Faery: Legends of Avalon
Score: 65% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Developer: Spiders Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure/ RPG
Graphics & Sound: Faery: Legends of Avalon offers a colorful romp through well-known legends, though it falls short on actually delivering an engaging RPG experience. From a production standpoint, Faery is a top-notch production. The art style is incredible bold and features an amazing sense of scope. Characters are only a few inches high, so it's neat to see even commonplace areas from a completely different perspective. Character designs are great, particularly when you begin to delve into the character customization system. Audio is great, though suffers from a few blemishes. The soundtrack is masterful and adds a lot to the atmosphere the visuals are attempting to create. You'll hear a lot of repeats, though each world has its own unique audio feel. However, there's no vocalwork, leading to a lot of reading. This wouldn't be that bad were it not for the awkwardly worded dialogue.
Gameplay: Faery: Legends of Avalon attempts to merge elements of famous legends into one tale involving magic fading from the Fae worlds, threatening to destroy everything. You play as a fairy or elf who, having been recently awoken from a crystal pod, is asked by the King to travel the Fae worlds in search of a solution to the problem. You begin your quest in the hub world of Avalon and eventually travel to four other worlds and attempt to solve problems around each. After a few quests, it becomes readily apparent most of your playtime will be spent traveling between areas on fetch quests. You'll spend a lot of time ferreting out objects, but only after you figure out exactly what you're supposed to do. Really, you're just running through dungeons until something happens to show you what to do next. While finding objects for people, you'll see your fair share of fights throughout your adventure. Combat is turn-based and plays out similar to most RPGs. Each character has a pool of action points to draw from, which increases as characters level. More points mean more powerful attacks, adding another level of strategy to gameplay. It's simple, but offers a surprising amount of depth considering the simplicity presented by the rest of the game.
Difficulty: Although the combat system is interesting, battles offer very little in the way of challenge. In addition to deciding whom to take with you in battle and their combat abilities, you can also determine their positions in your battle formation and which attacks work best against certain resistances. But, even with all these choices, you rarely need to plumb their depths to achieve victory. Even bosses are underpowered pushovers and even if you find yourself low on health, potions are easy to find. Searching for quest times presents another set of issues. In general, it's really hard to see objects in the environment. There's an attempt to help point you in the right direction by highlighting certain objects. Even with the aide, it's still hard to actually get to the highlighted object due to the poor level design.
Game Mechanics: Customization is probably the best feature going in Faery: Legends of Avalon. Abilities are attached to physical upgrades, which are awarded every time you level up. Each accoutrement offers both active and passive abilities, ranging from increased defense to combat augmentations. Although the system doesn't leave much in the way of personal taste (you may want better dodge, but not want a cat tail on your character), it's still a really neat feature. Faery attempts to add a little more depth to it's story sequences by tossing in a conversation system similar to Mass Effect. Responses are mapped to a wheel, indicating various conversation choices. There are "good" and "bad" responses, though neither really dictates your character's standing within the world. Instead, each determines whether or not certain characters like you. If they like you, they'll help - it's as simple as that. The system is refreshing and lets you explore reactions without some arbitrary comment suddenly condemning you to a certain "moral path." At the same time, it's a bit underwhelming. Other than cutting you off from an ally, it never felt like what I was saying had any real impact on anything. At times, it even feels like you're being forced to take the "good" path, otherwise I'd have to face additional hardships. It makes sense from a philosophical perspective, but there should be some balance. Faery: Legends of Avalon is a interesting little offering. There are a few interesting things going on under the hood, indicating the game is aiming for something just a little different. At the same time, there's a noticeable lack of understanding about what makes these elements fun in the first place. Faery is a good attempt, but falls short in execution, especially considering the asking price.
-Starscream, GameVortex Communications AKA Ricky Tucker
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