Fragile Dreams
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Publisher: Xseed Games
Developer: tri-Crescendo
You’re in a dystopian world set in what appears to be a desolate Japan. Your grandfather has just died and he is the only person you know – or have ever known for that matter. Fragile Dreams takes place in this world and has you playing as Seto, a boy who just lost the only living person he has ever known and who has been left all alone in a desolate world. Some sort of disaster has taken place, and you are the only human left living as far as you know.
This is a dreary setting for the generally casual-friendly Wii, and a nice change of pace. The story to the game moves forwards as Seto finds another living human, who for some reason runs away after seeing Seto. Seto desperately tries to find her in order to have somebody else and not be so lonely. Blocking his path are demons, crumbling landscapes, and plenty of ghosts.
While the game has an interesting enough premise, are the story and gameplay enough to keep you interested?
Interesting environments help keep exploring interesting
It is important to point out that this game, while looking like a survival horror, isn’t. It certainly has survival horror elements, but the gameplay focuses on exploration. Much of the game is about exploring and traversing the torn down environments. The enemies which show up are more of a nuisance, and rarely are they frightening. It seems the emphasis of the world is in the environments you will run through, which is much more creepy and chilly than any enemies you will encounter. As you explore the environments, you will find many items you can pick up which contain memories of people who died. They all seem to expect their ominous end, and it is sad listening to their last days.
The art direction has two-cross styles to it. The characters themselves have a very anime-style to them, which cuts down from the style of the environments. The environments themselves are mostly gorgeous decaying ruins of a previous world that no longer exists. While I have no problem with anime, and generally enjoy the style, I feel like it undercuts the style of the environments in this particular game. With a more realistic approach to the character and enemy design, the enemies would have felt like true threats, and really made players afraid to run into ghosts.
The game features light RPG elements, where you gain experience for killing enemies. Leveling up will reward you with more attack-power and more health. While it is very simple, it does make leveling up feel rewarding, but not pertinent enough where you will feel the need to level-grind.
Organizationally, Seto carries a pack with him which, in survival-horror fashion, can only hold up to a certain amount of items. Beyond this, Seto will need to travel to one of the many scattered save-points, where he can store an infinite amount in a backpack of sorts. This would cause organization issues, however, there are so many save-points that by the time Seto has too many items in his pack, you will probably be near a new save point, or close enough to an old one that you can just throw extra items into your pack.
The Wiimote controls the flashlight
Fragile Dreams uses the Wiimote intuitively to make exploring the world feel completely natural. Much of the world Seto explores is decaying indoor areas, so this means no working electricity outside of the flashlights Seto finds. The user points and aims the flashlight (which always remains on) with the Wiimote. Meanwhile, the analog nunchuck attachment controls movement, and the wii-mote controls attacks. This feels natural, and helps to make exploring the world interesting.
The Sound Design to the game is simplistic, but works well. There is voice-acting to everything in the game. As an added bonus, the publisher, Xseed Games, decided to leave in the original Japanese Voice-Acting, so players can choose English or Japanese. Players will know that there are ghosts in a room before they see the ghosts by a ghost’s trademark creepy noise, and creepy music will come into play as the player fights off ghosts.
While the game did many things right, unfortunately, the missteps really hinder the experience of the game.
Most enemies fail to scare
As I mentioned before, the anime-style detracts from the horror feeling of the game. While there are a few creepy moments in the game, and a couple of creepy enemy designs, for the most part it didn’t feel very intense. I debated internally if this was the intention or not, and I’m still not positive. While I mentioned that the game feels like an environmental exploration game, this is a big reason why. However, the creepy crying/laughter before you fight an enemy, exploring through a dark world with a flash light, frightening hidden messages, and other factors in the game argue that this should be a horrific and frightening game. But the artistic style detracts from this and makes the ho-hum enemies seem nothing more than, well, ho-hum enemies.
Another large issue is the ease of the game. The game is very easy. While you have weapons which can break as you travel around and fight with them, it is incredibly simple to get a new weapon, and I never felt threatened by having a broken weapon, as it is very easy to run away from enemies. Boss battles in this game are laughable, as the bosses were so simple, that some of them even felt like regular enemies.
Environments grow more and more stale as the game goes on
The environments and level-design themselves seem to be the most interesting factor to the game. But, while both start off interesting and unique in the beginning, they both teeter off near the final act of the game. Both the beginning and middle of the game feature interesting areas with unique level designs, but at the end, you start to travel through many long tunnels which all start to feel the same. I guarantee you I climbed down a single ladder for at least a minute straight.
While the premise to the game holds promise, the story and writing goes in and out. Seto picks up items which contain memories from people as they knew their world was coming to an end. The writing here is spot-on, helps further the mystery of what happened, and fuels the question of what exactly is happening. Character interaction, however, is only sometimes interesting. I do not want to ruin any of the story, or of the mystery, but I’ll say that some elements of what you discover are very interesting, and others are sadly disappointing.
A big question which came to me while playing the game was what the target-audience was. The game feels like a survival-horror game targeted to a younger audience. The character designs and scares feel more catered to younger kids, but the level of detail and darkness placed in the environments is enough to make an adult feel uneasy. One could call the game an adventure game, but it lacks any sort of puzzle that would argue to this.
The game maintains a semi-creepy vibe
Unfortunately, with the lack of frights, the lack of an interesting story all-the-way through, and the lack of proper enemies, the gameplay teeters off. It’s especially disappointing in this game, as it had a huge amount of potential, and playing the game, all I could think about was the great potential the game continued to showcase, but never reach. The game ends up moving forward, and the only truly remarkable thing to continue to see were in the environments. Beyond this, the game never made me feel too interested in the end, nor too dissatisfied where I wanted to quit playing. The game-mechanics are something I would love to see used again, but perhaps in something that better harmonizes all of its interesting elements.
Final score: 6.5/10
- Dave
Tags: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Fragile Dreams, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, nintendo, tri-Crescendo, Wii, Xseed, Xseed Games