Yes, I’ll say it: I played a game called Fairy Fencer F. Might just be the most JRPG
title for a video game this side of Ar tolenico Qoga, also published by Nippon-Ichi, are we
noticing a trend here?
Anyway.
Fairy Fencer F: A game about fairies, and fencers, and a whole lot of mechanics and
terrain and other assorted assets lifted in broad daylight from the eternally-tongue-in-cheek
cheesecakefest that is the Hyperdimension Neptunia series.
But then again, Bravely Default spun off from Final Fantasy and was fine, Secret of Evermore
spun off from Secret of Mana and was fine, Persona spun off from the Shin Megami Tensei
mainline and was fine.
Awright, let’s at least give it a shot.
Let’s fence some fairies.
In this case, we’ve got Fang, a myopic dope of a protagonist who’s motivated by his
own hunger and little else.
When he manages to pull a magicked sword from a stone all Arthurian-style, a cute girl pops
out of the sword… and he couldn’t give a rat’s bum about it all.
He just wants food.
So he burgles some bread, ends up in jail, cute sword-spirit fairy girl busts him out
and tells him he needs to find other magic swords.
Shortly thereafter he runs upon another cute girl, who poisons him, and then eventually
befriends him and tells him that the reason they’re collecting swords is to free the
goddess that fought a dark demon leaving them both pincushioned with these blades.
Feel free to take a bathroom break, ‘cuz it only gets stranger from here.
As is typical for your modern JRPG, you’ll eventually come upon a number of other party
members, each with strange quirks and various quantities of clothing, though I do admit
that dubbing the Osaka yokel as a frost-bitten hoser straight outta Calgary was a nice touch.
Anyway.
They’ve all got fairy accompaniment themselves, and quest alongside you to attempt to subvert
a massive corporation with evil on its mind… maybe… and maybe liberate the goddess.
Or the demon!
Nothing’s stopping you from pulling out its swords, either.
Man, this game likes swords.
You can fuse a fairy to a sword by pulling it out of the goddess or demon, you can equip
a fairy to a PC for stat boosts, you can jam a fairy-sword into the ground to pass conditions
on to the dungeon… that’s a heck of a lot of function for a sword.
Or guns.
Or a scythe.
Or whatever it happens to be at the time.
That’s right, not only can these swords be possessed and all that, but they can actually
be turned into other weapons entirely, all the better to exploit enemy weaknesses.
All of these various forms, as well as new magic and stat upgrades, can be unlocked with
Weapon Points, which are separate from Experience points, and by and large handed out with a
eyedropper.
Unlike some of its fellow Nippon-Ichi RPGs - say, the Mugen Souls series - you’re not
going to be able to break this game wide open too early, which may or may not be a positive
depending on how much you like leaving things like “difficulty curve” in barely-animated
puddles in your wake.
Nope, you’re going to be slogging through this one, utilizing every power at your disposal
- including the super-flashy Fairize technique to merge with your fairy for bonus stats - just
to get from point A to point B, which will look really familiar because they really like
recycling terrain.
So that covers the plot and mechanics, but it leaves out two rather large elephants in
the room: the art and sound.
And the people behind the art and sound.
Namely, and I can’t believe I’m saying this in the context of a Compile Heart RPG,
but here goes…
Yoshitaka Amano and Nobuo Uematsu.
That’s right.
67% of the reason Final Fantasy VI was so damned beloved are right here.
I mean, I kinda get that vibe from some of the music, and some of the art… especially
the oft-mentioned demon and goddess, which are about as Amano as it gets.
Still, I kinda wish they’d done more with these big names than just throw around some
concept stills, while leaving the rest of the game in the same kind of modern anime
style that every such game walks around in all day.
Similarly, Uematsu features on a few tracks but leaves much of the rest to a half-dozen
other composers… he must be recovering from his association with that failed Recettear-clone
Hometown Story.
Were these just big-name acquisitions used to legitimize what would otherwise be passed
over as another piece of fanservice-loaded schlock?
I don’t think so.
While the Neptunia games were more about poking fun at the back end of gaming, Fairy Fencer
F wants first and foremost to be an engaging and complex game…
my only problem is that it might’ve overdid it, by layering systems over systems over
systems into a chewy, dense baklava of RPG goodness… that if you’re not prepared
for it, might just blow out a filling or twelve.
You’ve been warned.