Review: Fairy Fencer F

A long time ago there was a conflict between a goddess and an evil god. The two deities didn’t fight directly, but created a large number of special weapons for others to use. Eventually, these powers sealed each other and the power vanished from the world. Fast forward to modern times where these leftover weapons are called “Furies” and warriors that wield them are “Fencers.” Fury weapons are said to be incredibly powerful, so Fencers constantly scramble to acquire them. By a strange coincidence, two fencers, Fang and Tiara, get caught up in the struggle between the goddess and evil god.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Full platinum trophy.
• 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 platinum trophy.
• 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.
• Hundreds of hours of play to be found.
• 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.
• The whole game is basically just a reskin of the latest Neptunia game.
• Not a huge amount of variety in terms of core gameplay.

in Summary, The game is a lot of fun with some really nice graphics. Gameplay is smooth and simple and is one of those games where you can just relax and play it. You do not need to do much planning until very late in the game. The party management system is brilliant and to be honest the whole menu structure is clean and clear. Even if you are not a fan of the series you can still get enjoyment from it. its a dungeon crawler at heart and you can just skip the story scenes and get your moneys worth. I cant help but think its  a Neptunia game reskinned but thats not necessarily a bad thing. i enjoy it and will continue to enjoy it for what it offers. A good game to purchase and well worth a slot in your collection.