The remake/remaster whatever of Fairy Fencer, one of the serious RPG’s from Compile Heart and Idea Factory after fans liked Neptunia 2’s darker ending. It contains the whole original game but also adds two whole new paths which basically doubles the game.

It’s mechanically very similar to Neptunia, just with a male protag, some romance, and a bigger focus on character development and a “darker” story.

Story- 7

I liked this one far more then I expected. Compared to the Neptunia series, it has decent characterization, a bunch of funny one liners from the random town people, and the main lead actually has some character growth. He goes from a selfish lazy narcissist to a selfish lazy narcissist who makes his own fate and hates people dying. It’s better written then that sounds… Saying the story is about Fang going from a hateable jerk to a lovable a-hole would be pretty accurate. It frames his negative traits in a comedy style manner long enough to have you get attached to him and his crew before taking it and running far into drama territory. At least far compared to most anime story lines.

Basically if this was a Vn without the gameplay, I would have enjoyed this plenty. A lot of why I like VNs is in this game, like where your route changed the world dramatically instead of just being the same exact game with a different final bit.

The routes were actually a big part of why I liked the game. In the middle of the game, a big event occurs that splits the story in 3 directions based on how sealed the Vile God is. Completely sealed you get the original game’s only route, the Goddess storyline. This one is actually pretty basic and if it was the only one, the game would get a 5 for it’s score. Nothing really surprising happens here, other then time travel not being very commonly used in anime games. The second route is Vile God, and this one plays on Goddess a lot. Your companions change, everyone uses their alternate outfit colors which was a nice touch, and you get a very different direction of villain. Evil Goddess, the final route, is the darkest story with actual betrayal and completely new companions you wouldn’t expect. It also opens up the game as an actual series, setting up a sequel that…

The actual sequel isn’t. Weirdly enough, Refrain Chord does not start up from the ending of Evil Goddess. Kind of makes me question why they revived this series essentially twice and have not actually advanced it.

So the actual story. Long ago, the Goddess and the Vile God fought and defeated each other, being sealed. Their power scattered furies, weapons that have fairies living in them. People who wield furies with fairies are called Fencers. It is said that whoever awakens the Goddess will have their wish granted. Fang, our protag, starts the game being told about a sword in the stone kind of situation in the one town we actually see in this game. Hearing his wish will be granted, he picks up the fury and out pops Eryn. She gives her speech about saving the world, he asks for food. After not getting it, he steals some bread saying he’s the hero, and goes to jail.

Escaping that and not being chased, ever, Fang learns Eryn has amnesia and decides to help her out. They soon meet Tiara, the real heroine, who’s a classic ojousama who gets turned on by being mistreated by Fang. They go on to form a whole group just chasing Furies until they get the attention of Dorfa, a giant welfare company that really wants the furies for themselves for some less then good reasons. Then the comedy angle is dropped for drama and actual character growth that was slowly building up during the comedy bit. The game does a good job separating comedy and drama so that they don’t step on each other, unlike a few other things I’ve played lately.

It’s not amazing, but for the budget the time travel stuff was a good way to make the game longer without a lot of padding. Compared to the Neptunia’s I’ve played, this story blows them out of the water. Turns out Compile Heart and their partners can make good story’s.

Gameplay-4

I wanted to give this a 3, but I expect that if you weren’t a completionist, this would be decent, not frustrating.

I have to start with things involving the loot and synthesis, as those are the most frustrating mechanics. It’s mostly how they work together and how they took what mostly worked in Neptunia and made them more irritating.

Let’s start backwards. The synthesis mechanic is mostly straightforward, have the items to craft the thing. Making the thing usually adds it to the shop, but a few things don’t, mostly ingredients and a few armors. You can buy a few recipes, but a majority of them come from having the right item in your inventory. Yes, your crafting list is based on what you have currently. This could work, but…

If you aren’t playing on hard, monster drops are not fully revealed to you. Thankfully the hidden drops are never crafting stuff or important gear, just some bonus accessories. It does add a layer of uncertainty on drops though, which will continue. Next is the part breaking mechanic where normal attacks can break parts, which is a mostly useless mechanic as basic attacks suck for a majority of the game. They barely hit, do less then half the damage of your skills or spells and on bosses regularly do 0 damage. The actual issue is you have no idea which monsters have breakable parts and which parts have drops since those aren’t listed the bestiary. I didn’t know this mechanic had drops until the end of my first run, when a sidequest required drops from it. No idea if this connects to synthesis, but it’s a poor design decision.

On top of that, monsters are regularly reused due to the game having you replay dungeons because of the way the story works. This leads to the same enemy being in the bestiary but they have different drops. You want to go get those Strawberries from the Raven in the first dungeon, but are in the revisit part of the game? To bad, nothing in the second half has those. No drops, no steals, no breaking dungeon furniture, can’t buy them, nor are they in hidden treasures.

Hidden treasures are basically the same as in Neptunia, a random set of items are picked when you enter a map and are set at one of a few locations. If you walk near them you get a beep, closer is more beeps. A lot of synthesis junk is in these item packs, and of course without a guide you will have no idea what’s in what. The actual annoyance is different zones in each dungeon have different drop lists, but guides don’t treat them as separate. Enemies also always chase you so to get to zone 2 for item hunting requires dodging every time.

