2416: I Was Right

Back in 2014, when I was still somewhat raw from being let go from USgamer (hell, I still am somewhat raw from being let go from USgamer, assholes) I happened to have the misfortune to stumble across the site’s review of the PlayStation 3 version of Compile Heart’s RPG Fairy Fencer F, a game which combined the art of Tsunako (best known for her work on the Neptunia series for Compile Heart) with contributions from Final Fantasy veterans Yoshitaka Amano (concept art) and Nobuo Uematsu (music).

The review (which you can find archived here if you’re curious) struck me as doing the game a tremendous disservice, because it spent most of its time telling the readers how awful Idea Factory are in the writer’s eyes — even going so far as to say they had supposedly been nicknamed “Idea Fuck” (seriously, you couldn’t come up with anything better?) — and talking very little about the game.

I wasn’t happy. I hadn’t played Fairy Fencer F myself at that point, but I’d played enough of Compile Heart’s previous work by that point to know that, while their productions were inevitably low-budget and low-tech compared to the Final Fantasies of the world, their work consistently had a huge amount of soul to it that shone through via the writing, the character designs and their snappy, often biting use of satire and parody. They knew who their audience was, and they designed games to appeal to that audience.

I’m using the past tense, but all this is still true two years later, the only difference being that they’ve jumped into the next generation of games consoles and are now making games that run at frame rates more in line with what we tend to expect from modern games.

Anyway, I had a feeling that the Fairy Fencer F review on USgamer was unfair to the game, and playing through a substantial chunk of its new PlayStation 4 incarnation Advent Dark Force — which includes the original game, plus two extra narrative routes, all tarted up with some enhanced game mechanics such as a larger party size — I can indeed confirm that said review was not only unfair, it was also just plain inaccurate in places, too.

Shall we pick it apart? Sure, I’m feeling petty and vindictive right now, so why not.

“During the last console generation, we had some serious fears that the Japanese-developed RPG would soon be a thing of the past.”

Uh, no. I believe I’ve previously covered this in detail, but it bears saying again: JRPGs never went anywhere. However, what did happen was that the companies developing these sprawling epics didn’t have the time or the resources to keep up with technology so much as some other genres that favour shorter, more focused experiences that can be designed more easily around spectacular setpieces. Consequently, they became regarded as “niche” — and developers, recognising this, started to develop for this niche rather than for the mass market.

Said niche had considerable overlap with the otaku community, who enjoyed Japanese animation and manga for a variety of reasons — the complex, intertwining storylines; the strong characterisation; the distinctive character design; and, yes, sometimes being sexually provocative or even explicit. These were people who knew what they enjoyed in their entertainment and were willing to pay considerable amounts of money to demonstrate their love for their favourite franchises. So why not capitalise on that?

“Thankfully, history proved our anxieties false — take a look at the 3DS’ library and you’ll see one of the best JRPG collections known to humankind.”

I have to take issue with this. The 3DS, while a good platform, is not the place to go if you want JRPGs. Off the top of my head, I actually can’t think of all that many. Off the top of my head: Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates, Bravely Default, the upcoming Dragon Quest VII, Monster Hunter, Etrian Odyssey and… any more? Possibly a MegaTen game in there somewhere? The situation is similar even when you throw in backward compatibility with the DS, though admittedly you can add several excellent Dragon Quests and Final Fantasy III to the list in this case.

Compare with its contemporary the Vita, which has multiple Neptunia games, Dungeon Travelers 2 (one of, if not the greatest dungeon crawler ever created), Criminal Girls, Trails of Cold Steel, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Persona 4 Golden, Stranger of Sword City, Demon Gaze, Ray Gigant, Final Fantasy X/X-2 and numerous others — not to mention backward compatibility with the PSP’s astronomical library of fantastic JRPGs including the Disgaea series, all of the Final Fantasies up to IX, Trails in the Sky, multiple Ys games, Persona 1, 2 and 3 and all manner of other goodies.

You want JRPGs, you don’t buy a 3DS. You buy a Vita. (And then maybe a 3DS as well, because what JRPGs it does have are good stuff.)

