A Rose By Any Other Name | Fairy Fencer F Review

Did you ever get that feeling when playing a game that you’ve seen this somewhere else before? Well, when playing Fairy Fencer F that is precisely what you’ll feel if you are familiar with Compile Heart’s catalog. Specifically, Fairy Fencer F feels and plays a lot like Hyperdimension Neptunia. While this doesn’t make it a bad game, it does limit the game in certain aspects. On one hand you can safely say that if you like Hyperdimension Neptunia, chances are you are going to like this game. On the other hand, if you were looking for something new and exciting from this title, it falls short in the expectations department.

The story of Fairy Fencer F goes like this. Long ago, a war was fought between the Goddess and the Vile God. Because they were equally matched, they both created a vast number of special weapons imbued with their godly energy, each containing the life force of a fairy. Armed with these weapons, the deities continued their conflict until they finally sealed each other away into the great unknown. A long time has passed since this ancient conflict, and the weapons created by the Goddess and the Vile God have since been scattered across the world. These weapons, now known as “Furies”, are highly sought after by warriors who call themselves “Fencers”. You play as a young man named Fang who decides to rashly pull a Fury from a stone, he inadvertently becomes a Fencer himself. Fang then starts the quest to find more of the furies and reawaken the Goddess who has been asleep for so long.

The story of Fairy Fencer F is fairly interesting, but as mentioned above, it doesn’t offer much that we haven’t seen before. Luckily, the humor in this game is pretty good and the characters themselves are interesting. These two elements keep the game moving along. The game isn’t overly funny, but you’ll find yourself chuckling along from time to time which is just enough to keep your interest.

Fairy Fencer F is an RPG and what RPG would be complete without a robust combat system? Fairy Fencer F is a typical turn-based RPG where all your characters will take turns attacking and defending. While you have standard attacks to use, there are tons of skills and spells to use as you see fit which give you a good amount of customization options for the characters. No two characters have to play the same so you can really explore and find what you like the best. Certain characters even have their own special skills and abilities that only they can use. This gives you plenty of incentive to try out different party combos just to see how it works. There is also a combo system and a team combo system where you’ll be prompted to push a series of buttons to inflict more damage. Enemies are also weak to certain attacks so as you play the game, you’ll know what attacks to use against certain enemies. The system sounds complicated, but there are only a few things to keep track of and it is very intuitive so you’ll get the hang of it very quickly.

While the standard RPG system in play is certainly competent, Fairy Fencer F has one last trick up its sleeve. Characters have an overdrive bar much like Street Fighter does. As characters take damage or execute attacks, your overdrive bar fills up. Once it is full, your character can Fairize. In this mode, you’ll deal more damage and have access to a new set of very powerful attacks at your disposal. This mode is definitely fun and it adds extra incentive to string battles along just to get into this mode. However, this mode also creates some problems for the game as far as balance is concerned.

Balance in Fairy Fencer F is a big issue mainly at the hands of Fairize mode. Getting into the Fairize mode takes only two to three turns and once you are in it, you are virtually unstoppable. Sure, it is fun to turn your enemies into dust, but this makes the game very easy. Towards the end, you’ll start to get closer to a normal difficulty, but even then once you load up, there isn’t much that can stop you. There is a fine line between giving the player a sense of power and throwing off the balance and in this case, it favors the player too much.

In addition to balance issues, the game also fails to give the player enough quest diversity to make the game interesting for long periods of time. Most of the quests are of the same structure and they often require you to go back into the areas you just cleared to clear them again. They don’t really add much to the story and are generally a rinse and repeat scenario. This was a missed opportunity to flesh out the story and make this a more challenging and interesting game. Instead the focus is on grinding and that isn’t a lot of fun for most people.

In the end, Fairy Fencer F has the bones of a great game. Everything runs well and there are few technical issues to speak of. In this game, it isn’t so much what makes it a bad game as much as it is what it could have been. There was tremendous potential to make this a deep and immersive experience. The characters and humor are great, but the balance of the game is off and the quests are repetitive. This ultimately leaves this RPG on the periphery rather than being something you have to get your hands on. We would certainly recommend this game for Hyperdimension Neptunia fans since this game borrows heavily from that title. For everyone else, we’d recommend a rental just to see if this style of game is the right game for you.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation 3 version of Fairy Fencer F developed by Compile Heart