So none of that is required, but if you skip doing synthesis the game is like a third as long. A lot of content is based on you bothering with the above, for a few more visual accessories or some armor. Oh, and the cg gallery and music gallery. Those are craftable for some reason.

Thankfully, the devs had 1 good idea regarding the cg gallery. The game has 12 endings cgs, and you only get the one you see and like in Neptunia, gallery is local save no global. So it should require 12 full runs, but once you beat the game the fifth time all cgs unlock. Wish it was 3 times but I’ll take it.

I also want to note before moving on from synthesis and item farming, the game has impossible to craft items. Early on you get a recipe that calls for Mottled Fur, which cannot be gotten in game. You can get 1 from a dlc, but you need two to craft the thing. Without cheating, you cannot make the item, though thankfully you can just find the end result. There’s also a ribbon one of your characters has as their starting outfit accessory. It has 3 crafting options that require 2,3, and 4 of the character unique, of which you can only ever get 1 of it. You’d think they’d fix that with a full on expanded rerelease but nope.

Okay, so moving on to actual combat and game flow, it’s very similar to Neptunia. You can swing a weapon at enemies in the field to get an advantage, move around a circle and try to line up skills on enemies. The base mechanics are basically straight out of Nep 1 or 2, though it also has character challenges for stats from 3. It does have a decent amount of stuff beyond that though. Like weapon boost. Because your weapons are the furies the fairy cast are attached to, you cannot unequip them. Instead you get points to get stats and skills from your weapons. Including combo count, as at the start you can swing once, but you can spend points to swing 4 times. This can matter, as the game has several mechanic tied to normal attacks, the biggest being avalanche. Basically, every party member between the triggering character and the next enemy turn can use their normal combo into each other, and then get their normal turns once the avalanche is finished. This would be really strong if normal attacks did actual damage to bosses, but they don’t so you mostly just spam your strongest skills with some heals and debuffs/buffs thrown around.

Unlike Neptunia, everyone gets an ultimate form here and with it an ultimate attack. Everyone also has a unique skill, like Harley gets a scan or Fang gets more damage for higher SP cost mode. Some of these are nice, like the above ones, some are iffy like the one that increases money gained from fights. By the time you get the character with the skill, you won’t need money anymore, and it has a chance to fail and give you zero money for a fight. Several specials likely won’t ever see use.

Dungeons are mostly short outside of the small number of annoying 5 floor towers. This helps with the fact you replay almost every dungeon twice. There’s also only 2 dungeons with something akin to a puzzle, key gathering. The tutorial, and a new dungeon in the two new routes. Everywhere else is race to the finish if you aren’t doing side quests or grinding drops.

Character challenges from Neptunia are in this, but are only for stat buffs. Outside of luck on the thieves for steal rate, I ignored these. A lot of them are only useful stat wise after huge amounts of grinding that aren’t worth it.

Before moving on, I just want to highlight a stupid part of the game. If you play on hard or above this can actually require grinding, so I just want to mention it. Once you get Harly, your third party member, the next dungeon is a set of 5 fights where both Tiara and Harley drop out of the party after fight 2. The next dungeon is another 5 fights with just Fang, with a break of running around as Tiara if you want to buy healing items as you can’t do anything to power up Fang when controlling her. I just don’t get this design. Here’s 3 party members, now fight with 1, twice in a row.

Lewdness-4

Swimsuit are cool I guess? Nice that the game makes the female ones easy to get as they are just bought in the in-world store, while the guys need to be grinded or found. Everyone also gets towel only costumes.

So the game has about 6 lewd cgs total, depending on your definition. The common route has 2, Harley disrobing and an onsen scene with the two main girls. Goddess has another onsen, this time with a fox girl and another party member. Vile God has Tiara nude with godiva hair in two cgs, though the first one is a bit to sacrificial maiden to be lewd for me. Finally a party member falls asleep in her lingerie next to Fang. Evil Goddess has zero lewd cgs.

I’m kind of okay with this. I thought it had a bit more, but once the game gets serious it really doesn’t fit the mood. There is a weird moment in the Vile God route where they go to an onsen and they just visit it while you watch a villain have a break down on screen instead of onsen cgs.

Final Thoughts

I liked the narrative, but everything else is kind of flat. They want you to use the combo system, but it’s actively pointless. Creating items is needlessly complex and requires far to much grinding random garbage to get pointless hair accessories. The game has setup for lewd stuff but just skips it and the romance is really only strong in the first route, with the other two downplaying it. Especially the final route, with it’s sequel hook, downplays the romance while still giving basically every girl an ending of these two might get together eventually.

I would recommend this for the story over the Neptunia Re;birth games, especially 1 at the very least, but that’s not an amazing bar.

Save for Fairy Fencer Advent Dark Force

All cg, save to easy access to every ending, main save has all visual items.

Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 7/10

Completion:

Beat the game 5 times for all cg unlocks. That’s easy. Getting all the visual items is a pain./ Some fairies have unique costume accessories for using them in 200 fights, only way to know that is a guide. Beat the 40 floor tower, hunt for hidden items and get massive amounts of them for crafting, steal and get every drop. Double check the quest list for any unique accessories to that… I can’t say with conviction that I got all of them. I think I did, but who knows.