Ara Fell

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• INTRO

Ara fell is a turn-based indie RPG developed by Stegosoft Games and released on PC. It is created in a style reminiscent of classical 16-bit sprite based RPGs such as Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy or more recently Radiant Historia.

The story takes place on floating islands of Ara Fell, and centers around a young girl named Lita who discovers a magical macguffin that marks her as the chosen one who will save the world from total destruction at the hands of a race of evil vampires. So as you can see, we’re already overloaded with completely original ideas from the get go. To be fair, familiar tropes and narrative premises are completely acceptable so long as you have a strong enough cast or at the very least throw a spanner or two in the works to keep things from becoming too predictable. Xenoblade for example isn’t exactly the most original trope-free story ever, but that story worked because it didn’t waste time, focused on characters and relationships, and kept things constantly moving forward.

• PRESENTATION

While the story of Ara Fell won’t ever leave you jaw on the floor surprised at anything, I get the feeling it wasn’t supposed to. If you’ve played any number of RPGs as of late, you’ll have noticed a common flawed logic dominating a lot of them. The idea that more, or longer is innately better. The problem is if you look at some of the best games of the genre, a lot of them are better partly because of how short and focused they are. You can beat Chrono Trigger in less than 20 hours on your first time through, and I don’t think more needs to be said about Undertale.

Ara Fell took be a grand total of 9 hours to playthrough and that is actually a massive point in it’s favor. Aside from being a respectable length for a $10 game, the developers didn’t waste time with menial side quests or filler and busy work that was there just for the sake of padding things out. There are plenty of optional quest along the way that grant rewards that make them worth it if you take the time to complete them, but it’s never a scenario where the story is somehow gated off until your complete some side mission that you may not really care about, keeping things constantly moving towards the final goal, instead of arbitrarily drawing things out with gathering missions or slaying x number of monsters because random NPC #46128 said so.

It’s also nice to play a game of this type that doesn’t take itself so ludicrously seriously. Excluding The Witcher and basically anything Bioware puts out, too many RPGS especially continue to cling to their irrational phobia of having even the slightest sense of humor for fear of not being taken seriously. For all intents and purposes, Ara Fell is more comedy than it is lord of the rings style fantasy adventure, and a lot of that comes from the exceptionally well written characters. Your only have 4 party members for the whole run, which is good as it lets you get to know each one better as a result. They feel more like a cohesive group with their own personalities, interests and nuisances to them, all delivered through consistently tongue and cheek dialogue.

Not that that’s to say there's no drama or heavy moments throughout, but their aren’t overloaded to the point of mundanity and are used in just the right moments to add the impact they need. Without spoiling anything, for example, there’s a scene between Lita and her father, where she’s just gone through some traumatic events and decided to sleep it off, to which her father decides to come and tuck her into bed with a few words of comfort. And that’s all you need. No melodrama or drawn speeches or why our hero is so important or any of that. Just a brief genuine moment and you get the emotional resonance you need.

The journey through Ara Fell is consistently entertaining and endearing for nearly the whole run, but in the spirit of fairness, I’ll need to be honest and saw that unfortunately the ending is a bit lackluster. Naturally I won’t give anything away, but it fumbles in a ways similar to Final Fantasy VII, for those who have played it. Everything builds to this big climactic battle, you face and beat the final boss,they through one more spanner in the works to ramp up the tension, you have the big climactic resolution and then BAM ending credits roll as you just sit their with the ever so classic “Wait, is that really it?” look on your face. I won’t call it bad as theirs probably enough there to make a reasonably accurate guess as to what exactly happens to everyone after the end, but it sure would be nice to actually see it. For one example, the game spends a fair amount of time building developing a romance between two of it’s leads, and despite most video games constantly one-upping hollywood for most awkwardly forced and uncomfortable “love stories” ever delivered in narrative form, I actually found the romance in Ara Fell rather cute and endearing and wanted to see it develop. Then the ending comes and I just kind a have to guess as to whether or not they did decide to go full on babies ever after. I get your game isn’t Harry Potter. I don’t need a whole 10 year time jump to see the future of Lita’s grandkids or anything, but I’d typically expect if a writer loves their characters so much they’d want to give them at least some sort of proper closure or epilogue.

• GAMEPLAY

Gameplay wise, well, this is a classic turned based RPG with preset abilities for each character, so you know how this goes. Combat slogs along it’s repetitive way against trash mobs and standard enemies, while really coming alive with the more intense moments being saved for boss fights which thank goodness are genuinely fun, each having their own gimmicks and strategies that keep you on your toes the whole time. The fact the it copies Chrono Trigger’s Active Time Battle system, instead of straightforward turned-based combat definitely helps with the strategic element of gameplay. And the addition of more modern features like increased maneuverability when exploring, or being able to choose which specific stat to advance for each character upon leveling up all help really help make the game feel like the appropriate mix of old-school features but modernized in just the right way.

Right off the bat, the game gives asks you if you’d like to have access to the “Story Mode” ability, which is basically just a special attack you can use at any time in combat to instantly kill all enemies you're currently facing. And your first reaction might be, “well way to go and make half of your entire game completely pointless when you can now just ‘story Mode” spam your way to victory.” But truth be told, I actually approve of this. On on hand it’s completely optional so you can get rid of it whenever you want. And really, all it does is cut down on the time you spend spam fighting the same trash mobs over and over again, which even the most hardcore JRPG fan will tell you is the WORST part of any JRPG. Plus your whole party is fully healed after battle anyway, to there is no unbalancing there. And if I’m here for the characters and dialogue anyway, the less wasting my time from getting to that meat the better, I say.

• VISUALS/AUDIO

Aesthetically speaking, Ara Fell was made to look like a SNES game, which again isn’t exactly new at this point, but it doesn’t make the game look any less visually appealing. I’d have liked it if the character artwork in conversations wasn’t exactly CLAMP levels of “meh”, but the detail and art direction in the both the sprites and environments is both constant as well as consistently nice to look at. The music is much the same, and while I can’t say any particular song or melody stood out to me aside from maybe the title menu, and the lack of a catchy standard battle theme immediately calls the legitimacy of this game's claim of being a “JRPG” into question the music as a whole was wonderfully atmospheric and always set the tone of each area and scene perfectly. There’s no voice acting, but that’s to be expected with the kind of budget that forces you to develop your game in RPG Maker, and honestly with how well written the dialogue is, I’m even really sure that it was needed.

• FINAL THOUGHTS
  

Truth be told with the year half over and not much to show for it in the way of high quality JRPGs I’ve been started to get a bit worried. Fire Emblem and Bravely Second were both good, but didn’t exactly blow my socks off. And as good as Final Fantasy XV and Star Ocean look, let's not pretend that Square Enix is exactly the most consistent when it comes to recapture the glory of their ‘Soft”-er days. Ara Fell may not be the 50 hour epic tale that you’d expect from a Final Fantasy, but you know what that’s fine, because it has the perfect price and length to make it exactly what I needed as the dry season befalls us. The best description I can come up with is Chrono Trigger meets Xenoblade Chronicles and frankly if you somehow live on some floating island where that DOESN’T sound like early Christmas, than I’d prefer to “Ara Fall” of this island as soon as possible please, because I think we might have a we bit trouble getting along.