Many would remember this was in my list of Games We’re Looking Forward to in 2010, I said I wasn’t too sure whether or not this game was worth looking forward to, or going to be one of the games I might crap on. I mean after all, this game is basically 3 gaming conventions that I adore. So like in every review, the questions is, is this game any good?

Well the story goes that the game is set in post-apocalyptic future Japan. You play as Seto, a young boy who had lived with an old man in what seems to be a derelict observatory. The old man dies of old age, and leaves a letter for Seto to go west from home and see if there are any more survivors left, as Seto is off in his journey he stumbles upon a silver haired girl that he falls in love with, and goes searching for her, along the way he makes new friends with a computerized radio, an insomniac, and a ghost.

In the early beginning of the game the setting does feel somewhat Miyazaki-ish, lots of green and a ton of old looking vehicles, it’s somewhat refreshing to see a somewhat green and color saturated end of the world. The game in terms of graphics looks pretty good for a Wii game, if anyone remembers Eternal Sonata (or Trusty Bell in Japan), this game was developed by the same company, so you’d know that the game will be at least colorful, color isn’t something bad in a game.

This game is borderline Silent Hill, Zelda and Fallout (3 to be exact), three games I’m known to adore. The game plays much like an adventure game with a few RPG elements with some exploration, so far it sounds good on paper, right? In theory it sounds great, but in practice you get an awkwardly dissapointing game. When I said Silent Hill, I wasn’t really exactly expecting any horror, especially from a game with an anime look to it, but you will spend the majority of your time in and out dark pits running around with a flash light, avoiding monsters and picking up items, that’s where the Fallout 3 bit comes in play. There isn’t exactly that much of Zelda in this game though, I say Zelda because this is pretty much an action RPG for the most part, that and you get more weapons and items as you go along. Speaking of weapons and items, there’s that item organization mechanic found in many games including Diablo, Resident Evil, etc.

Now here comes what bad about this game, leaving the corny and plot-holed story aside, it really seems like whoever made this game have forgotten they were making a game in the first place. The weak fighting mechanics make it really hard to hit anything, you’re not the only one that will be suffering from this issue since the enemies barely hit you. Not that it really matters since all the enemies are easily avoided, so you’ll spend a good share of your time just running away from non-threatening monsters.

Speaking of long corridors, this game seems pretty proud with it’s over stretched corridors, not only will you be spending a long time running through long and dead tunnels, but you will be back tracking in a lot of them. The game designers made a really sloppy job in elongating this game. The back tracking is so bad, that at one point you have to spend 30 minutes going down a dam, and go back up to fight boss then your “friend” tells you need to go back to where you came from, BEFORE THE FREAKING DAM, in order to head back to you primary objective, that’s an entire hour wasted just  on doing nothing but go up and down ladders, dodge rabid pigeons while walking steadily on rusted scaffolding to avoid falling and fight a boss that can barely hit you. That was only one of the many points in this game where I believe it could have been 10 hours shorter if it weren’t for the excessive back tracking.

Yes, those rabid pigeons are actual enemies in Fragile dreams, and those aren’t the only whacked out enemies you encounter in this game, there also GHOST pigeons (I swear I’m not making this up), wild dogs, wild fire breathing demon dogs, ghosts, some weird mutants and a few jelly fish that somewhat seem to be lost souls of human beings. the enemy designers were probably smoking something really heavy when they designed this crap. Bosses aren’t much of a threat either, they either barely hit you or beatable in the second round.

In no shape or form is this game fun, I was expecting a good game, but I was dissapointed that this hunk of garbage was just like the rest of the shovelware out there, avoid this like the plague and think nothing about it.

What we think: You’re really better off geting the other games Fragile Dreams is trying to be, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on the same system is especially excellent, play Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess if you haven’t that one is great too. You should be ashamed of yourself to be thinking of this if you haven’t played Fallout 3 yet.

Mohammad AlHuraiz

Founder, editor and host of Lochal Archade. Mohammad has been running Lochal Archade for years and working hard in bringing video game-related content to the UAE and the Middle East as a whole.

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