Fairy Bloom Freesia is a strange game for us. The gameplay is rather rudimentary, but the story is charming. Overall it is very strange and we will be reviewing it in-depth for you. You can also check it out on Steam.
The combo system is just a bit too easy.
The Gameplay of Fairy Bloom Freesia
Fairy Bloom Freesia is a beat-em-up with RPG elements. You can equip special skills and attacks to improve your character. You also have passive abilities that buff you. However, as an experience and highly skilled fighting game player, this game left me underwhelmed. On the very first stage you can get an infinite chain of hits on an enemy.
This, is a boss.
The punching bags, er, enemies of Fairy Bloom Freesia
The enemies are also rather predictable. We cannot fault the game too much for this because that is usually how beat-em-ups go. However I was bouncing them around like beanbags, nonstop. The bosses provide a bit more challenge. Even then you only need to guard properly.
An amusing story for Fairy Bloom Freesia
What probably drew people in originally to this game was the story. Listine, the boss seen above, is one of the strangest, creepiest characters I’ve ever seen. He often hits on the main character. While I understand the main character is supposed to be a timeless guardian, she looks like a small girl. Her looking like a small girl is exactly why Listine likes her at first. This makes him even more creepy. Basically the whole game has crazy, confusing plot points like this. I really found myself enjoying the story much more than I thought I would.
The Translation of Fairy Bloom Freesia
In the strictest sense, the translation is fine. However some of the phrasing is a bit clumsy here and there. The phrase “enjoying living with humans” is not strictly wrong. It would sound better as “some types of flower enjoy living with humans”. The phrasing did hurt my enjoyment of the story a bit. Hopefully this will improve with future updates.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5 – Slightly Above Average – An amusingly comical storyline with really amusing characters is hampered by mediocre gameplay. The chaining in the game is far too easy, leading it to bore experienced fighting game players. At $7.99 USD this game is well worth picking up for those who love both anime and gaming. However, if you like the combat in the “Tales of” games, which I do not, you may like this game better. It is heavily reminiscent of those games due to the chaining system.
It seems basic and simple because it starts out slow and easy for the purpose of easing new players into the game. There’s a lot more depth to it than it sounds like you’ve played.
Sure, it’s easy to chain… but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the player to experiment and improve. Players won’t need to play well at lower difficulty, but at higher difficulty it helps to have created an efficient setup and mastered your most effective combo attacks.
There’s also a system revolving around striking and juggling enemies into each other. The more you juggle without the enemy touching the ground, the higher your damage multiplies. While you don’t need to use this system to win, it’s satisfying and adds another layer of gameplay to master.
The enemies are predictable because they’re designed to be easy to handle on their own, but difficult to keep track of in large, varied groups. You won’t see that until much later in the game. Try playing on Cruel difficulty or the later parts of Guardian Mode and see if you still feel the same way.
I played the game plenty, and saw the full mechanics, it never gets deeper than than the Tales of series, mixed with a little final fight. Even having to dodge some guard-breaking attacks does not add much.
It is so easy to chain that any seriously skilled player will take it as a joke.
The bounce gameplay is so simplistic that it is insulting to the intelligence of the person to call it another layer of gameplay. Even playing on the hardest difficulty does not solve this problem.
Do the enemies get more difficult on harder difficulties? Yes. But they get harder in the manner of “learn this pattern after enough trial and error”. They are harder in the way that DMC1 enemies got harder on Dante must die. Sure, this is fun for some people, and perhaps if this were my first game of the type it would be fun for me. But this is far from my first time to the rodeo, so to speak, and this falls into a sea of similar titles, with similar hooks. The game falls somewhere between Final Fight and a “Tales of” game without achieving the charm of either. Anyone who can’t see this is either is in denial or has not played enough of the titles this game draws from.
A 3 is generous for this game.