section), besides the large amount of bugs & crashes, the game is also plagued by:
-Long loading times (specifically when loading the game and save datas),
-Sluggish character movement,
-The low amount and poor quality/diversity of conversation dialogues (a massive decrease from previous games accordingly),
-No freedom of how the characters can call the MC,
-No more seasonal crop fields,
-Undermined battle system (such as too many stun-lock enemies in the early part of the game apparently),
-No New Game+ data transfer (which was introduced in RF4),
-Very hard and inconvenient to own a proper house for little to no rewards,
among several other things.
So yeah, the game was practically doomed and XSEED just did something unnecessary, but again considering the company's track record, they have a knack to spend a lot of resources on trainwrecks.
Is the fanbase a bunch of fujos? Like I get one gay offering. You might as well have one. But it shouldn't be at the cost of big boob oba-san.
If I remember correctly, there was one heroine (Lucy, below) that the female MC could romance in the original japanese release of Rune Factory 5, before XSEED's full involvement.
