Fairy Fencer F Review

Title: Fairy Fencer F
Genre: RPG
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Compile Heart
System: PS3
Release Date: 09/16/2014 (NA), 10/10/2013 (JP)

When Compile Heart introduced the Galapagos RPG label that claimed to produce traditional RPGs targeted at a regular Japanese audience, I didn’t believe them. Not for a second. Not even the Final Fantasy-esque dark concept art, the involvement of the Earthbound Papas, nor Nobuo Uematsu being credited as a composer had me fooled.

It still failed to be even as satisfactory as recent Neptunia games.

A long time ago, the Vile God and the Goddess engaged in war. The Goddess sealed herself up with the Vile God by stabbing both their bodies with weapons called “Furies” that host the souls of Fairies. Some of these Furies missed and landed in the human world, and humans chosen by the Fairies residing in them become “Fencers.” Fang is a poor young man who pulls out a Fury and awakens the Fairy within, who chooses him as her master and tasks him with awakening the Goddess and saving the world.

If you look at the promotional content, you may be able to see a trace of their so-claimed ambition in creating a “dark” fantasy RPG. The setting and plot synopsis definitely bring forth a traditional RPG feel, at the very least. However, such presumptions are immediately shattered the moment the protagonist, Fang, opens his mouth. He’s thrown in jail for stealing food, and is living the time of his life because you can sleep and eat for free in prison! His first encounter with the Fairy Eryn consists of him shouting “Gimme food” as she begins her “thou art the chosen hero…” type speech. Fang is a lazy bum who is also full of himself, and definitely not a character befitting of the role of the typical hero.

So far, so good. Sure, we don’t really have a truly “traditional” RPG per se, but FFF is setting itself up for a fun adventure that parodies the RPG cliches, right? And, well, for the first half, it certainly showed promise. Not in terms of plot or serious writing, but in the form of its gags. The first bit is truly enjoyable and a great laugh, with the player being drawn in through the beginning party’s energetic banter and the serious-sounding (if cliched) premise and setting reduced to a few pages of text conveyed in the same way the tutorials are. I honestly wouldn’t have minded if they kept up the strong humor for the rest of the game and kept FFF as a gag/parody RPG.

Unfortunately, the team didn’t seem to be able to decide on what exactly to do with FFF, as they tried to give the story a turn for the serious and play straight the very tropes it aimed to parody. A transition from a light, humorous atmosphere into a more serious plot is by no means uncommon in the genre, but execution is the key to success, and Compile Heart doesn’t seem to have it. The game is 20 hours long for a playthrough, which is nowhere near enough time to satisfactorily develop all the characters and plot points it introduced. The quality of the writing takes a massive dip after a certain plot twist halfway through the game, making the protagonist’s development seem abrupt and out of place from the player’s point of view. Overall, it feels like the team just gave up halfway through and the game ended up being half the length it should have been.

The characters were entertaining for the first five hours, and the main trio of Fang, Eryn, and Tiara are rather enjoyable to watch. However, the game keeps introducing more party members, each with thinner characterization than the last. There simply wasn’t enough time for anyone but the main trio to get time in the spotlight, and that’s including most of the villains. Enemies hyped up in the first half of the game go down like mere bugs, and the game likes to throw the “oh no! He’s too strong! We can’t defeat him!!” cutscene around when the actual battle is a cakewalk. At the end, Fairy Fencer F failed to become the “traditional RPG” that it strove for, and also provided little satisfaction for those looking for a fun parody or even a character-centric game, due to everyone but the main trio having little presence in the main story.

Since my first playthrough was a mere 20 hours, I expected the game to be heavy on multiple endings. I mean, the developer loves implementing ending branches and having a True ending with lots of requirements! So I looked up the endings on a wiki and saw that not only did the game not have the True ending that it desperately needed, there were also only three endings with branches near the end. There’s one for each of the heroines Eryn and Tiara, as well as a normal ending if choose neither of them. This astounding lack of volume shows that Compile Heart clearly cut corners here, even compared to their usual output.

The battle system is similar to that of the Neptunia series, except the balance is worse off. Most of the game is extremely easy, with bosses going down in minutes and there being a grand total of one fight in the main story that actually posed a challenge. FFF also has a transformation mechanic, except it provides no drawbacks to the user so there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to transform. While the Neptunia games are mainly centered around using special moves, it is more beneficial in FFF to stick to strengthening regular combos as the special moves actually deal terrible damage for what they cost (loads of SP and 40% of the character’s HP). The most viable tactic is to just go all-out with regular attack combos, which results in a very button-mashy game despite being turn-based. It doesn’t take long for the battles to become tedious, and the repetitive environments don’t help.

As if the balance wasn’t already skewed, the main character is also overwhelmingly powerful. Fang gets a bunch of cut-scene powerups in the story and they actually reflect on Fang’s battle capabilities, making him much stronger than the rest of the cast. The game introduced a bunch of things like elemental weaknesses, status ailments, and weapon type weaknesses, but none of which matter since Fang can simply smash through everything better than everyone else. Some of the non-battle mechanics contained good ideas, but failed to save the combat, which is what you’ll be engaged in for the majority of the time.

Visual assets show off Compile Heart’s underwhelming budget, which should come as no surprise for anyone familiar with their games. Environments are repetitive and uninspired, and the character models, while a step up from the former, are hardly good for a PS3 game. At least Tsunako’s art is nice as usual. In fact, Eryn and Tiara are probably my favorite designs from the artist, so I’m visually satisfied. Story cutscenes are presented in the usual static visual novel format, which doesn’t really work when the scene at hand demands some action, especially since CH’s portraits and special effects are arguably less dynamic than the usual assets for visual novels, and there weren’t enough CG events. Amano of Final Fantasy fame was credited as an artist too, but all he did was a concept art that was used to show off in promotional images early on and conveyed nothing about the actual atmosphere of the game. They also boasted about having Nobuo Uematsu as a composer, but the majority of the BGM is done by Compile Heart’s usual people. It’s not a bad soundtrack–there were some pretty cool vocals, but the rest of it wasn’t all too memorable. My favorite has to be the post-transformation battle theme.

One plus side of the game is that it has secret recruitable party members, both of whom you are likely to miss on your first playthrough. That’s a pretty cool incentive for a New Game+ run, provided that the game is actually fun.

If you’re still curious about the game, wait for a price drop (it’s most likely happening). Whether you try to look at it as a serious RPG, a game for moe appeal, or even a plain old parody, FFF will only come out to be half-assed in every department. Even though the beginning is enjoyable, the second half of the game leaves a bad aftertaste as you can see the writing team pretty much give up. It’s a step down from Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory in terms of game balance and the amount of content, too. To this point, I still don’t know what Compile Heart’s Galapagos RPG label is for, because what they’re publishing under it look no different from their usual output. The comedy is enjoyable if the style of humor in the Neptunia series appeals to you. Oh, and Eryn was cute. Eryn is the best girl, and made the experience ok, I guess. Red-Pink twintails are wonderful.

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