“Even in the hand-wringingest days of JRPG doom and gloom, one group managed to quietly pump out console game after console game without garnering much attention: Compile Heart, a developer that mainly specialises in role-playing experiences for the anime crowd. So why didn’t we ever hail this company as saviours of this once-distressed genre? Well, their games just aren’t very good.”

We’ve covered above why it was a natural evolution for RPG makers to court the anime crowd. The article itself covers why they tend to be low-budget experiences by noting that “Japanese developers may struggle to produce 40-60 hour RPGs with HD assets — as would any developer”.

Aren’t very good, though? Hmm. I’ll give you that their earlier work was of noticeably lower quality than what they’re putting out now — the difference between the original Hyperdimension Neptunia and even its first sequel Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 is astronomical — but they still had that core charm about them. They spoke to the player. They worked within their limitations.

And, more importantly, with each and every new release, Compile Heart has improved and refined its work. Every Neptunia release has been superior to the last — they even went back and rewrote mk2 and Victory using the new Re;Birth engine on Vita and PC, and MegaDimension Neptunia V-II is a quantum leap forward for the series. A modern Compile Heart game is virtually unrecognisable from one of five years ago.

But, sure, let’s write off their whole catalogue as “not very good.”

“There’s a reason their parent company, Idea Factory, is affectionately known by the nickname ‘Idea Fuck’ by those who understand their M.O.”

I have literally never seen this anywhere on the Internet except in this article.

“It seems Compile Heart may be aware of their less-than-stellar reputation…”

The people who keep buying the Neptunia series time after time — the people who cause Idea Factory International to sell out of limited editions every time a new Neptunia game comes out — would like a word with you.

“…since their latest RPG to hit the States, Fairy Fencer F, carries two extremely well-known names: Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano, two men who defined the look and sound of Final Fantasy until the early ’00s. Unfortunately, their material doesn’t rise above Compile Heart’s house style — sink some time into the game, and you wouldn’t have guessed these two massive talents contributed a single song or sketch.”

I’d agree that Amano’s influence isn’t particularly recognisable in the game itself — but I’d also argue that the vast majority of games in the Final Fantasy series don’t make particularly strong use of Amano’s art, either; when it is included in the form of character portraits and suchlike, it’s immensely jarring with the rest of the visual style. The PSP port of Final Fantasy II, for example, features immensely distracting character portraits in the dialogue window, in which protagonist Firion looks uncannily like Murray Crofts, the boy who used to sit behind me in Year 7 tutor group, and who was a complete wanker. Thankfully, you can turn them off.

Uematsu’s influence, however, is immediately apparent if you’ve ever listened to any of his work with The Black Mages or Earthbound Papas. Fairy Fencer F features numerous heavy rock numbers that are strongly reminiscent of Uematsu’s work with his various bands, and each track is melodic and catchy, just like Uematsu’s most well-known themes from Final Fantasy.

“At first, I assumed the inclusion of these two greats meant Compile Hearts [sic] wanted to forge a new path with their RPGs, but Fairy Fencer F is basically indistinguishable from anything else they’ve produced for the PlayStation 3 — meaning it’s pretty lousy.”

As I noted before, play Trinity Universe, then Hyperdimension Neptunia, then Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, then Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, then Fairy Fencer F, and you’ll see a developer that knows how to hone and refine its style. While some might argue you should probably get it right first time rather than evolve gradually over the course of several games, Trinity Universe and Hyperdimension Neptunia aren’t actually bad games in their own right, and everything that’s come since has improved on what they put in place — or in some cases, like Omega Quintet, completely wiped the slate clean and started again.

“At least Compile Heart seems to understand just what kind of game they’re making. Fairy Fencer F opens with your standard RPG premise: the unassuming hero must collect X number of magic somethings to seal away some great evil. Unlike RPGs that go to great lengths to pad out their extremely basic premises with hundreds of thousands of words, Fencer F [sic] drops the basics of the plot into your lap, and doesn’t feel the need to focus on elaborate lore or world-building… there’s not really a story worth telling here, so Compile Heart keeps the narrative mercifully brief.”

