Faery - Legends of Avalon Impressions

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Anyone here played this game?

Just bought this game for 600 MS points from Xbox Live Arcade. That's roughly $7.50. Let's see if it's worth it...

Played a few hours so far and I'm enjoying myself. It's definitely a unique experience. The map I'm exploring currently is an island and it's an open area. Not too huge but has enough little nooks and crannies to discover things in. You play as a fairy and you fly all over the place. It's cool.

I like some of the character customization aspects. Your skill upgrades, some of them actually make your character look different. Your fairy can have different types of wings, a tail, horns, etc. I've never really played an RPG where character skills alter the look of your character, so that's pretty interesting.

The combat is turn-based in a classic JRPG style. Not the most exciting combat but I find it fun. I do like this style of combat to begin with, so that's probably why I like it. It's solid though. If you like turn-based JRPG combat, you'll like the system used here.

One of the great aspects of the game is that you gather companions and party members. It's traditional in that way, but I really enjoyed finding my 2 first companions. The quests they sent you on in order to join you were pretty rewarding. Apparently, you can gather many companions over the course of your journey. Cool.

There seems to be a lot of side quests. I've gathered about 5 or 6 of them just from the first island alone. Also, when you complete a quest or start a new quest, it appears that the islanders will have new things to say to you, so it's worth it to talk to everyone at various times. I like that. You really have to talk to people to discover if they have quests for you, so it's recommended you talk to everyone about everything you possibly can.

The best part of this game seems to be the crazy and quirky, magical world you inhabit. There are all sorts of trolls, goblins, fairies, mermaids, weird and fantastic creatures to meet and interact with. I really like the lore I've seen in this game thus far. It's pretty unique.

Overall, I'm having fun with it. I think it was a steal for $7.50. It's normally $15 and I would say it's worth that too, but that's just from the little I've seen of it thus far.

What do you guys think of this game?
 
I've been tempted to pick it up a few times on the cheap. Seen it more than once for $2.50 for PC. Interested to see how it goes for you.
 
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Loved it. I bought it for my wife, but ended up obsessively playing it til the end after messing w/ it for a little while and really liked the exploration. One of those games that i wished would never end, but alas it was actually quite short.

Nice fantasy fare, fun worlds to explore, weird characters, lots of different mythologies swirling around the characters and story. At one point, my party was my evil little scorpion-tailed faery, another little warrior faery, a leprachaun, and a mini satyr pirate. Good times.

Fun, unique flying control scheme too, it was really a blast just flying around exploring. I liked it alot and heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a light party-based strategy game w/ RPG elements and fun exploration on both horizontal and vertical planes.

The customization is cool, basically you trick out your little character w/ different horns/wings/tail/etc and they all bestow different bonuses. Like I was saying, mine had a scorpion tail which gave her a poison strike, horns which gave her some kind of darting attack, and… some other stuff. It was like 8 months ago. It was fun tho ='.'=

It's worth noting that I played the game on an xbox, I cant vouch for the PC version and quite frankly cant picture playing the game w/ a mouse and keyboard. I wouldnt play it w/ anything but a gamepad, the flight controls really lend themselves well to a controller layout.
 
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I have it on PC, you definetly don't need a console controller to play it, in fact I can't imagine me playing it on a console or console controller.
It's fun, it's great, but it's - short. You'll finish it in 2 days. :(
 
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Based on the recommendations here I bought it

pibbur who knows who to blame (but not sue) if he doesn't like it.
 
Loved it. I bought it for my wife, but ended up obsessively playing it til the end after messing w/ it for a little while and really liked the exploration. One of those games that i wished would never end, but alas it was actually quite short.

Nice fantasy fare, fun worlds to explore, weird characters, lots of different mythologies swirling around the characters and story. At one point, my party was my evil little scorpion-tailed faery, another little warrior faery, a leprachaun, and a mini satyr pirate. Good times.

Fun, unique flying control scheme too, it was really a blast just flying around exploring. I liked it alot and heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a light party-based strategy game w/ RPG elements and fun exploration on both horizontal and vertical planes.

The customization is cool, basically you trick out your little character w/ different horns/wings/tail/etc and they all bestow different bonuses. Like I was saying, mine had a scorpion tail which gave her a poison strike, horns which gave her some kind of darting attack, and… some other stuff. It was like 8 months ago. It was fun tho ='.'=

It's worth noting that I played the game on an xbox, I cant vouch for the PC version and quite frankly cant picture playing the game w/ a mouse and keyboard. I wouldnt play it w/ anything but a gamepad, the flight controls really lend themselves well to a controller layout.

Glad you liked it.

I played more last night and I really enjoy it. The exploration is awesome. I reached the first mirror zone last night which has a high degree of vertical exploration. It's really cool.

Sad to hear that it's short. Wish they would release some DLC or something for it but it's too late for that probably. Maybe a sequel would be in order? That would be awesome.

But yeah, anyone thinking about picking this up should go ahead and do so. At least play the demo. It's a really fun game.
 
I tried it when it was on sale for ~2½€ on GG a long time ago, but I did not really like it. The idea was good, the execution was not, in my opinion.
 
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I only played the demo so far, and I instantly thought : "This game begs for voiceovers !"

Thanks for the reminder ! :)
 
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A few more impressions after another night of playing.

