When you have a game like Fairy Fencer F, it’s fairly difficult to try to grade it on a normal scale. This is a game that takes just about every anime trope imaginable, throws it into a giant mixing pot with many other JRPG tropes, and serves it in a small bowl seasoned with last-gen tech and limitations.

This does not necessarily make it a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. However, it does make a product that, admittedly, will only truly appeal to a very specific demographic.

Fairy Fencer F has you taking on the role of Fang, a lazy delinquent whose only goal in life is to be able to slack off and do absolutely nothing. Which seems to almost happen after we first meet him in a prison cell that he refers to as “Heaven.” However, before that happened, he wound up pulling out an ancient weapon, known as a fury, and releases the fairy inside named Eryn. After some shenanigans, Eryn manages to convince Fang to get his crap together and go on a journey to find the other fury weapons in a quest to revive an ancient goddess and bring back Eryn’s lost memories.

Along the way, you run into lots of classic anime/JRPG characters. You have your aristocratic gothic lolita, your obligatory fanservice character, the suave and smooth rival, an evil organization bent on world domination, the overly eager protege, and even a weird bipedal cat thing with a sword sticking out of it’s head. Although there are some quirks that help some characters stand out, such as one of your party members having masochistic tendencies. 

Despite the somewhat cliché cast, the gameplay itself actually manages to hold ground, even if it is formulaic in its approach. You start off in your hub town, with access to a shop and a pub where you can accept side quests. You then go out into the world, find the newest dungeon, advance the plot, and then return to town after the excursion. In a sense, each dungeon feels like it’s own anime episode, although the predictable plot tends to have trouble holding itself up.

The furies you collect, and the fairies that reside within them, also have numerous functions. Their primary use is to remove the swords that seal both the Goddess and the Vile God. Doing so awakens the latent abilities within a fairy, and grants them new abilities. These in turn can buff your party members when equipped, providing bonuses to defenses, attack power, or other traits. When on the world map, you can stab these awakened furies into the ground to open up a new location, as well as shape the area by activating latent effects that have an impact on the entire dungeon, making it easier or more difficult depending on which weapon you jam in. One trait in particular is required to do most side quests, which can be admittedly frustrating, as it’s not really made clear right away.

Although battles get a little bogged down by the truckload of mechanics gradually introduced to you as the game goes on, you can get by with just knowing the basics for the most part. Battles are fast and fluid, with numerous options available to you, including the ability to use character-specific abilities and potential combination strikes with your party members. Each fencer also has the ability to go into their ultimate form by Fairizing with their fury, which even includes a transformation cinematic and music change that hammers the anime aesthetics home. Add in the fact that load times are practically non-existent, and the game suddenly becomes a fast-paced dungeon crawler.

Being able to remove those loading screens, however, comes at the price of poor graphical appeal, as the regular character models themselves are basic and without much animation to them, and the dungeon environments themselves lack proper textures and just look bland. There are even several cases where you’ll immediately notice recycled assets going from dungeon to dungeon. Although you are presented with high-res 2D character portraits, the game was clearly done with a limited budget, which can also explain the use of a visual novel method of storytelling rather than using cinematics, which causes some scenes of dramatic tension to lose their punch.

Probably the biggest thing about the game that has managed to irk me is how it handles mid-fight segways into story elements. Remember back in older RPG games you would have an encounter that you can’t win for story reasons, and the boss ends up insta-killing your party when you reach a certain point to show how powerful they really are? Those kind of scenarios exist in Fairy Fencer F, only without the boss doing any action whatsoever to show what they’re really capable off. Several times I’ve found myself completely thrashing the boss of a given stage, only to get thrown into a story sequence that shows my party getting thrashed instead. 

Again, this doesn’t necessarily make the game bad. It’s actually fairly presentable, especially since it has some all stars involved with the development. Nobuo Uematsu contributes the musical score, and Yoshitaka Amano on the art department. Both are legendary talents behind many of the Final Fantasy games. The actual development team consists of people behind the successful (at least in Japan) Hyperdimension Neptunia series.

On the other hand, the clear lack of budget, some strange design choices, and brings the game down several notches and overload of JRPG tropes may feel like overkill if you’re not a hardcore anime fan. Still, the gameplay aspect is rock solid, and the quick pace of battles allows the game to be played in short bursts if you need to. While Fairy Fencer F may not quite be the game you want to retire your PS3 on, it’s at least worth trying if you’re big on anime, or are a huge fan of JRPGs.

Hint: "Serious Face" is a very serious attack. It should not be used for silly or frivolous purposes, on serious ones. 

by Michael Revis