FAIRY FENCER F

BUY. 

So, I'm sure this comes as a no brainer to anyone who regularly visits my blog and knows my thoughts and opinions on the Compile Heart rpgs, but Fairy Fencer F does things surprisingly different from the Neptunia games in a way that's pretty satisfying. 

The game revolves around a character named Fang, who pulls a sword out of a tree and ends up becoming what's known as a "Fencer". This is because the sword he removed was actually a "Fury", a weapon imbued with a Fairy, which contains a part of the goddesses power. By pulling the weapon from the tree, he made a bond with that Fairy, and he has to set forth on a quest to have his wish granted. In exchange, he has to help his fairy partner revive the Goddess, who has been sealed away along with the Vile God in a battle of deities long before anyone can remember.

Your fairy (Eryn) has amnesia, and doesn't actually remember how to go about reviving the goddess, and Fang, as a lazy, selfish, and generally unmotivated individual who only cares about food immediately writes off her request. The pursuing story is pretty entertaining, but I'll cover that later in the review.

To start off, let's discuss the one thing that has barely changed from the Neptunia games, because it's still pretty fantastic -- Combat.

 As you can see from the images, combat is relatively the same as Neptunia, taking place in a small arena, everything turn based and attacks being "combo" based. The main difference in combat is that you have "launch" attacks that launch your enemy in the air, and then pursuit attacks that follow your enemies, and deal a bit more damage. 

The item crystals and "hidden" crystals are still in the game, however in Fairy Fencer F, you don't hit an area "scan", you have to unlock an "item sonar" ability which will give you a "?" over your head when you're near a hidden item, gradually progressing into "?!" and finally "!!" when you're right ontop of it.

A normal item crystal we're used to seeing in Neptunia games

 I prefer this new system initially, because the "area scanning for an item" gets tiresome, however (to my knowledge, currently) there isn't an upgrade that just shows you the hidden item on the minimap, which is something I much rather have than any sort of "hot/cold" mechanic. A good initial change, at the very least.

Transformation is still in the game, however it's not a CPU transformation -- it's Fairizing. 

In order to "Fairize", your Fencer throws their weapon into the air, and it falls and impales them, somehow giving them a burst of energy and letting them transform into fanatical forms, that deal insane damage and have high defense.

The overall result is typically the same as you'd find in the Neptunia games of HDD forms, except you don't have any equipment to power up your transformed form, and building your tension gauge in order to transform seems infinitely easier than it ever did in the Neptunia games. The Fairize music is INCREDIBLY amazing though, and it builds so much hype the first time you pull it off.

That brings me to one of the biggest changes from Fairy Fencer F and the Neptunia games -- your equipment is at a minimum.

You are forced to keep one weapon, because of the fact that it's bonded to you, and your fairy, so that's something that never enters the equation. In fact, your armor is pretty minimal as well, with you having the standard fare of a chest piece, and a "amulet/ring", which with DLC brings about cosmetic changes to your weapon, but the stats they provide are pretty minimal at best, however you can "link" with furies you unlock later in the game, which provide a range of benefits like EXP+, Elemental Damage/Resistance+, Weapon prowess (for more damage) and the like, which is very useful. The reason behind having less equipment however is the "Weapon Boost system", which is something I personally love.

With the Weapon Boost system, you use a currency called WP to boost your weapon, which allows you to boost all kinds of stats, making this more or less a stat stick for your character. The variable nature of the Wep Boost system is incredibly addicting however, as it lets characters who'd normally be forced to constantly go close range to have almost entire map range with their basic attacks, and it allows you to keep everyone on even footing. WP is used for far more than just Wep Boost, however. It's the currency you use to purchase new skills, magic, abilities, and combos.

  "Combos?" you might ask. In Neptunia games, you simply leveled up to unlock new abilities, and you started with all of your combo slots. In Fairy Fencer F, you have to PURCHASE your skills *and* your Combo slots! I was initially incredibly annoyed with this, because it seemed so tedious to have to grind WP in order to have a "normal" character. However, having 3 full combo slots makes your character very, very powerful, especially when we introduce Avalanche attacks -- but I'll touch on that in a bit. You may notice in the screen shots that there are different weapons listed in "Combo", even though I said you can't change your weapons.

In Fairy Fencer F, your weapon TRANSFORMS INTO NEW WEAPON TYPES DURING COMBOS! It's incredible, your first attack will always be your "basic" attack of that type of weapon you have, but after that you can choose one of 3 buttons to start that combo, very much like the Neptunia games. You can go from Sword to Scythe to Bow if you so chose, and it's so much fun. I love setting up the different combos because different enemies are weak to different weapon types, which not only boosts the damage they take from that weapon, but also allows avalanche attacks to happen.