Fairy Fencer F opens in media res with aforementioned unassuming hero Fang locked in prison for stealing food. After escaping, we flash back to three days earlier, when he pulls a “Fury” out of the ground, thus releasing the fairy within, who takes the form of a girl called Eryn. Those who draw Furies in this way form an unbreakable bond with their fairies, and said fairies come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from Eryn’s adolescent appearance to giant robots, small cat-like creatures and rather overbearing matronly types.

Eryn realises that she has few memories about her past life from before Fang pulled the Fury out of the ground, but knows the legends behind the Goddess and the Vile God, who were sealed away by the Furies after they had a great battle with one another that threatened to devastate the world. It is said that whoever collects all of the Furies — there are over a hundred of them — will be able to wake the Goddess, and whoever wakes the Goddess will be able to have one wish granted. Fang, realising he is stuck with Eryn whether he likes it or not, begrudgingly agrees to assist her in the quest for her lost memories, but the two quickly become great friends, albeit friends who bicker all the time.

Not long after the story opens, Fang and Eryn encounter a mysterious young woman called Tiara, who initially poisons Fang with paralytic tea and makes off with the Fury he and Eryn were pursuing. She subsequently gets caught by a low-level hoodlum (who, in Compile Heart’s trademark satirical style, is well aware that he is a low-level hoodlum that “always shows up at times like this”) and rescued by Fang and Eryn, against their better judgement. Reluctantly forgiving her for her earlier transgression when it transpires she, too, is seeking the Furies to have a wish granted — world peace, in her case, though it becomes apparent there’s something more to her than meets the eye — they team up to continue their quest.

All this takes place in the first hour or so. Don’t tell me this has a throwaway plot, particularly with some of the surprisingly emotional moments later in the narrative.

“In terms of gameplay, Fairy Fencer F feels like a low-rent Tales of game.”

Fairy Fencer F plays nothing like a Tales of game. Tales of games feature zone-based open-world design — you can run from one end of the world to another — while Fairy Fencer F features an overall world map (much like the Neptunia games) and discrete dungeons within, some of which are story-relevant, others of which are purely for grinding or item acquisition purposes. Tales of games feature real-time action game-style combat; Fairy Fencer F features entirely turn-based combat.

“Its battle system tries to incorporate some action-y elements, but they only serve to create the illusion of complexity. Enemy encounters work via a turn-based system, where you’re given a limited range to move (without any sort of time restriction) and the chance to perform a single action.”

Yes, that is how turn-based games work. However, it does not incorporate any action-y elements whatsoever. The closest it gets is with the “launch/pursue” system of moves, where one attack knocking an enemy in the air can be made more effective if followed up by a move specifically designed for “pursuing” an airborne enemy, but there’s no timed button-presses here; a launched enemy goes into slow motion so you have ample time to press the next attack button. Theoretically, you could miss it, but you’d have to be pretty much paralysed from the neck down to do so, in which case you’d probably have trouble pressing the attack button in the first place.

“Outside of area of effect spells and abilities, your location on the battlefield doesn’t really matter.”

YOU LITERALLY JUST SAID WHY YOUR LOCATION ON THE BATTLEFIELD MATTERS.

“Attack the side or back of an enemy and you’ll do the exact same amount of damage as if you attacked it from the front.”

Wrong. This system has been in place since Neptunia mk2. You’re also more likely to hit an enemy’s back or sides.

“I guess it’s possible to coordinate your location around enemy attacks, but since there’s no way to tell their movement range, or what action they’ll be taking next, the game gives no compelling reason to do anything other than attack.”

Okay. Let me explain a bit about Fairy Fencer F’s battle system. Each character is a Fencer equipped with the Fury whose fairy they formed a bond with. This means you can’t buy new weapons throughout the game, but you can upgrade the one you have with new moves and even give it the ability to transform into other forms.

