JRPG Review: Fairy Fencer F

[Andromeda]

Fairy Fencer F is the first title from a team formed within Compile Hearts known as Galagapos RPG. It is a team focus solely on making RPG and their first title was advertised as having talent like Yoshitaka Amano and the Earthbound Papas, Nobuo Uematsu’s band, behind it. But much like with the FF series, it’s likely that Amano’s influence was purely on the concept stage as nothing in the game stylistically resembles his work. However, that’s not to say it makes for a bad game with their presences not clearly seen.

In many ways, Fairy Fencer F is about what you have come to expect from a Compile Hearts RPG. It has your standard heavy moe inspired characters, this is due to the Neptunia character designer being a part of the team, combat will feel a lot like more recent Neptunia games and the general tone of the story is not too unlike a Neptunia or one of their other RPG series that pre-date it. It’s a fairly light-hearted romp with a simple, but deep enough system to tie it all together. And that goes well to describe a lot about the game, simple on outset, but deeper once you get into it.

Initial interest in the game came from admittedly the fact that they were supposedly having big talent behind the game. I was curious to what it would mean for the game. Plus, this was Compile Hearts first original, non-parody game in a while. So that had my interested as well. Like the Neptunia games and the others before, they were always entertaining stories that were mildly interesting and more than just a little serviceable as RPGs. They were casual RPGs, something you cleared in a weekend, not a bad thing. They were a great break from the heavier or meatier games I normally played. Fairy Fencer F though surprised me with some additional depth and complexity that made it jump out from their standard outings.

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Getting started with the story, the protagonist might be best described at times as an anti-hero, but I wouldn’t use it terms of someone more hard edged willing to do un-heroic things for the greater good. No, Fang is more just the opposite of your standard hero in that he is selfish, lazy, unmotivated and has to be conned, tricked or lied to do something heroic. And he’s only doing it because being hero will get him something that’ll help him. Which in some ways does describe an anti-hero, but when you see him in the first few minutes you’ll understand what mean.

But that’s one of the fun things that really attached me to this game. Neither of the two protagonists are really standard hero types. Fang does eventually grow into something of a more selfless, noble out to the save the world hero you know, but he does a lot of stupid and selfish things before he gets there and there’s a really big turning point for him. A point that really shifts the whole mood and tone the story. It is something that sort of forces him from being a self-centered kid to something more heroic. And that growth he takes, while ends up making him that more naïve type of hero gives him a lot of grounding and reasoning. You understand why he’s motivated and it’s not just because he has always naively believed that way.

And then there is Tiara, the by appearance moe standard and proper lady-like girl. But you find out that she isn’t trusting, withholds some very important details, lies and cons, and something that you really don’t see coming, she’s a masochist. After their first introduction, a poor one at that, Fang is rightly rude and disrespectful to her, which she finds exciting. It ends up surprising her and the audience. It makes for some very unusual character types.

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The story itself, it focuses on the journey of people called Fencer, who are special people that have been able to extract fairies that were scattered throughout the world. Fairies are leftover power from when the Goddess and Evil God fought. During their battle, they threw weapons call furies at each other. The furies ended up sealing away both deities, but not all the furies hit their mark. So there is now furies and fairies spread around. Furies are just weapons, while fairies are the sentient part of the power that are infused in the weapons. When a person pulls a fury out and links with the fairy they become known as a Fencer and gain vast powers.

Everyone is motivated by different desires, but the legend says that unsealing the Goddess will grant a wish. So Fang is grudgingly motivated by the notion that he’ll never go hungry again. Tiara is very adamant about reviving the Goddess. So the two begrudging agree to work together and gather up a very wide cast of eccentric characters.

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Combat for Fairy Fencer F is very much like that of the Neptunia games. Battles occur in a circular arena in turn-based style combat. But movement is allowed so that you can attack multiple targets with skills or out range an enemy. This allows the turn-based combat to have more going for it and give it a little edge over the standard line up and take turns.