Avalanche attacks happen mid-combo during your character's attacks. If you successfully do enough damage, or hit an enemy enough times with their "weakness", avalanche attacks will happen -- this lets your other two teammates get attacks in, without wasting their turn. So you could have Character A start a combo, then halfway through bring in characters B and C, have them pull off a full combo each, then finish up with Character A's combo. If there are enemies still left standing after that devastation, it then moves on to Character B's turn, and they can start doing their combos as normal (and possibly set up another Avalanche attack in the process!) 

It's an intelligent system that rewards the player for properly abusing the weakness of their enemies, and encourages the player to explore with the variety of attacks and abilities instead of sticking with one basic combo for the duration of the game (although I'm sure you could if you really wanted to.)

Moving further along that line of thought, there is a Crafting system in place for special items (like the jump ability, armors, healing items, and of course quest items) but Dungeons aren't unlocked using plans. In fact, there are no "change dungeon plans" to change enemies, or items found inside!

This leads us to the "Goddess Revival" mechanic in the game!

With this mechanic, you're presented with the Vile God, and the Goddess, both of whom have been sealed by furies. In the game, you find furies in dungeons and as part of quests, and use these furies to pull swords out of the Vile God, or the Goddess. The furies sealing the gods have special bonuses, like EXP+30%, Change Enemies, WP+50% and the like, but there's also typically a negative effect as well, such as MATK-10%, EXP-10%, No healing, Seal (can't use skills), Silence (can't use magic) and the like. It's a trade off, but it allows you to break the game in incredible ways, going as far as having +200% EXP, and +225% WP around dungeons at a certain point. In order to obtain these bonuses, you select a fury in the god or goddess, and "pull it out" which leads to a battle --

with "guardians" of the fury, who are disturbed when you pull a fury. This finally leads with you pulling a sword and great success.

These furies are used in the World Shaping mechanic -- 

                          

in which you stab Furies into the very earth itself, in order to to unlock dungeons (which are ? points on the map) and allows you to add bonus effects to dungeons. Initially the area of effect is quite low on furies, but once you level up that fury to 10 (by equipping it, and using it, which is another layer of customization to your characters!) you'll have something like this:

which will finally lead to your dungeons look like this:

which is just incredibly fun to play with. I've heard talk online about people managing to fit between 12 and 18 furies around any given dungeon at one time, which is incredibly insane, and totally believable. 

The furies are gated in class of how strong the fury you have is, starting off with C as the lowest, and finally ending with the elusive S, which has no downsides whatsoever to using them, and only offer benefits. As you can expect, they're incredibly rare (there are only 2 in the entire game) and they're very, very, very hard to obtain.

To further increase your stats beyond equipment and linking with fairies, there are also "challenges" in the game, which provide stat boosts by completing silly things like "jumping X amount of times", walking so many meters in a dungeon as the party leader, taking no damage from a battle, and the like. Overall there are just so many passive ways to boost the stats of your characters, which is a really nice change. The game constantly feels like it's rewarding you from just playing it, which is something you may not feel in a Neptunia title due to the grind, at times.

Oddly enough, the "Arena" does make a return in Fairy Fencer F as well -- except it's not called an Arena, and your progress is gated on how many furies you've collected and bonded using the Goddess Revival mechanic. It's called Shukesoo's Tower, and the more furies you stab into the ground around it, the higher the tower grows.

The interior is set up the same way the Arena is from the other games, having a menu and "levels" to select, however in Shukesoo's Tower, you have to clear the previous floor before you can proceed onto the next.

It's another interesting change from the Neptunia Formula, and one I enjoy, though i'll be happy to get back to the Neptunia way of things come re;birth 3.






I'll finally touch up on the writing of the game, which is something Compile Heart & Idea Factory have been nailing PERFECTLY. The humor in this game is hilarious, with jokes and references that actually made me laugh. Hell, here's one of the first cutscenes you see in the game -- 

 

which is the goofy silly humor that you can expect to find throughout the game. The story initially starts off pretty lighthearted, making you think "nothing truly bad will happen, I'll just get psyched out!" like the Neptunia games, but there is a dark sadness in the game, which you normally wouldn't expect from Compile Heart. I actually teared up at the ending of the game, and was really bummed. It was an overall happy ending, but it wasn't a "everyone's fine we're all super happy together!" ending, it was much more bittersweet. It's something I really appreciated, and found myself wanting to do more of the main story and not goof around as much just to get more of the plot.

Of course it wouldn't be a Compile Heart game if there wasn't fanservice, but I won't directly post that here because of course it's incredibly NSFW. The fanservice is closer to Neptunia re;birth 1 levels, however. It's there, and there are a few images here and there, but it's a lot more toned down than it was in Neptunia 2, which is something I appreciate. Don't get me wrong -- I love fanservice as much as the next guy, and I loved it in Neptunia 2, but toning it down and not making it seem like the focal point of the game is always appreciated.

Overall, this is another fantastic game from Compile Heart, and if you've enjoyed the Neptunia games, or been curious about this game, PICK IT UP. It's fantastic, I love it, and I'm hoping to completely finish the game before Hyperdimension Neptunia re;birth 3 comes out (which is coming super soon!)