Fairune 2 - Review

Where illusion is still reality. 

Console: Nintendo 3DS

Last year I reviewed Fairune. A small, Zelda-like but not quite, Indie title. As you might recall I wasn't very impressed. "I will play Fairune 2 someday" is what I concluded with. Well, that 'someday' came around a lot earlier than I expected. 

However, after finishing Assassin's Creed Origins I was in the mood for something completely different. For one reason or another, my mind kept coming back to Fairune 2. It's a bit longer than the original but it's still a rather breezy experience to occupy a weekend with - or so I thought. 

As it turns out, this game has a lot more meat on its bones and not a title you can complete in only a couple of hours. It's a more elaborate, polished experience that is fun and can be just as obtuse as its predecessor. Let's talk about it!

In the land of Fairune, where illusion is reality, the 3 great fairies have gone missing. They might have been kidnapped by those monsters that have shown up... or they're just taking an impromptu vacation. Either way, the codex, a sentient book, once again calls upon you, the Chosen Maiden, to save the land.

Fairune 2 starts out familiar yet different. The whole 3 fairy plot, finding the sword and the grassy plains is just like the original. What is different is that everything is more elaborate. There is a lot more dialogue to go around. From the book itself chiming in more throughout the journey, tongue-in-cheek as ever, to actual side characters. Because of this the plot, the world itself, and even the gameplay are easier to understand. 

Not that I would´ve been lost had the beginning of the game not explained things better. Fairune 2 makes things more elaborate but doesn't change much of anything. At its core, it's an old-school Zelda game with a twist in the combat. 

You walk around in a top-down overworld littered with puzzles to solve, secrets to find, enemies to beat and fairies to rescue. That´s not very different to the core setup of 2D Zelda´s but I singled out the first Zelda because of how obtuse it can be. Fairune 2 remains a puzzle/exploration title with its own spin on combat and levelling that is not in the business of handholding. 

While its tricks are somewhat limited, both Fairunes are annoyingly small masters in hiding things in plain sight... and making you hug every wall to find secret pathways. Yep, this game loves the philosophy of keeping your eyes open and ´push every boulder until you find the right one´. It was a bit too much if you ask me as it led to some very frustrating moments in which I could not see the answer and if not for my stubbornness I would've given up. 

In those moments I recommend taking a breather and coming back to the problem with a fresh brain. But, as with its predecessor, Fairune 2 nails that feeling of satisfaction when you solve a puzzle. Plus, some of its puzzles were surprisingly creative for the small game this is. 

Some screengrabs from the game to give you a good idea of its look. 

All of that hasn´t changed and so has its combat. You attack enemies by walking through them in a ´risk-reward´ type of deal, taking them down in one hit and earning exp but taking damage too. So, it´s a choice between fighting your enemies, levelling up but taking damage or avoiding them but staying weaker. An interesting idea that is easy to exploit when you´re willing to do a bit of grinding.

What has changed is the curveball the game throws at you during the final boss. It does that thing where it completely changes the gameplay on you all of a sudden, shifting to an arcade shooter in this case. I had fun with it, surely, but it was a swing I´m not a big fan when a game pulls. 

That´s not the only annoying trick here, disappointingly. Fairune 2 is a bigger game, taking me 08:36:26 to complete compared to the 03:35:16 of the original. It has 4 whole overworlds compared to one, it has a dozen more enemies and there is a lot more to collect. From the tools you need to solve puzzles, like a torch, to permanent upgrades you can enhance even further with the coins you can now collect. 

Learning of the slew of collectables in this game I initially thought that this was for some sort of secret ending. After all, there were comparatively so many of them that I didn´t see all of them have a use. And yet, when I came to the entrance of the final level it turned out I needed to collect all that stuff just to try my hand at beating the final boss. That added almost 1.5 hours of just backtracking and trying to find everything I missed.

And, of course, got lost along the way. With three nice-looking and diverse overworlds to jump between, each with its own cave system to boot, there is a lot of ground to cover here. The grassy plains you start your adventures isn't the exact same map as the first one but it might have well been. It is very similar in design and feel to the world of the 1st game. That gave me the impression this title was simply a redo of its predecessor which didn´t excite me. 

When I got to the second overworld, a snowy mountainscape, I was relieved. It wasn´t only nice to get to a new environment and encounter new enemy types and puzzles it was a much-needed visual change and brought some variety that pulled this game out of its predecessor's shadow. 

With this larger world, it is harder to keep track of everything though. To remember where that cave with the pressure plates was again for example. Had you been able to mark things on the map it would´ve been so much easier to find your way back to these points of interest later. 

That is the whole reason why, after learning I truly had to collect everything, it took me 1.5 hours to collect what was left. For so many items I kind of knew where they were or remembered places I couldn´t figure out but couldn´t remember where they were exactly or how to get to them. I was resolved to just stumble around the map hoping to stumble across these places again and that was quite frustrating. It does now clearly list how much of a specific item there is to be found so that frustration is thankfully gone. 

Conclusion

You could say that where Fairune crawled, Fairune 2 walked. It's a bigger, more elaborate title that improves on some things but is mostly the same. It's a pleasant but often also annoying old-school Zelda-like game. I think this one is better at carving out an identity for itself with its better-presented narrative but a slew of little problems and annoyances, like the often obtuse design of its puzzles, remain. 

I like this game better than the first, and it is the one to play between the two, but I'm still not overly charmed but this Zelda-inspired indie series.