Damage in Fairy Fencer F has numerous different types — sword, greatsword, axe, scythe, gun, spear, glaive and knuckles — as well as elemental affinities. These all matter a great deal. Attacking an enemy with a damage type they are weak to reduces their Guard gauge — initially hidden, but the character Harley who joins your party later is able to make it visible. When the Guard gauge breaks two things happen: the enemy temporarily takes more damage from physical skills (i.e. not the combo moves you unleash when you hit “attack” and various button combinations) and magic spells, and the possibility of an “Avalanche Attack” occurs, allowing any characters who are adjacent in the turn order to get a number of “free” attacks on the enemy before taking their actual turn.

Enemies have damage types and elemental affinities, too, and equipping each character with supplementary fairies can affect these stats significantly, to such a degree that a character could be easily one-shot if they have a negative resistance to an element an enemy specialises in, or take no damage at all if their resistance is high enough.

As for not knowing how far enemies can move or what they’re going to do, well, just like in every other RPG, you have to watch what they do for a couple of turns, then figure out the best way to deal with them.

On top of all that, enemies can generally hit multiple characters with a single attack, so once again, your position matters — keeping your party spread out but within close enough range of each other to be able to heal/buff as necessary is essential.

Nothing to do but attack, sure.

“Character progression in Fairy Fencer F offers some different ways to tailor your party, though it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Your team can equip Furies — think of them as Final Fantasy materia or espers — which brings them new abilities and stat boosts over time, and battles yield a resource called WP, which can be spent to upgrade parameters and buy new spells and abilities.”

This isn’t quite right, either, though this is not surprising by this point. You can’t equip Furies; each character’s Fury is fixed. You can, however, equip fairies that you acquire from the Furies you collect, and these level up independently from the characters, increasing the stats they boost further as well as unlocking a number of passive abilities that range from adjusting the “wearer’s” elemental resistances to boosting their HP at the end of combat.

WP, meanwhile, are used to upgrade the character’s Fury by boosting its base stats (physical attack and defense, magical attack and defense, range, combo length and the degree of stat boost they get while in “Fury Form”, a transformed incarnation similar to Neptunia’s HDD form). WP are also used to learn new combo moves (including different weapon types if desired — each Fury can transform into four different forms), physical skills and magic spells as well as passive abilities. Each character has their own unique loadout of possible abilities to learn and don’t learn any passively as they level up; their development is entirely up to you. So while their endgame forms might be identical to one another from one playthrough to the next, their early game forms might be completely different.

“It’s all your standard RPG stuff, though Fairy Fencer has one interesting idea, even if it’s pretty basic: once upgraded, your Furies can be placed on any location with enemy encounters, and grant these areas bonuses and penalties. I wanted to level up faster, so I stuck my Fury with a 30% experience point boost on a dungeon — though this boost also came with an effect that lowered my defense by 10%. A neat idea, but it’s ultimately drowned out by Fairy Fencer F’s surrounding blandness.”

This part neglects to mention that it is possible to overlap these “World Shaping” effects, as they are called, in order to potentially nullify any negative effects you might get. For example, overlap the aforementioned “EXP +30%/P-DEF -10%” with a “P-DEF +10% / M-ATK -10%” and you nullify the penalty to your defense, taking a hit to your magic attack instead. If your party is set up for physical attacks, you’re all good.

The further you progress in the game, the higher the “rank” of the Furies you obtain, too. C-rank Furies generally have one moderately good benefit and one moderately bad drawback. B-rank Furies generally have one very good benefit and one very bad drawback. A-rank Furies tend to have three effects — a combination of at least one excellent benefit and one pretty bad drawback and one other thing. S-rank Furies, meanwhile, which are understandably rare, have no drawbacks at all.

There are some interesting “risk and reward” mechanics at play here. Do you want to boost your experience point and WP gain by a considerable amount but have all damage (taken by you and the enemy) doubled in the process? Do you think you can get through a dungeon with your physical attack skills locked? Do you think you can survive without the ability to restore your HP, or heal status effects? The Furies provide the opportunity for interesting challenges, none of which fundamentally break the game but which often demand you think about things slightly differently. And, outside of stabbing them into the ground to unlock dungeons when they first appear, their use is entirely optional, too.

