Genre: Adventure, JRPG
Developer: IDEA FACTORY, COMPILE HEART
Publisher: Idea Factory International
Release Date: Feb 14, 2017
Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force is a JRPG from Idea Factory and Compile Heart. It is the second version of the game, with the first having been released back in 2014. Advent Dark Force brought about a host of changes and improvements, including an expanded storyline and multiple difficulties. I can say in all honesty that the changes they made to the game improved it greatly. The base story of the game goes like this, The Goddess and her Fairies fought the Vile God and his Fairies and, after a long war which the Goddess won, the Vile God and his Fairies were sealed away. Unfortunately, The Goddess fell into a deep slumber. The Fairies who fought alongside the Gods were sealed within the Furies (magical weapons powered by the Fairies bound inside them) unable to act without a human partner called a Fencer. A very long time in the future, it is said that if you find a Fury you will be granted a wish.
Without further ado, let us dig into the nitty gritty details and get our hands dirty. The first of the many changes to the game that you experience is the updated opening to the game, which features scenes from the new story sections of the game plus Ethel’s Fairy partner that you never see in the original game. When I saw this I was filled with fanboy glee like you would not believe, because her Fairy matches her so well. The next change to the game is the choice of difficulty when you start the game. This was an interesting change in all regards because the game did not really need it, but it is a very welcome change nonetheless. The difficulties are Amateur, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Hell. The way the difficulties affect the game is by changing the HP and stats of the enemies and bosses. On Amateur, it lowers both by 50%; however, on the other end of the scale, in addition to new item drops, Hell has 50% more hp and 40% more stats as well as more abilities.
They also changed a good bit of stuff early game such as the scene where Eryn, who is Fang’s Fairy partner, busts Fang out of jail for stealing a piece of bread. Now instead of being just a VN style cutscene, they turned it into a dungeon. Also at this point in the game, they added one the coolest of the new features – breakable items. (Think pots from a Zelda game.) In addition to this change, they also added a new dungeon zone right at the beginning where you meet Ethel, earlier than before, and get introduced to her Fairy. They also moved a few other story points around, however the biggest change for me was the fact that you are no longer limited to only three people. That´s right – you can now have up to six party members with Advent Dark Force giving you a whole other list of team ups.
The game hosts a lot of graphical updates including 4k resolution support. On top of the visual novel style story points they added some cosmetic up dates. The most noticeable one is that they prettied up the chat box with some artwork to the sides, making it a lot more appealing to look at.They also added a new text language which is Chinese text support. Unfortunately, they still have not added a way to skip the story points you already seen. For instance, while playing the game for review I got stuck on one of the harder boss fights early in the game and had to repeat a story point several times, because there was no way to skip past it. They updated the Neptunia engine they were using for the levels from the first game, and added a bunch of cosmetic features to the maps. For instance, moss on the trees and such, which makes the environment look much more natural.
The audio for the game when you first load it is kinda deafening for headphone users, but this comes to no surprise for me for games rarely have balanced audio when you first load them. They seem to have fixed the offset of the voice to text ratio during the cutscenes where voices were far far behind the text, however, so that’s very nice. One of my favorite things is the fact there is always some music playing no matter where you are. It always comes through nice and clean and easily heard. Other than that, the audio is not spectacular and at best adequate.
Ok to sum it up.. First up is the fact they added three branching storylines at the halfway point for the game. Then we have got a new intro as well which shows some of the new plot points. We also got some plot points moved around for a better flow overall. They added, some breakable objects within dungeons that gives random loot. The option to choose your difficulty when you begin the game gives the player a choice of how challenging a game they want. A few new dungeons were added, along with the rearranging of some the story changes. The most amazing change for me was the fact the party size was increased. Honestly I say the game is definitely worth the price, especially if you played or have the first.
Pros:
- 3 new storylines
- Some plot points rearranged give an overall better story flow
- New dungeons
- Changeable difficulty
Cons:
- Still can’t skip story points that you’ve seen before
- Audio is great but not memorable
BoxCatHero gives Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force a Drastik Measure of 7.8 out of 10 (78)
Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force is available on Steam for $49.99 USD.
