Fe (Switch) Review - Fairy tale atmosphere

lyra.roberge (56)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

Fe feels like a beautiful old and beloved print pants from your youth that has been lying in a corner for years. Full of curiosity you start, but soon you notice that all pages are stuck together and in some places the images are torn away. Eventually you did see a beloved picture book, but it was not quite what you expected. Fe is currently more of a sticky picture book than a fresh new experience.

The appearance of the game is not: the world of Fe looks beautiful and is very atmospheric. From the moment you start to the end credits, walk, run, float and jump into environments where color, light effects, sound, flora and fauna come together in a beautiful way and form a fairytale, polygonous whole. Especially the animals present look stunning. They are all recognizable creatures that are made up of multiple animals and with their special appearance complete the magical feeling.

Rhinoceros dogs and fish snake worms

Fe is the creature that controls the player and like all other animals a weird mormel, a kind of avian squirrel fox. The game starts in a nice piece of forest and from that point you have to figure everything out. The game has no text and the story is told through rock drawings and a kind of crystals that you can find in dead enemies. Those crystals are quite interesting, because you are here in the shoes of the enemies and thus see their side of the story.

These enemies look like a kind of deep-sea divers from space, and they want to catch all animals like Fe. Why these enemies want to catch animals or what the petroglyphs exactly want to depict is not really clear. It remains guesswork throughout the game. In addition, the story is not so fascinating that after completing the game you want to go through the six or seven hour adventure to really understand it.

What is immediately clear is that you can not enter into direct confrontation with the enemy. You always lose that. That is why you have to outwit the enemy by sheltering, sneaking and making good use of the environment. This sometimes requires fun but light puzzle work, such as luring enemies into the trap or activating certain points in an area so that you can continue.

Moderate camera work and fatal jumps

In addition to the story, more parts of the game do not feel good at all. For example, the animations are not great. Especially the big birds in the game are jerky and illogical. This way they sometimes hang around for a while, so that they can still follow the predetermined route. Fe management does not always go well. As long as you move over the solid ground there is nothing to worry about, but when you go climbing in trees, which happens a lot, you have to pay attention. The camera, which also does not always occupy a fine position, determines the direction you are going. Because the button for moving is also meant to use a climbing motion, it can happen that you unintentionally jump out of a tree. Many of these trees hang above cliffs, so you often have to completely unjustly restart at a previous checkpoint.

Finding where you stayed or where you have to go is difficult. You have a map, but it is so global that you actually do not have much. The levels go up a lot and have quite a few layers. However, the map is a rough, static view from above so that details of all paths, tunnels and layers in the world can not be seen. The question is to what extent that is bad: some extra wandering in the beautiful world of Fe is no punishment.

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Honk and punches Anyway

The game looks beautiful, but for that a high price is paid: the game sometimes runs reasonably smoothly and sometimes with fits and starts. When you're running around in a smaller area, you notice that the framerate occasionally collapses slightly. Not very disturbing, but noticeable. When you walk around in one of the beautiful, large open areas, the framerate sometimes sinks to such a low point that it gets in the way of your fun. Also, the game sometimes remains full for half a second. Incidentally, it does not matter whether you have your Switch in your fists or in the dock: in both cases there are just as many framedrops and moments on which the game momentarily stops.

All flaws of the game can be solved with a good patch, but at the moment Fe is not what we had hoped for. You can certainly have fun with the game, but then you have to be willing to condone a lot of things.

Fe has been available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and the Nintendo Switch since 16 February. For this review we played the Nintendo Switch version.

Conclusion

The graphic splendor of Fe unfortunately sometimes causes the game to run in fits and starts. Fe also contains just too many rough edges. Nowhere is the game really broken, but you have to be able to accept many things if you want to enjoy this game.