Johnnydillinger Posted January 30, 2013 Report Share Posted January 30, 2013 Well, what the hell, there's a fairy game out there after all? Oh don't worry, there are much more than you'd know, that are not even Zelda-related. For example, Supsoap's Faerie Solitaire is an addictive little card game that I recommend everyone to play. But then there are stupid ones as well, such as Zanzarah: The Hidden Portal, which leaves a lot to be desired despite its good main premise and overall fairly good design. My conquest to find an awesome fairy game is ongoing still, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on this one game I found ages ago and got the opportunity to play on Steam already. But first, a little history behind it. http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/18439662256787554304_screenshots_2012-07-10_00001_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpgMust be hot in that forest... The first game, or shall I say, the "tech demo" for it is a freeware little fighting game found here. It's all in Japanese, but you should be allright bringing up a new game. It's fairly basic in story: you're a fairy that for whatever reason doesn't have pants but is armed with a big-ass knife, and you'll have to defend your plant against... well.. corrupt fairies I guess? http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/18439662256787554304_screenshots_2012-07-10_00004_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpgMaybe they're vampires?... Now that's odd, because when I was looking for pictures about it, it seemed to have other enemies... http://edelweiss.skr.jp/works/fairybloom/ss_04.jpg ...but okay, I can live with it. The gameplay is pretty much like a mixture between a brawler and a tower defense game. You have to kick and slit the shit out of those pests and defent your plant (tree?), using various moves and chaining some primitive but overall very satisfying combos. The best part is, your enemies have this disadvantage that when you kick one of them in the face and send them flying across the screen, they will hit their comrades and make them fall. It doesn't do too much damage but it's an easy way to stop them eating your little plant, especially if they're doing it on various "floors" simultaneously. And, I must say, there is a lot of kicking around in this game. This fairy uses her feet a tad lot, which makes the pantless thing in question a bit more impractical. Oh well, if Dead or Alive could be advertised with Kasumi kicking high and and a bunch of guys jerking off to it in the same room (which is not disturbing at all), this one doesn't need to be mentioned for it. Other than kicking and slicing around, you'll also get to use a super blast kind of thing which gets refilled when you destroy enemies. http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/default_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpgI think she's taking a magical dump in there, but sure, "magical blast that makes all enemies *wink wink* go away" all the way you want. During the first game mode your plant will grow after a set of days, and those floors mentioned above will be available. This makes the game fairly hard on the last levels, as you'll have to defend it on the different floors simultaneously, and its lifeforce can be drained pretty easily. Once completed, you will get a one-screener ending showing a happy fairy and a fully bloomed plant. Pretty basic, but at least it's not overdone. Another gamemode is the "endless mode" where you fight off baddies until eternity (I guess), but other than that there's not much to it. The art style is basic, and the whole game is in 2D. The sounds are very satisfying; those whacking and slapping sounds that get delivered with your kicks never get old, and the game is very fast-paced, so even though you'll see a 2D anime fairy fighting other fairies for a plant, it will give the same effect such as old classics akin of Serious Sam or Quake. Really satisfying. Your enemies, well, there's only one type of them really. My biggest issue was that, even though the game is good and whatnot, what makes the protagonist a fairy? Well, while doing some moves, you'll gain your ethereal wings, but the time it took for me to figure out that move exceeded the first completion of the game. http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/18439662256787554304_screenshots_2012-07-10_00008_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpgFinally looking like an actual fairy. One that's eating the toes of a zombie fairy. Overall, go and give it a try, it's a neat little title. It's very simple, and a very satisfying fighter-tower-defense game that I wholeheartedly recommend, even though there's not a single english translation for it. And now, let's talk about the commercial one. This one is english, but it started its life as an obscure japanese game with a small cult following from abroad. The protagonist now has a name too, Freesia, and the game is expanded in much and many ways from the original. It has a complete story to it, a lot of RPG elements with new moves to add, fully 3D environments (moving on a 2D plane though) with 3D characters, and voice acting, kind of. The titular Freesia is a forest spirit (or a fairy), who hangs out in her forest and then gets some visitors: the mighty blobs. Very imaginative. But oh well, that's when she starts fighting them and holy shit, is she on fire. She might look like an 11-year old anime rape victim lost in the woods, but damn, she seems to love that forest really much. She's probably the most fierce female character I've seen in a game in recent years. She fights like a velociraptor breeder, which is on its period. And its nest is disturbed by some stupid blobs. You just don't fuck with her forest. http://nyu-media.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/A5WM4O0CYAAF-13.jpg-large.jpgI was going to make a joke about period and the pantsless thing but it's too tasteless even for me. Anyways, as the story goes, it turns out the blobs are attacking the forest because of humans. The local king is kind of a dick, so he wants to cut the oldest tree in the wood to get its power, but it's never explained what he'd do with it. And the story is stupid enough to even point out its own stupid mistake later on in the story, where the local scientist confronts him about it. Of course, that old tree is Freesia's master and best friend, and she won't let them take on it. First, she destroys their superweapon which is (wait for it), a giant blob. Yes, another fucking blob; don't ask. Then, the guy who really likes her gets his ass handed to him, but she spares his life. After that, some random woman who must be the king's relative or something does the same, and lastly there is Plum, another fairy who was genetically modified by the local scientist. Umm, how does that work in a sort of medieval setting? Actually, I'm not even sure what time or civilization or technology this whole thing takes place. There are scientists with white coats and modern glasses who genetically modify alien lifeforms found in the forest, but there don't seem to be such amazing advancements in