Fragile Dreams is a very strange game. In some ways, I failed to see a game in it at all. Its pacing is so slow and repetitive that I never really felt much was accomplished on my journey. Yet the strange, beguiling story kept me trudging along to the end. You play Seto, a boy who has awoken with little memory and has found himself alone in the world.
The heart of the game is exploration. Moving from one area to the next in search of survivors from some unknown apocalyptic event is what drives the narrative. Along the way, you find items that in other games would probably be minor throwaway items. In Fragile Dreams, these items will save your life.
The first item you find is the flashlight, which lights your way in this very dark and dreary world of ruins. For a weapon, you find a stick. Then you are off into the unknown. The tutorial warned me that some creatures can only be harmed by light. Don’t believe it, as all creatures, alive or otherwise, can be harmed by your stick. Along the way, you will also come upon mystery objects, that when observed by firelight reveal items that can be used as weapons, health, currency, upgrades, or most interesting, story-telling elements.
The mystery of this unique setting is what will keep you playing until the end. As you find certain objects, you are treated to a story told by the previous owner of the object, now deceased. These are sad, lonely moments, but they also inspire you to keep moving forward to hear other stories in hopes to make sense out of the situation. This is really the best part of this game, and the element that makes it such a unique experience.
To accompany this moody feeling is an excellent soundtrack. The various bits of music throughout the game are haunting at times, creepy and odd at others. It definitely captures the strange essence of the game. The voice work is decent, if not occasionally annoying. The rest of the sounds include repetitive snippets of moans, groans, growls and chants from the various enemies that you will fight.
The graphics in this game are really a mixed bag. On one hand, the game uses an anime style that makes the post-apocalyptic world oddly beautiful at times. It’s clear that the damage done to the world was not a bomb, as all major structures are intact and the sky looks absolutely beautiful, with a large harvest moon looming above. On the other hand, there are a ton of graphical bugs and glitches, and there are sparse details once you get up close to objects. What details there are tend to repeat themselves, such as little electrical breaker boxes strewn throughout the locales. It seemed strange that there were so many little glitches, until I realized that the designers made this world really big.
By big, I mean you will be walking long distances to get where you need to go. This element, while adding a sort of realism to the areas, tends to drag the game down to a frustrating crawl. I found myself literally dozing off while walking down a hallway or climbing down what seemed an endless ladder or flight of stairs. It becomes kind of a joke after awhile. You need to have a lot of patience to get through this game. As you explore these artificially large areas, there are dangers that block your path.
The combat in the game is also either decent or bad, but never great. Combat would have been better if Seto controlled a little tighter. This game is a third-person action game that controls like a first-person shooter. You turn by moving the Wii-mote cursor to the side of the screen. The further over you move it, the faster you turn. That is, unless the sensor loses the Wii-mote signal. Then who-knows-what will happen, as I have had the camera shift around, I’ve had Seto both stand still and continue to turn. I have no idea what it was programed to do when it loses the Wii-mote, but it seemed pretty random to me. When exploring, this was rarely a problem. It caused some serious headaches in combat. The best moments in this game are the boss battles, yet they also had some frustrating moments where it felt like there was nothing I could do but get pummeled because I was either figuring out what the game wanted me to do or I was fighting the controls.
The inventory system is also kind of weird. You have hot buttons mapped to the Wii-mote directional pad. Yet, depending on how you access the menu, only certain options are available to you. For example, you cannot use a healing item from the inventory menu, but you can equip a weapon. You can both use and item and equip an item from the right directional pad, but you cannot manage inventory or see all your items at once from this screen. You have a briefcase to store extra items that can’t fit into your inventory that can only be accessed at save areas, which is fine, unless you need some room. Then you need to throw an item away to make room in your inventory. Also, some menus use the pointer, and others use the D-pad. Not very intuitive, as you will probably fight the menu system the whole game. The map is completely useless.
You don’t need the map anyway, because you will find yourself easily finding your way around because there is rarely a moment where the game is trying to trick you into going down a dead-end. The game is so slow, you will probably memorize the areas fairly quick. Good thing, too, because some of the objectives you are given involve some arduous back-tracking.
In fact, most objectives are about finding something or someone. The game announces these objectives throughout the game, and I’m not sure why. One of the first objectives was to leave the area you were in. That’s it. Other objectives repeat through large portions of the game. It was all a little strange, like having a wandering shopkeeper that wears an oversized chicken head following you around.
The end of the game came as a big relief because the game was starting to get a little too repetitive. The game ups the challenge by throwing more of the same ghostly enemies at you, until the climatic battle at the end, which was thankfully easy. However, with all this negative critique, I really can’t say that I hated the game, or that it was all bad.
It was an experience in gaming that felt very familiar, yet new all at the same time. I can think of so many games with a similar mechanic or flow, such as the Zelda games. Yet this one feels so much different that its not even fair to compare the two games. It felt more like an experiment into a new type of narrative, so you should expect some of the elements to be a little off. It seemed like the game was made to make you uncomfortable, like the way Resident Evil refuses to allow a character to move and shoot at the same time. It adds to suspense. Yet is was so unlike Resident Evil, that again, it would be insulting to both games to compare them.
So should you play the game? I really don’t know. Rent it ifyou found what you read in this review interesting. You can probably finish the game in less than 10 hours, but remember that 5 of those hours will be spent walking down long hallways or carefully navigating ledges. It tells an interesting and oddly unique story that manages to make you feel as lonely and frustrated as the main character. Not many games have accomplished that feat.
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is rated T for Teen and is available now exclusively for the Wii for $49.99.
A review copy of the game was provided but did not affect the outcome of this review.
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