Review: Fairy Fencer F (Steam)

Long ago, the Vile God and the Goddess waged war with each other. Equally matched, they were sealed away in another world… Now a lazy young man named Fang somehow finds himself a key part of this war he’d really rather not deal with, but fate beckons in this uncommon RPG!

Pros:

• Anime style graphics that look really good on the PlayStation 3. The areas are varied and nice to look at. Characters look great with some excellent animations both in game and in cut scenes.
• crazy J pop influenced soundtrack.
• Gameplay is a dungeon crawler.
• Turn based combat with a area of attack circle. Attack anyone who touches the circle.
• You can see enemies roaming around the land. Hit them from behind for a pre emptive strike. Hit them anywhere else for a fight with no buffs. if the enemy hits you from behind you get ambushed and give control to the enemy.
• Find chests in the levels for bonus loot.
• Full controller support.
• Controls are simple and clear.
• Earn exp and level up. Your stats are automatically increased.
• can skip or fast forward cut scenes and FMV sections.
• Japanese/English voice over options.
• Bright colours make the game easy on the eye.
• Fairys are very much like Pokemon in terms of you want to catch them all! Fairys carry unique missions which when done grants you the use of their powers. you can combine fairys with weapons to increase the stats and you can at any time swap out fairys so you have a lot of diversity.
• Easy to use user interface with minimum button presses needed and menus streamlined so you never feel like your digging around for stuff.
• Steam achievements.
• Meet some weird and whacky NPC characters throughout your journey.
• Combat is quick, varied and a lot of fun! You have special moves and moves that require MP to execute. You have complete control on what you want to do. With no grid system or move limit, you can go wherever you want within the fightzone.
• End of battle screens give you a breakdown showing damage dealt, Time taken, exp earnt and any loot found from the fight with a rank given.
• Full party management where you can hire/fire, change formations, assign roles and change loadouts.
• Every character has a set of passive missions. Well there more just little goals/achievements than full on missions. They are things like jump x amount of times, trigger x amounts of fights, Things like that. Finishing one grants bonus exp and buffs.
• the story is whacky, cliche in a lot of ways but its whackiness carries it forward. To be honest the action takes centre stage so you soon forget the story.
• Comes with a huge collection of DLC, Some of which makes playing the game a lot easier.
• Hub towns to find where you can buy and sell items/weapons/armour. You can also find new side missions.
• You can replay levels.

Cons:

• Slow starter with a lot of reading and cut scenes to watch.
• game does get occasional bits of slowdown and runs a bit juddery and shaky.
• A lot to take in at first.
• Has you replaying the same dungeons a lot of the time.
• Crafting whilst vast, Never feels compulsory or worth the time.
• Not a huge amount of variety in terms of core gameplay.
• For an RPG it can be short with a play through taking around 25 hours.

So Fairy Fencer F makes its way to Steam. It was a rocky start with many issues happening at launch like dodgy frame rate, controller recognition and a few more. A few updates later and it is running a lot better. Best played with a controller, The game is very accessible and fun. It plays like a chilled Neptunia game and you will notice many similarities between Fairy Fancer and Neptunia. The game is short but multiple play through are needed to explore everything and maximize your story. I had great fun stepping back in from my PS3 adventure a while back. The free DLC chucked in is a really nice touch and makes the start of the game a lot easier but also more enjoyable. Fans of Neptunia will love this game, New players will find this easier to get into than Neptunia due to the laid back story telling and accessability of crafting and combat. Its worth a look for sure and like I say you could do it in a few nights of play but you will come back for more.