Fearless Fantasy | a Review
originally published on 24/01/2025;
Hello everyone, I am the fearlessly fantastical G.E.M.Simov, a Monster Hunter Princess come to tell you about Fearless Fantasy.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Right off the bat, ladies, gentlemen and N-Bees, this is an IMPRESSIVE performance. Fearless Fantasy (henceforth this game) is a turn based RPG. However, unlike literally every other turn based RPG, which are all mind-numbing slogs when it comes to their combat (the only exception so far being LISA: The Painful and its DLC), this one has engaging combat.
And not only is the combat engaging, it is done in such a way that it urges you to seek excellence. So let me slow down a bit, because this was a really staggering discovery - that someone had actually put in the brainpower and effort required to spice up this plain chicken - and get back to the point.
So, Fearless Fantasy - a turn based RPG. From the looks of it, this is a mobile-phone game. Fortunately, it’s a good phone game (I know, unbelievable) because there was no prompt urging me to buy something. In fact, there is no in-game store. There are no micro-transactions. The fact that this is a phone game does not, at all, impede it, with the exception of Presentation, which will be something I talk about later.
Then, seeing as this is a turn based RPG - more inspired by JRPGs than Western RPGs - we have two things to consider - the combat, which I already threw great heaps of praise at, and the exploration. This game features no exploration, at least not in the conventional for most JRPGs sense. The Player Characters (PCs) travel around the world and fight in different locations, so there is some semblance of exploration, but it is not the kind that involves using the WASD keys to move around and find treasures.
That implies that we’ve got a heavily combat or story focused game. Seeing as I’ll talk about the Story later, we’ll have to talk about the combat.
In a sense, it is exactly what one would expect out of a JRPG. Two sides - enemies and the Player Characters - taking turns - who goes first is dictated by character stats - and then repeating until either one of the sides loses.
But this combat system is almost unlike anything I’ve ever seen while simultaneous retaining incredible similarities to the main formula (of JRPGs), so let me get down to it.
There are 4 different stats that have an effect on combat - Strength, increasing base damage; Agility, increasing the speed of your turn (elaborating later); Vitality, increasing health; Endurance, increasing energy.
Naturally, these 4 stats govern some other stats - which is faux complexity at its finest, seeing as there’s really no need for a stat that governs 1 other thing - why can’t it just be the thing that is governed instead? Nevermind that, we’ve got 4 stats.
The turn speed is the interesting part of this one. Instead of having a speed stat, or an initiative number, characters in Fearless Fantasy have a timer. For the Main Character, that would be 1.80 seconds. This timer decrees when the Character acts in combat - in the MC’s case, he acts at 1.80 seconds, and then at 3.60 seconds, and then at 5.40… In theory. In reality, the characters take their turns at a similar rate, if a bit faster, though everything is on a clock.
An example fight would start with 2 enemies and 2 Player Characters. Enemy 1 goes first at 0.53, enemy 2 goes second at 0.83, PC1 goes third at 1.5 and then PC2 goes fourth after that, and in this case PC2 is the Main Character, so it almost makes sense. It’s just a very interesting approach to handling turn order, or rather initiative order, and I find it quite interesting. Either way, no one Character can have a second turn before another character has had a turn at all, so it’s all about who gets to act first… But then there are situations in which a character can get to slink off with 2 turns in a row.
Well, when someone gets to acting, what does it look like? In short, it’s a bit messy, courtesy of phone-game + JRPG, but there’s a number of things that can be done by the PCs.
First, they can attack normally - there are two options, ranged and melee, though on a character who can do both melee is always superior. The difference between them is that a ranged attack requires clicking, whereas a melee attack requires simply moving the mouse along a specific path. There we are, ladies, gentlemen and N-bees, at the interesting part, but just hold a moment!
Other than attacking normally, Characters can make use of special attacks which consume energy and do more than what normal attacks do. So, what’s the deal with these attacks and what’s so interesting about them?
Well, in any other JRPG when the Player selects their course of action and their target, that’s it. The PC will do the thing. In Fearless Fantasy, the best is yet to come. When the target is selected, the game will zoom in on the PC as they prepare to attack, and a series of prompts will show up.
For ranged attacks, the prompts will be circles which are surrounded by other, rapidly shrinking circles, and the Player now needs to click the surrounded circles when the shrinking ones are aligned with the ones within them. For melee attacks, the prompts will be arrow-esque shapes with other arrow-esque shapes around them, the latter rapidly shrinking, and the Player needs to move their mouse’s cursor through the arrow-esque shapes as the shrinking ones align with the constant ones.
Special attacks are either a more complex variation of a ranged or melee attack or a combination of the two.
So, what comes out of this? Depending on the Player’s timing, the result of the attack will either be a failure, good, epic or flawless. A failed attack means that the enemy will dodge it and take no damage. A good attack means that the PC does the average amount of damage - as far as one can tell - whereas an epic attack will do around 160% of the damage a good attack would do, and a flawless attack winds up doing double damage.
The same applies for skills - the better the Player times their inputs, the better the result. This also comes in play when a PC is attacked - the Player has to do the corresponding movements, and time them right, to potentially avoid all damage, to reduce the damage tremendously (to a 2, as an example), to reduce the damage slightly (to a 5) or to fail and take max damage (a 10 in this case).
What, then, are the other options? Well, fortunately, there is no longer an option to Guard (JRPGs love this turn eater). There is the option to ‘Troll’, which works as a provocation/taunt for a turn, there’s the option to use an item from the inventory OR to rest, which restores a certain amount of energy.
Another interesting aspect of Fearless Fantasy is that enemies come in waves. In fact, it’s not that enemies come in waves, it’s that the levels that get explored by the Player are literally just a number of consecutive fights, which do occur in waves, split apart by interactions between the characters.