Oh, and the more you stab into the ground, the taller the secret dungeon gets, too, up to a maximum of 40 floors.

“The biggest issue affecting Fairy Fencer F, though, has to be its astounding lack of polish. Developers have been making PS3 games for nearly a decade, so it’s unclear why Compile Heart can’t squeeze a good frame rate out of an RPG with assets that don’t look more complex than what you’d find on the PS2.”

I’ll give you this one, with a caveat. Frame rates in Compile Heart games on PS3 suck. They’re outperformed by the Vita versions, for heaven’s sake. However, with the PS4-based Advent Dark Force (along with its stablemates Omega Quintet and MegaDimension Neptunia V-II), this is no longer an issue, with the framerate remaining (mostly) stable at 60.

As for this looking like a PS2 game, that’s a lazy criticism. Fairy Fencer F isn’t pushing lots of polygons around, but it has some interesting environments with nice background details, and the character and monster models reflect their 2D counterparts nicely. There may be a couple of PS2 games that looked on a similar standard — Dark Chronicle springs to mind — but on the whole, I think you think PS2 games looked a lot better than they actually did.

As for the 2D art… oh, God, the 2D art. Compile Heart’s games have gorgeous 2D art. Tsunako’s influence on Fairy Fencer F gives it more than a passing Neptunia resemblance at times, but there’s enough unique about the aesthetic to make it clear it is its own game with its own identity.

“While Fairy Fencer relies on 2D assets to tell most of its story, it does so artlessly, sliding around body parts like the cheapest of ancient Internet Flash animation.”

Fairy Fencer F uses Live2D, a system whereby 2D artwork can be wrapped around a 3D mesh to provide very smooth animation, particularly for smaller, more subtle movements like breathing or a shake of the head. Compared to many visual novels with completely static character sprites (this isn’t a criticism!), Fairy Fencer F’s characters are positively lively, and their subtle animations are complemented by spot-on lipsyncing, too.

“After playing more than 35 hours of Danganronpa 2, which understood its limited assets required a stylish approach, Fairy Fencer bored me with its lack of flair.”

Fairy Fencer F has a pretty distinctive style that admittedly overlaps somewhat with how Neptunia does things. Tsunako art + Live2D + occasional event scenes with light animation. It may not be as in-your-face “stylish” as Danganronpa (which admittedly sets a pretty high bar for distinctive game aesthetics), but it’s certainly immediately recognisable and does the job without distractions and without trying too hard.

“I’d really like Compile Heart to surprise me one of these days…”

Then maybe don’t start reviews by saying all their games aren’t very good. Try going into one with an open mind. Try actually engaging with the characters and getting involved with the plot — put yourselves in the shoes of someone who would enjoy it, even if you don’t, and ask yourself why they find Compile Heart’s games so appealing. Because for all your moaning, they’re still making games, and people are still buying them.

“They seem pretty content to keep churning out these dull, low-budget RPGs, which usually come with a healthy does of pandering to distract players from their lack of quality and originality.”

There it is! You didn’t think it’d be possible to go through an entire review of a Japanese game without whining about “pandering”, did you?

Let’s not forget the target market for these games: otaku game fans, who are used to seeing heavily stylised characters in a variety of cool situations, including provocative, sexualised scenarios, like it or not. Fairy Fencer F, as it happens, is pretty light on the sexytimes, with only one early scene with Harley taking her trousers off springing to mind, and this is played for laughs and as a reference to Harley’s slovenly, shameless personality rather than as wank-bank material.

“And, in a world with so many other RPGs to play, it’s hard to understand why anyone would waste their time on something as stale as Fairy Fencer F.“

Why waste your time on anything? Do you always pick the movie with the biggest budget? The most expensive thing on the menu? Read the bestselling book? No; sometimes it pays to have a look at the smaller-scale stuff out there — the indie movies, the burger joint around the corner, the novel by your friend — and you might just be pleasantly surprised if you go in with an open mind.

“But I’ll give it this: It sure gets an ‘A’ for alliteration.”

E for effort. Try again.