The exploration is, as I said, awesome. I'm currently exploring an area where there's more just as much stuff above your head as there is on the ground level. Lots of vertical exploration and little hidden things to find around every corner. Very cool exploration.

The loot system is decent, not my favorite part of the game, but decent. It's not the most exciting loot system. There isn't a lot of stats to mull over or anything. But one positive thing I can say about the loot system is that they did a good job of giving you items that further customize your play style. For example, you can equip items that increase all the fire damage you do, so if you have a fire spell it would be wise to equip that gear. But there aren't many stats to mull over in your equipment. I would have preferred more stats.

Speaking of character customization, the options really seem endless. You can learn all types of spells and abilities like healing spells, or fire spells. Or you can focus on passive abilities such as abilities that give you bonuses to attack damage, or magic resistance, or an ability to dodge attacks better, etc. There is a lot of customization to be had and it seems each character you make can be unique with their own play style.

Quests have cool little stories and are fun to do. In some cases there are a few different options you can choose. Do you want to just go rushing in and handle the quest with combat? Or do you want to use your wits and find another solution? There are a few of these opportunities to be had throughout the game and I like that those options exist.

Dialog. Lots and lots of dialog. I like it. Then again I'm a "talk to everyone until they have nothing else to say" kind of guy. It reminds me of classic JRPGs, however, the dialog wheel is a good addition. You can talk about various topics with pretty much any NPC you find. Almost all NPCs can give you valuable advice about quests or things to look for, or just expand the lore of Avalon for you. A good amount of time is spent in dialog if you are a person like me who has to talk to everyone.

Can't really think of anything else to say. The graphics are pretty. I really enjoy the art style used in everything from the environments to characters. The sound is pretty good too. Reminds me of a movie about a magical story book or something. It's got that "magical" flair to the music. Good stuff.

Oh, and no quest markers or mini-map, and a limited journal. Quest markers really aren't needed nor is a mini-map, and the journal functions to let you know what you have to do but nothing more. Again, not really needed in this game. It's pretty easy to figure out what you have to do in quests just by paying attention to the dialog and talking to everyone.

truly underrated and original game, i wonder why it rec'd no critical acclaim whatsoever

Who knows? But neither did Daggerdale, and I found that game to be great too. It seems these indie games don't get the same kind of love from the reviewers that big named titles get.

Lack of voice acting seems to put a lot of people off to and gives them the notion that they're not playing a quality game or something.

But come on, Faery and Daggerdale each getting 3's and 4's out of 10? That's absurd. These games are much better than that. As I've said before it actually makes me sad to see games like these get such poor reviews. It pretty much assures that there will be no sequels or anything because they weren't received well. Sad.
 
Now I'm wanting to play this one again.
That said, it's pretty dang linear, you really have a certain path you go down and that's all there is to it. I guess you can try different faery builds and party configs, but in the end it's gonna be samey.
I think it's one of those you replay in a year or two when youve forgotten a lot.

Just to ramble a bit more, one of the things I thought was unique and fun about the game is presentation of scale, and your role in the world as a very small entity in a big world. I dont remember ever playing a game where i was a tiny protagonist in a huge world, except maybe Alice at times.
 
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On the subject of scale how about micromachines
Micro Machines 1
Micro Machines 2
I remember that I used to play those a lot but can´t remember on what machine also I think NWC put out some game with plastic army men

Anyhow I too got convinced to procure this game and found it very fun
I would love to play the following episodes although it doesn´t seem like any will be released on the official forums there are some talk about starting a petition but it mostly seem like empty talk
 
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On a side note for some reason I went an named my character Titania (before I knew that she would play a role in the lore) which leads to some funny dialog where it´s not always clear if it´s me or the queen they are talking about
 
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On a side note for some reason I went an named my character Titania (before I knew that she would play a role in the lore) which leads to some funny dialog where it´s not always clear if it´s me or the queen they are talking about

I can see why that can be a problem. :) So maybe those LOL names like Badsmellingdude and Sir Fartalot have their place after all.

Pibbur who has never seen other Pibburs in any game.
 
Maybe although I didn´t fell that they were really appropriate for my female fairy but perhaps if I used fairy in the old derogatory sense and tried to roleplay a hbt character or something

I´ve heard that queer theory is still in and it´s far to seldom I manage to be trendy

Maybe next time
 
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Micromachines made me think of another game I played to death, where scale is a big part of the experience - Re-Volt. A remote-controlled car driving game, the tracks and environments are all done from the scale that youre a small RC vehicle (cars, trucks).

Your rc car is armed with fireworks of all types, like bottle rockets and stuff - awesome game. I wonder if I could get it running on Win7.

Looks like it's abandonware, nice. Okay, maybe not. Doesnt matter to me, I still have the disk (case #253 of when never getting rid of any good game ever pays off yet again)

Re-Volt runs perfect on 7x64 w/ the unofficial patch, yeah!
 
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Never played that looks good maybe should try it out

thanks for the tip
 
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I got to play a few more hours and made it to the second mirror.

The first mirror was great fun, and the second mirror has me giddy as well. Very cool setting with some really solid exploration and interesting quests. Loving this game right now.

The scale is definitely cool. Exploring an area that is made for humans is awesome. Everything is huge and there are tons of little openings to explore. Fantastic stuff really.
 
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