PSVitaAddict

Hey everyone, I’m back with another review! This time I’m reviewing Fairy Fencer F specifically the Steam version. Before I start with the review, I would like to thank Idea Factory International for providing me with a review code for Fairy Fencer F. Fairy Fencer F originally launched on the PlayStation 3 back in October 2013 in Japan and later launched in North America and Europe in 2014. Fast forward to 2015 and Fairy Fencer F is now available via digital download on Steam. The game currently retails for $29.99, but if you snagged the game during its first week out on steam, then you paid $14.99, which is a great price!

When you finish installing Fairy Fencer F and boot it up, you will be greeted by a great opening song, every time I play Fairy Fencer F I watch the games opening, I just love the games overall soundtrack, it’s worth listening to. Anyway let’s talk about the story in Fairy Fencer F. If you’re familiar with the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, well you will be right at home here. Fairy Fencer F is structured in much the same way that Hyperdimension is, which isn’t a bad thing at all, and if you’re a fan of the Neptunia game, you will more than likely end up liking Fairy Fencer F. Soon after you start the game up, you will meet the games main protagonist Fang. You will soon notice that Fang is a laid-back guy who only really cares about food, no seriously he really loves food. Fang soon encounters his partner Eryn, attempts to convince Fang to escape from prison, but he just doesn’t want to hear it since all he cares about is having a roof and being constantly fed food. Soon afterwards Fang is convinced to pull out a sword stuck in the ground, he is told that if he successfully pulls it out, he will be granted one wish. Fang grabs the sword and pulls it out, afterwards Fangs partner Eryn pops out, and the first thing Fang says is “Gimme some food” I personally found it funny how Fang constantly asks just about anyone he meets for food. Some people may find Fang annoying, but overall I found his character to be funny.

Let’s discuss the combat in Fairy Fencer F. The combat in Fairy Fencer F is almost exactly the same as the combat system in the Hyperdimension games. You have a party of characters which you take into dungeons, when you trigger a battle it plays out much like a turn based strategy game, you move your party members around in a small area and set them up to attack. Every time you attack the enemy, you will be building the games tension gauge, once the gauge fills up you can utilize your characters unique “Fairize” transformation. When you transform you will become more powerful, and as you progress through the game this will be very important since some of the later enemies are really difficult to defeat. I also want to mention, when you “Fairize” some really great music starts playing, sometimes I would seriously transform just to hear the music, yeah it’s really that great. While you attempt to fill the tension gauge in combat, it’s worth noting that if you take damage from enemy monsters, the tension gauge will gradually decrease, so it’s a balancing act, which adds some added difficulty to battles. Additionally, if you get bored with doing the same attacks over and over again, you can actually skip the animation by hitting a button, I personally make use of this feature whenever I’m grinding levels. Fairy Fencer F has a cool little feature called “World Shaping” basically you can designate one of your fairy friends to a dungeon, this allows the fairy to pass several effects over to the dungeon you choose, this feature is unique and it adds more depth to the overall game. As you fight your way through each dungeon, you will be collecting different fairies, you can actually equip them to boost your stats, and you can also level them up.

Now let’s discuss the most important part of the Fairy Fencer F PC port. I’m happy to say that the game ran flawlessly on my gaming rig. Before I go any further, here are my current PC specs Intel Core I5 4690K overclocked to 4.6 Ghz, MSI GTX 970 100 million edition, 16 gigs of Kingston HyperX Fury ram @1866 Mhz. My single GTX 970 handled Fairy Fencer F easily, I ran MSI afterburner every time I fired the game up, and the frame rates were a constant 60, the only time I noticed the frame rate dip, was when I entered a dungeon, the frame rate would drop top 54 but after a few seconds it would go straight back to 60. I also tested my older GTX 660 in Fairy Fencer F, and I got pretty much the same exactly results, the game ran perfectly fine. I do have to mention that, Fairy Fencer F doesn’t let you change any graphical settings, the only thing you have control over is the in-game resolution, but this shouldn’t be much of an issue since the game is optimized really well and should run well on most gaming systems. Fairy Fencer F actually has support for 4K monitors, I only have a 1080P monitor, but thanks to Nvidia DSR I was able to run the game at 4K, and for the most part it ran great, though I did see frame drops more often, but overall it was totally playable. I honestly came away from Fairy Fencer F feeling very impressed with the performance, it’s no secret that tons of games release in a broken and sometimes unplayable state on the PC. The best example of that would be Batman Arkham Knight, which was a Triple A release, but sadly launched in a state that made it almost unplayable for everyone, thankfully Fairy Fencer F is perfectly optimized and anyone that picks the game up will have a fantastic experience.

If you played Fairy Fencer F on the PlayStation 3, well you probably know that the frame rate was terrible at times, while playing the game you could just tell that sometimes it was running under 20 FPS, and the graphics weren’t all that girl. The PC version improves on the graphics, overall everything in game looks smooth and sharp, so if you own the PlayStation 3 version, I highly recommend you pick up the game on steam, you will enjoy improved frame rates and better graphics overall. The story is on the average side, I never really felt impressed by the storytelling, but I did enjoy the games wonderful humor, and I laughed so much while playing it, so that’s a plus.

Okay, so is it worth picking up Fairy Fencer F on Steam? Absolutely! Fairy Fencer F is an overall better game than the console version. Better graphics, 60 FPS, and support for screen resolutions higher than 1080P, yeah Fairy Fencer F is without a doubt worth the purchase. I give Fairy Fencer F a 8.0/10