technology like phones, cars, or (since this is a japanese game) big-ass mechs or anything. Why? Fuck knows. http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/excuses_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpg"Look at me! I'm evil! Can't you tell by me acting evil that I'm evil? Wait, I'll try harder then." Then there's this douchebag who has the hots for the main character. I shit you not. For reference and if you haven't noticed, this is what she looks like: http://kepfeltoltes.hu/130130/default2_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.jpgNice angle, eh? That is at best 12 years old, thank you very much. Again, she's pantless which is disturbing, but why is that guy so openly wanting to bone her? Isn't there an authority there that doesn't take kindly to such things? And this isn't even just slightly hinted at. He's an annoying douche at all times, because even when Freesia's talking about unrelated things, he responds in some way to take her on a date. Once she offers him some kind of fruits or honey or some other stuff like that which I can't remember, and he went like "OMG! YOU WANT A DINNER DATE WITH ME? *blushyblushy*" What a fucking pedophile... And Freesia's age is out of the question too. She's so obviously just a little girl. The other woman is characterized in such a way that you can tell, yes, she's a grown-up. Hell, at one point there was a scene where this woman asks the guy what she doesn't have that Freesia does, which makes him like her better. I was honestly surprised that the answer was nothing in the lines of "You're too fucking old". The amount of wrongness in this is petrifying. http://i46.tinypic.com/2qi0676.jpg"I'm sorry, officer, I didn't know she was only 6!" Another disturbing thing was that, even though the characters are all shallow and you can't possibly grow to like them too much, the death of Freesia's master is pretty much just ignored. It's like she cries a little bit and then it's all forgotten. Yeah, who cares about that old fart, he was just, you know, Freesia's best friend all these years, ever since her birth. But even Freesia is kind of over the whole thing in like 2 minutes so why should the player care? The story's end is that this master is killed, and then merged with Plum. This creates a huge blob again (surprised?), and Freesia must make her way into it to destroy its heart. Kind of like Akira meets The Core, only without the interesting bits. In the end, all is saved and it turns out that this douchebag pedophile is actually the evil king's son, who can stop his daddy with just asking nicely not to burn down the whole forest, which he does at the end. So... why the fuck didn't you ask him not to destroy that tree to begin with then? Oh right, you didn't have cellphones or a sports car to ride home in time. Or you're just an asshole. The whole plot is just so stupid, it makes me want to slap it so hard that it never wakes up from it. It's overdone, and sometimes there's way too much shit to read in those cutscenes which are basically visual novel excerpts. Overall it's a good premise, but if they went with the "look buddy, here's your plant and you're a fairy, just don't let those nasties eat it, okay?" approach, it would have worked out so much better. This way though, it's just too complicated and stupid. To hell with it. http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s241/erickdamon/FairyBloomFreesia2012-01-0600-48-56-31.jpgBelieve me, it makes much more sense to play it in japanese. The gameplay is much improved though, and there are some amazing improvements from the first game. First of all, you have much more moves you can use. Not only the main moves though, you can set 4 special moves to keys on your keyboard or gamepad (thankfully, the game runs with cheap gamepads and is not an xbox controller snob), and use them for your pleasure. Lots of special powers in there, such as an ability which lets you dash through enemies, a lot that shoots different projectiles or even lasers at enemies, or even home on to them, and a plethora of other useful and neat looking kicks and giggles which put even some of Street Fighter 4's moves to shame, and that's saying a lot. You can unlcok and buy these powers once you level up a few times, and you buy them with mana, which your enemies will drop. Your enemies? Just blobs, that's it. There are different types of them though, some of them will fly, others will shoot, and then there are the big ones which are a pain in the ass. Aside from the first boss though, the other boss characters are human(oid)s, so there's also that. The bosses are extremely hard to handle on Hard difficulty, so you'll be throwing your controller across the room a few times for granted. Especially at the end when you'll have to beat Plum 2 times in a row, and let me tell you, Plum is a bitch to slay. http://www.dealspwn.com/writer/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012-10-15_00002-540x303.jpg"Bitch, I'ma make everyone see your undies! WITH SCIENCE!" The replay value is pretty high, mostly because there's a sort of New Game + mode. Basically, you just start a new game and the game asks you if you want to import all your levellings and stuff. Unfortunately, this doesn't transfer to the infinite mode though, and that makes it extremely hard to finish for the first time. It also won't let you save and configure your fighting style between each day, but only after a specific number of days which you'll have to endure in one sitting. It's pretty challenging. The sounds are allright, and the japanese ramblings of the main character are actually not too much annoying. The music is your typical arcade-style fighting game soundtrack, so it kind of goes with the gameplay, but otherwise just run some Dimmu Borgir in the background and you won't be missing anything. http://i.imgur.com/9bAD6.jpgProgenies Of The Apocalypse gains a whole new experience with this... Overall, Fairy Bloom Freesia kind of manages to improve what the original game did, and it's one of the most action-packed brawler to get these days. Once again, the way you fight around is very adrenaline-lifting, and the RPG elements will keep you experimenting with styles all over the place, until you perfect your own fighting style. It's like a Street Fighter game where you can choose your own fighter which has both a Spinning Bird Kick and a Shoryouken at the same time. And despite the fact that I mostly mash buttons in fighters, this one here taught me how to use a more tactical approach instead, so that I felt an incentive to learn the new moves and apply them when necessary, without the need for pulling off stupid and elaborate key combinations that only work when they feel like it. Too bad the plot is just trash, and is wrong on so many levels, that it couldn't even be fixed at this point. Just skip the cutscenes when you play this. And play this, you should. Rating:7/10 Fairy Bloom Freesia is available on Steam for roughly 10 bucks. Seeing the replay value, you'll be getting your money's worth from it, so give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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