It is very bare-bones, in that regard, but the engagement of the fights is very high in return for that. It’s so well done, so fantastic, that I almost forgot the main issue - and that is the fact that one needs to do the fights over and over again. This game might have done a tremendous amount of work on making sure that the combat of a JRPG is not as lame as it is by default, but it has forgotten that the concept of a JRPG is also quite lame by default - kill hundreds of goons to get max level, all the while engaging in something that isn’t that fun - that being the combat.
In the case of Fearless Fantasy, the combat is almost fun. It almost manages to reach that level of fun moment-to-moment gameplay that is so incredibly rare in games, and is the sign of a good one, but it fails to do so, because, after all, one must incorporate reasons to grind - if you can handle all enemies through skill, alone, why would you need to grind or even level up?
That gripe aside, this game almost manages it. The grinding is a bit bothersome to deal with, but if it wasn’t there at all, the game would be over far, far too quickly, as there are only 13 levels, even if there are 3 difficulty options for each - 1 star, 2 stars and 3 stars, with 3 stars being a bit masochistic to attempt, especially without grinding… But what happens after the Player completes a level? Well, the PCs gain experience points, which allows them to level up, with each level providing a stat point that can be allocated and a skill point with which the same can be done. That’s how one gets new special attacks and increases their stats. The Player also gains gold, which can be used to buy items in the shop - items that provide considerable improvements, such as: “When you get an epic, the bonus is 1.5x that of the previous weapon.” You know, RPG stuff.
Every character has 2 equipment slots - 1 for a weapon, and 1 for a gadget. The gadgets are, essentially, equipment - they provide all kinds of bonuses, such as stat increases or specific positives, like a buff for every party member after the wearer of the item has trolled.
Naturally, most of the items are locked off by progression requirements - mainly reaching certain points in the story, as one could expect.
All in all, it’s a fun experience - definitely amusing for a while, but nor for too long. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks like someone had a very interesting trip and then tried to depict what they saw. The locales are interesting and fanciful, the backgrounds are colorful and outlandish, the cutscenes look like joke animations done by someone trying to get into animations but has seen a lot of anime, the character sprites look okay, but the character portraits look absolutely horrible, and…
Well, I quite like the look of the game if I make an effort of ignoring the portraits that show up whenever the characters talk. They look a lot better in the cinematics, and the cinematics are just shoddy-in-appearance outlines, so it’s just weird how that’s come to pass. I suppose it’s some weird 3D object and many faces look weird in 3D, especially older stuff. And this is decently old, 2014.
The most striking part of this thing is, however, the voice-acting. I think it’s incredibly good - so good, in fact, that at one point Xola - a character - sounded like a very perfect Joker impression. The Voice Actors do a very decent job and I quite enjoyed the villains - they were very colorful, if I can so express myself.
The music is not bad, but it becomes a bit repetitive after one hears it a few times, especially the level-select one. The sound effects are also quite well done, and, all in all, this game’s presentation is impressively good.
Though, unfortunately, we might need to get to the phone aspect of it. This looks like a phone game, because it is a phone game. Instead of click, prompts say ‘tap’. There’s no other means of doing anything other than clicking, which is, in this case, the substitute for tapping. There’s a very real sensation of repulsion that I feel as I look at its UI, thinking to myself: “phone game”
Strangely, though, this is an amazing phone game. It’s a great game overall, and for a phone game? This is something absolutely incredible. Still, though, mobile games have been so horribly corrupt that I can’t look at one, even if it is outstanding in quality, and feel as though there was something wrong with it. 3/3
Story
The story follows Leon and Vonn, a pair of Monster Hunters, as well as Alice, a princess betrothed to Xula, as they wander about the realm in search of a means to kill Xula’s legendary beast while Xula’s forces try to retrieve Alice.
Does it sound cliched? Well, maybe, but then that could have been the point. This story features gunblades and mobile phones in a pseudo fantasy setting, it features plants with phenomenal disguises that look like tourists, umbrellas, beach balls and goodie tables, it features farting lizards and a guy with a hole in his sock.
It is most certainly a ‘feels good’, fun adventure, and I can’t say I did not enjoy the story. The most contributing factor to my enjoyment of it was the quality of the Voice Acting - though that could just be me - and the fact that it was not taking itself all that seriously, though there were a few moments of appropriate reactions.
The story doesn’t do anything too new and unique, but it doesn’t look as though it’s setting out to do that, so I’m more than content with what I was given. The ending was the most fun thing out of most of the story, as it showed a slew of activities performed by the characters, indicating that there was more time that passed… Ah well, it’s a good story, not an amazing masterpiece. I think good stories are okay, too. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Does it? Well, I feel like it does. There’s a lot of meme-y stuff in it. For example, when the characters ‘troll’, they do the gangam style dance. Or the farting lizard I mentioned in the story - that one’s a nice little joke. Or Jasper - Jasper’s wonderful, he’s a great meme.
Or maybe the ludicrous game-related stuff, such as how you start off the final boss fight with 2 out of 3 characters dead? That really works as a way of ramping up the threat of the boss, but it does feel a bit cheap. I think out of all these things, the most unfortunate thing is that the game still requires that you do the thing. The thing being grind to succeed. That being the case really puts a damper on my admiration of this game’s approach to combat. So NO, I will not be giving Fearless Fantasy the Legendary Point, even if it almost deserved it. 0/1
Conclusion
7/10. Fearless Fantasy is a surprisingly pleasant to play JRPG, sporting a very peculiar style and a reasonably okay story. I would not go as far as to recommend it to folks who are not at least open to JRPGs, but its gameplay is a lot more forgiving and enjoyable than the stereotypical representative of its genre.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display.