Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord Review
On paper, the original Fairy Fencer F sounded like JRPG Mad Libs, with Final Fantasy legends Yoshitaka Amano and Nobuo Uematsu collaborating with the studio behind Hyperdimension Neptunia. It’s an absolutely bizarre combo on paper, but one filled with potential to deliver a game with unparalleled style, aesthetic, sound, and writing. It didn’t play out that way at all, as Fairy Fencer F was a goofy, unpolished RPG adventure that ends on a massive cliffhanger.
Rather than closing that wide-open door, the 2015 re-release Advent Dark Force Chose to retread the same story with a few alternate paths mixed in. Surely a new entry arriving nearly ten years later with brand new gameplay would be a step forward in addressing the ending of the last game and turning this one-off RPG into something bigger? In that regard, Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord shatters all expectations.
Things don’t quite pick-up from the original story, or even from any of the prior routes. Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord is more of a re-contextualisation of the original – we jump in seeing himbo hero Fang and his full crew of companions already assembled, but what follows is a third near identical adventure to recover ancient relics called Furies in order to resurrect the ancient Goddess responsible for creating them. This time around, though, there are a lot of new characters mixed in that quickly shuffle around otherwise familiar events – most important of them being mysterious women known as Muses, who have the ability to heal or harm with the power of their songs.
It’s honestly a struggle to pin down what kind of audience Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord is meant for. Fang and his crew are charming and hilariously written, but you’re thrown into the middle of
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