Between Wasteland 2 and now Fairy Fencer F (FFF) I have become a lot more involved in two RPG sub-genres than I had been before. While Wasteland 2 is a tactical/strategy RPG, FFF is very much a Japanese RPG (JRPG). Both are turn-based, although their similarities pretty much end there. In FFF, you play as Fang, a teenage dude who loves to eat and sleep. You’re in a world in which the Vile God and the Goddess had battled each other in ancient times, and simultaneously sealed each other away. But, in brief, this fragile balance is shifting and the world needs a hero. A fairy named Eryn discovers Fang who is in prison as the game begins (for attempting to steal food). She helps him escape, but Fang wants nothing to do with helping Eryn.
Eryn’s goal is to free the Goddess by finding Furies, special swords in which Fairies can inhabit, scattered about the land, often protected by boss characters. To remove a Fury, though, you need a special kind of human — a Fencer. She convinces Fang to try to remove a Fury and it turns out Fang is a Fencer’s, although he doesn’t know it, and perhaps worse yet, he doesn’t wish to be one. He’d rather just work on finding his next meal or stay asleep. His persona lazy persona is a little bit annoying, but it works itself out as the game progresses. Soon enough Fang decides to help and so the goal is set before you: find 100 Furies, retrieve them, and as you do, release the Goddess from her seal.
As you find a Fury, at your discretion you can use the power of another Fairy to go to the plane of existence where the two gods lay dormant. Interestingly, you can choose which god you want to “help” with each Fury+Fairy. The Furies are ranked on a scale of S to C, and as you exchange your Fury in you get a new Fairy with a boost ability and world-shaping effects (more on this soon). This refreshingly simple and interesting premise is something many JRPGs I attempt to play lack. That the characters aren’t too grating is a huge plus too, since there is a decent, but not too much, amount of dialogue to go through, too. This dialogue is all scripted, though, there are no branching conversations, which works for me. My taste in JRPGs is pretty basic — I prefer fast combat, a story and characters I can invest in at least a little bit, and traditional RPG elements that aren’t too involved. I’m not the type to want to spend 50+ hours in a single JRPG. In all of these ways, FFF fits the bill.
In addition to the story/characters being worthwhile, the combat is also pretty good. It’s turn based, although you’re not bound by rigid hexagons or grid squares. There however strict limits on what actions you can perform during your turn as far as using an item, casting a spell, attacking, or casting a magic attack, which uses SP. SP is a precious resource that’s needed to perform all of the powerful attacks. You can also Fairize when the tension meter fills up. Doing so merges the Fairy within your Fury with your body, giving you several turns with increased damage as well as the ability to use some really high power attacks that take not only a lot of SP, but a large percentage of your health, too. These moves are obviously intended only for the heavy duty battles, i.e. with bosses, which are common enough that you’ll see these fancy Fairize animations and attacks regularly.
Of course besides the boss battles there are lots of random battles and a pretty much endless stream of optional side quests you can pick up that give you reason to revisit areas to collect certain items and turn them in for money or potions and things. These challenges are rated on their difficulty so you have an idea of what you’re getting into. I liked that it was easy to simply accept all available side quests, and work on them seamlessly in the background while pursuing main quests. When you achieved a side quest, a notification pop-ups in the battle summary screen, or you can go into the pause menu to quickly check status. There are also numerous Challenges per character, such as being the Leader for 10 minutes in battle, jumping X number of times, and many others. Completing these give you additional stats boosts in your attack and magic and so forth. Furthermore, you get XP in these categories from random battles as well as WP, which are used to allocate to learning new abilities. The allocation of these points was well balanced; there were a lot of skills I wanted to unlock, but the incoming amount of WP was limited enough that I had to spend a little time planning my route. Plus, I could take on other side quests and revisit areas if I wanted to ‘grind’ and get extra XP and WP, etc. Oh, and the more time a certain Fairy is embedded in your Fury, the more they are upgraded, too.
The pacing of the story and its scope is agreeable with me, and that is a factor that’s more important to me in JRPGs than some other genres as I’m not inherently a JRPG fan. FFF provides a clear direction, but also gives you the flexibility to go off on your own a bit if you want. And while there are a fair number of concepts and terminology and mechanics, these are explained nicely in pop-up tutorials that are concise, include pictures, and they aren’t shown until they’re needed, so you don’t get too much info to sift through at once.
As far as presentation goes, FFF is a mixed offering graphically. As far as resolution and camera wonkiness, there are some things to be said against it. The graphics look almost like a PS2 game that was HD-ified, and the camera can snap a bit awkwardly during battles. The art direction and other visuals aren’t all that impressive, but they’re sufficient. On the other hand, to my surprise, one of the first things that struck me about this game was the music. I looked it up, the music was handled by Nobuo Uematsu. I’m not familiar with his work, but if his other efforts are this good, I’ll have to check them out as the music made a noticeably positive difference to the overall quality of the game. Voiceovers and effects get the job done without being too repetitive or grating, but there are times when they become awfully close to being so.
With that, let’s get to the summary…