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| A sky-high adventure. |
Ara Fell is an indie game from Stegosoft Games that released back in 2016 on PC. An RPG starring a young girl out to save her world, it's inspired by SNES classics of the 16-bit era like Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger. It's also been in my backlog for a while until recently where I decided to finally check it out. So, is it a great time that captures the essence of the classics?
In Ara Fell, a land floating high in sky, a young girl named Lita always dreamed of becoming an adventurer. When one day she and her friend Adrian stumble upon old ruins; there she comes across a magic elven ring where its spirit tasks her with gathering Six Artifacts of Power that the elves have forged before a war erupts between humans and the vampires that live in Ara Fell's shadows. The latter are also after the Sunstone that's keeping Ara Fell in the sky, so it's up to Lita and her friends to put a stop to their plans.
The story was a pretty good one as though it starts slow, it managed to completely hook me in with lots plot-twists and revelations keeping things interesting. As for the cast, they're equally as good as Lita grows from carefree adventurer to a fully-fledged hero. At times she'll even doubt herself with all of Ara Fell's fate resting on her shoulders, but with her friends, she overcomes her trials. Her companions Adrian, Seri Kesu, and Doren were all interesting with their reason for joining the adventure as well.
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| Join Lita on a world-saving journey. |
Ara Fell is a turn-based RPG with each character having their own spells, attacks, and classes. The gameplay is the standard genre affair with you levelling up, doing side-quests, exploring, and battling bosses-- so it's solid. During battles, a Special meter fills up that when it reaches a character's icon, they'll be able to unleash their special attack like an elemental attack on enemies, group heal to the party or taunting all enemies while raising defence. As you explore Ara Fell, you'll come across materials that can be used for crafting new gear and weapons for your characters. You won't encounter any equipment through exploration, which means that you'll only be collecting and crafting through the game's menu. While simple, it sucks a bit that you won't find any special items out in the wild.
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| The gameplay is great though it could've used some variety. |
The turn-based combat-- while good-- could've used some variety as you'll be fighting the same enemies and vampire bosses over the course of the game that it eventually becomes boring. Something like the ATB gauge from FF would've made battles a lot more exciting. A decent solution to that is bumping the difficulty to Expert to make fights more strategy-based and challenging. Also, an auto-battle feature would have been useful when fighting weaker enemies. It took 30hrs to beat getting 100% completion, which is great for a $15 game. The Enhanced Edition includes an updated user interface, more side-quests, and gameplay revamps over the original release that are good to have.
Ara Fell packs 16-bit retro visuals of the SNES era that it's inspired by. The backgrounds were vibrant as well as colorful and the detailed sprites made world come to life. It lacks voice-work but thankfully the dialogue was fun to read through as the cast occasionally made fun of the standard video-game tropes. The soundtrack was good, packing many calming tracks though it could've used more variety as hearing the same tracks like the overworld got tiring after a while.
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| Ara Fell looks and feels like a classic game. |
Overall, Ara Fell was a surprisingly great time as I wasn't expecting much since it looked similar to many indie RPGs-- but it ended up being a really memorable adventure. The story was great, characters were likeable, presentation was good, and despite lacking variety, the gameplay was solid. It's a worth a look for those interested in a small yet fun RPG that's reminiscent of the classics.
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