A surprise turn-based JRPG at SAGE and a Golden Raspberry nominee for its ability to present itself to a new audience. Everything seems to be beautifully drawn, there is a basic text prologue, but why the hell did you decide to introduce the player to the basics of the future game in the middle of a disgusting, stinking sewer among green snot and other waste products??! Wouldn’t it be nice to see cityscapes, floating islands from textual prehistory – or at least something other than a fucking sewer??! OK. Let’s shut our noses and comprehend what is..
And there really is a basis for “pretty” here. I didn’t even immediately realize that I was dealing with another creation of RPG Maker – thanks for that to the abundance of hand-made graphics. Even in battles, the characters do not stand like pillars, but are well animated, so the collective farm is typical for the engine here. It still feels, although not as rabid.
Firstly, all movement through the sewers in peacetime occurs on an invisible square grid, which is why it is controlled little better than some eight-bit Pokemon. Secondly, focus on solving puzzles right out of the gate? You don’t have enough eggs, though! Few people in their right mind would like to turn the valves under the pressure of random battles.
Yeees. Random battles. This Casinokatanaspin.co.uk archaism of ancient JRPGs, due to the hardware limitations of equally ancient hardware, still continues to be considered a kind of “feature” of the genre, which must be brought into every new game. Although in this case the culprit is most likely a feature of the selected engine, which would have taken too long to overcome using standard means. So we have what we have.
When the screen goes crazy, the action shifts to the battle screen, typical of the genre: on the right, brave heroes are waiting for their turn, on the left, vile enemy opponents are hatching evil plans. You wait until the character’s initiative gauge is filled and you can do something on his behalf. Most often – give it to the jug. The main thing is not to think too long, because the enemies will not wait for you, acting during your turn. Yes, we have the classic “Final” ATB here, so if you’re familiar with the Square classics, you’ll be like a duck to water.
However, there are still few options for “thinking” here: magic, techniques and objects. The first is a typical option for frying more painfully, but at the expense of a separate mana scale. Techniques are already more interesting because they spend action points received at the beginning of each turn. The problem is that a regular attack also consumes them, so you can only gain profit by sitting in the block. ODs in the interface look, literally, like circles in slots, not at all reminiscent of matter from FFVII. In general, it turns out quite well: one character boosts characteristics or increases the chance of a critical attack, the second one infuses damage. It’s just that there aren’t enough options for self-expression in the demo yet.
But the boss kicked my ass. For bigger guys, the authors have saved one more mechanic, also not seen at all in FFVII, but now in the remake: when the bosses begin to prepare for a particularly painful technique, they can be knocked off balance. This way you will disrupt the attack and weaken the enemy. Such enemies are knocked down by anything that causes damage, but exploiting vulnerabilities is especially effective.
The boss is weak to fire? It’s better to save mana for an emergency then. You can, of course, eat bottles, but I was sorely lacking them in the boss fight. It turns out that it was necessary not to ignore the thieving skills of one of the characters and to grind at least a few consumables. Well, it’s okay, the boss gave in the second time and so, although he again forced him to stand on the brink of life and death.
I’m not sure that Foxblade Fable will become something truly mind-blowing, but as a small snack for lovers of vintage, richly seasoned with hand-made graphics and combat animations, it will do just fine. And I always approve of genres that are atypical for the exhibition; Tetris with elements of a first-person shooter and the leveling system from Vampire Survivors will not let you lie.