Faery is an interesting addition to the XBLA catalog. Its description/dashboard text implies that it’s a vast RPG with a lot of open and non-linear aspects to it, but this is only partially true; it really takes some of those ideas and molds them to fit what is otherwise a mid-90s style console RPG. You have some exploration, some character development, various quests (usually of the "go talk to Person X to get Item Y, which you in turn use at Location Z" sort), and plenty of turn-based combat. This isn’t a bad thing at all, and if you’re a fan of that sort of RPG you’ll find much to enjoy in Faery.
This game’s most obvious feature is that you play a fairy in a world where magic is steadily vanishing, and it’s up to you to find out why. What makes your fairy stand out is how customizable they are both in appearance and abilities; each time you level up you get to pick from various skills, but can’t have them all. Fortunately other characters will join you every so often, filling party roles you couldn’t otherwise cover. Each character also has a separate ’relationship’ stat with your own character which can influence how they improve over time, and this is mostly advanced by your character’s reactions to situations; some characters prefer you to be brave, others want patience and kindness, and so on.
Exploring the world is done in a third-person view with two interesting twists. First, your character is a fairy in the classical fantasy sense; they’re only a few inches tall and most of the areas you visit are built to human scale. Second, you get to fly as your left analog stick controls most flight, triggers handle straight vertical movement, and the right analog stick fine tunes which direction you’re facing and moving toward. While this does lose some of its ’sense of wonder’ after a while, the variety of places you can explore keeps it mostly interesting.
Like most other turn-based RPGs, the game system is in many ways a vessel to tell a story. Strangely enough, this is where Faery starts to falter. The basic plot works well enough and does come together in some interesting ways as you get further in, but it has some serious issues with how it tells the story. Most of this stems from the text in Faery clearly being written by someone who speaks English as a second language. The writing shows they’re fluent in the language, but various mistakes and stiff wording rob some scenes of storytelling impact and that’s a significant issue with an RPG. To be fair, it’s understandable and the point usually comes across just fine; this is the occasional use of wrong tenses and plural versus singular and it’s not even close to being nonsensical ’SNKglish.’
Yet for the most part, Faery’s story works. It’s joined by a decent RPG system, interesting locations to explore, a variety of useful characters, and should last players several hours. If you’re not a fan of this sort of RPG (even with it borrowing some more modern design ideas), then Faery won’t change your mind. On the other hand, if you’ve enjoyed previous games along these lines then Faery does a lot to earn its $15 USD/1200 Microsoft Points price.
