There is a turned based RPG with Japanese RPG style battles
that gives you the freedom of flight. You fight fantastic creatures while
helping the residents of one of the worlds you visit. Your character is
customizable and after creation your selection of skills further personalize
your avatar. You are also a fairy…errrr, faery. Today we perpetually flap our
wings while we fight.
Before we get into Faery:
Legends of Avalon I would like to look at the developer. Spiders is a
French game company made up of people that worked on Silverfall. Silverfall
was isometric hack and slash RPG that came out in 2007. I have not played it. Spiders
seems to be sort of an anomaly in the game industry today by being a “mid-tier”
company that has been around for almost a decade that hasn’t had a major hit.
They develop and release games exclusively through Focus Home Interactive on
their own “Silk” engine. Their website says they offer consulting services and
will license out their proprietary engine, even though the only Silk games that
have been released are from Spiders themselves. Let’s see what these little
warriors can do.
You create your silent protagonist with a bevy of appearance
options. After awakening a couple of friendly sprites teach you have to get
around the world of Faery. You have
full unrestricted movement in the small levels that make up the game world. There
are a total of 4 worlds in this episode. The first is the hub world of Avalon
that is defined by the mirrors you use to travel between settings. The world
tree of Yggdrasil is next, it consists almost entirely of the tree; it makes
for an interesting vertical level. The Flying Dutchman is a ship of legend that
carries souls to the other side and is the most boring, drab place you end up.
The City of Mirages is the highlight of the game, it is a desert city riding on
the back of a scarab. The ending alludes to a sequel that never came. It is too
bad, I would have liked to see where the adventure would have gone.
Faery is a product
of the Silk engine and looks good for a downloadable only title from 2010. The
music is extremely whimsical and fits each one of the settings well. The levels
are small but have a numerous characters to talk to and receive quests from,
often side objectives reward you with equipment that augment your different
abilities. I stuck with the iron set and moved to the superior iron set when it was
available to boost my main's physical attacks while using the status effects to restrict enemy actions. The battles are triggered when you get too close to an enemy on the
map like Chrono Trigger and play out
in typical turn based JRPG fashion. The overall structure of the game is solid.
Also the game’s concept art is metal as f***!