Basic combos can be custom built as you learn new skills. Branching off a single opener, there are three face buttons assigned attacks and as you grow more can be chained allowing for up to 5 hits. They can be hit in any order and there are a wide range of skills and usage in addition to enemy types with specific weaknesses or strengths to these types. The AP gauge is gone from Neptunia, so once the chain has reached the end your turn is over. It’s no longer possible to chain spam weak attacks. Making actions a little more strategic.

Built into the system, the player growth opens up a lot of customization options. There are the base attributes that can be improved, but there are also a long list of skills available. This allows for a lot of variation, as a standard playthrough will not see enough points earned to unlock them all, even two playthroughs weren’t enough, though I didn’t fight a lot the second time through. So it actually has more customization than you come to expect from a Compile Hearts RPG. I was very pleased with it and the control it gave you. It really did allow for custom play styles.

Visually, the game is definitely the best so far from Compile Hearts. However, it still runs into the same problem all of their games do. Compile Hearts is still pretty much just a budget company. They have heavy reuse of old monster models from Neptunia games, the ones that make sense. Their environments continue to be very bland and flat even by low end PS3 standards. But the character models are all fantastically rendered and beautifully handle to come very close to their artwork.

I already did a lot to answer this, but the part that is really quirky about Fairy Fencer F is the characters. They are all eccentric and strange. Tiara herself does well to entertain with her bouts of masochism and Fang is a fun change of pace from cookie cutter heroes. And the rest of the cast have their own different quirks.

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However, the one system that I really liked that made things interesting is the Fury system. I mentioned before that Furies are weapons and Fairies are inside Furies. One of your jobs is to find the Fairies. Then you go to the place with the Goddess and Evil God are sealed away and insert your Fairy into the Fury weapons to remove part of the seal. Both the Fairy and the Fury have unique stats. The Fury have world changing stats while the Fairy have player changing stats. One character can have one additional support Fairy. But you’ll end up with more Fairies and Furies than you need.

So what you can do once you’ve removed the Fury is place it in the earth on the world map. If you do so where it’s influence overlaps with a dungeon that dungeon gains the world changing stats of that Fury. So say the Fury has +10% Exp and -10% Money, you’ll get more exp fighting, but not as much money. And you can place down a lot of these in an area. If you level up the Fairy they have wider ranges of influence. Late game, you can run with dozens of Furies in the earth on one dungeon with stats like +130% Exp and such.

The game goes a long way to really make it feel like you are in control. It’s an unique and rewarding system and puts the game in the player’s hands. And it is one of my favorite new features I’ve seen in an RPG. This system alone really helped to make me see a new light from Compile Hearts as not just being comedic RPGs, but possibly serious RPGs. Though it seems they’ll still be whacky and silly, just with some better thought out designs now.

Reason to Play:

The uniqueness is really a lot of the reason to play the game. It does some new things not seen before in RPGs and executes well. The story and characters are also very entertaining with a story that opens as being light-hearted and ends on some pretty dark and heavy stuff. If you’re looking for a nice weekend game that you just want to kick back have some fun and have a good time there are few others that do it better.

Story – 8/10 – It is save the world, but it’s not your typical adventure. Opening with a hero starving and demanding food from his newly acquired fairy, it does well to show a natural and more well developed lazy kid into a hero.
Combat System – 8/10 – It is another iteration on the Neptunia system, but it was already a good mix of pseudo-free run and turn-based. It’s not a complex system, but it is a deeper one. Still it is easy enough to spam though without a lot of trouble.
Customization – 9/10 – There is a lot of control to be found with the options that they give. I did sometimes feel that all of the skills were a little unnecessary, but it’s more of pick your style than you need all of them. So it is forgivable to not even look at some.
Graphics – 6/10 – Characters are beautifully render, the environment not so much. And there is a lot of reuse.
Characters – 9.5/10 – The cast, like most Compile Hearts games, entertain and keep you smiling through your journey. They are fun and silly and will give you some unexpected head tilts.
Uniqueness/Quirkiness – 7.5/10 – Eccentric characters aside, they did a great job coming up with some new ideas to mix things up in what could have largely been a paint by numbers RPG design. While only a couple of new ideas won’t make a perfect game, it is fresh.

Overall – 8.5/10 (Not an average)