Faery: Legends of Avalon

Faery: Legends of Avalon
Developer(s)	Spiders
Publisher(s)	Focus Home Interactive
Platform(s)	Xbox 360 (XBLA) PlayStation 3 (PSN) Microsoft Windows Cloud (OnLive)
Release date(s)	November 10, 2010
Genre(s)	Role-playing video game

Faery: Legends of Avalon is a role-playing video game, released on the Xbox Live Arcade service on November 10, 2010, and on the PlayStation Network on January 11, 2011. It was developed by Spiders Studio and published by Focus Home Interactive.^[1]

Plot

In the game, the player assumes control over a winged faery who has just emerged from stasis. The faery king Oberon informs the player that because humans have stopped believing in faeries, the power of magic has failed and the faery civilization and its inhabitants are slowly being destroyed. The player's objective is to assemble a party of magical creatures and attempt to save several mythical worlds from destruction. The mythical worlds that serve as the game's setting are drawn from preexisting mythologies, and include the ghost ship Flying Dutchman, the great tree Yggdrasil, and the City of Mirage, which is built on the back of a giant beetle.^[2]

Gameplay

There are two components to the gameplay of Faery: Legends of Avalon, combat and (non-combat) exploration. The game uses a turn based combat system in combat. The attacks available to characters are in part determined by the player's choices when leveling up the characters. Outside of combat, the player character can fly, and therefore exploration takes place in three dimensions, as opposed to the more common two dimensional exploration seen in most other role playing games. The game features a large number of options for customizing the player character, including the gender and face of the character, the equipment that the character uses, and what new abilities are gained when the character levels up. All of these options change the in-game appearance of the player character.^[2]

Reception

Faery: Legends of Avalon received mixed to poor reviews upon its release, with a Metacritic score of 57.^[4] Critics praised the game's vivid visuals, which employ cel-shading, the bright and upbeat music, and the creative depictions of several well known mythical worlds. However, they also point out that the quests are tedious and repetitive, that the dialogue is bare bones and contains numerous spelling errors, and that the combat is excessively easy. Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot.com summarizes the game as "disappointingly threadbare," and states that "Legends of Avalon amounts to a bunch of bland missions separated by elementary turn-based battles that inspire only a few faint yawns."^[6]

References