The Haunted Hoard: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)

Many video games take place after the apocalypse, but they mostly use the setting as an excuse to face off with zombies, mutated monsters, or other survivors. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon decides to go another direction with the concept though, instead focusing on the haunting emptiness of a world after almost all of mankind has been wiped out. The lonely atmosphere of an almost uninhabited world is, in fact, the game’s main focus, many moments focusing on the quietness and eerie solitude as you explore dark urban areas being retaken by nature. There are monsters to fight and animals in the remains of the world, but devoting so much of the game to having that feeling of inescapable isolation certainly gives this action role-playing game a distinct and effective atmosphere.

 

However, even early on you do learn you aren’t truly alone. The main character of the adventure is a young boy named Seto, and when the old man who raised him passes away, he’s left believing he might really be the last human being on Earth. The game doesn’t spend too long pretending this is the case though, Seto quickly encountering a girl with silver hair out in the streets who flees after the two have barely spoken to each other. Desperate for what seems like the single possible human connection left in the world, Seto sets off to follow her trail, passing through empty subways, dilapidated underground malls, a derelict hospital, and even an abandoned amusement park. The environments have a weathered look that is meant to add to the melancholy, and many areas are definitely longer than they need to be just so you can ruminate on the stillness of places that were no doubt once bustling with life.

 

However, again, Seto isn’t quite alone. While the silver-haired girl seems to be the only other human about, his quest has him meeting many other people who join him for a time. A wearable computer nicknamed P.F. becomes his first companion, the AI in it learning to become more personable as they navigate the underground together. The ghost of a girl covered in surgery markings joins him at the hospital, Sai adding a bit of attitude to interactions as she enjoys messing around with Seto. Even a kooky merchant with a chicken mask crops up from time to time, mostly just there to sell items but also revealing hidden depths later in the adventure. In fact, most of your companions have an arc to follow that makes their part in the story sometimes legitimately emotional while Seto and the girl he’s chasing end up being the least interesting part of the narrative. There are some characters like a boy who picks on Seto where the game doesn’t feel like it earns the emotions its angling for, and even when characters like Sai and P.F. get their time to shine, it’s often in spite of Seto. While these side characters develop a relationship with him, he seems to be oblivious to it as he single-mindedly pursues another human being instead of these people who he could engage with in an equally rich manner. Seto does have some moments where he opines on why he feels he needs this human connection that make him feel less like an uncaring and oblivious guy who ignores his budding friendships, but the white-haired girl is certainly the least interesting of the main cast because you don’t get to know her very well and Seto’s main goal thus feels a little less meaningful for it.

While a little rickety in how the story is told, the tone and the characters are a good foundation for a role-playing game, and with the right action backing it, it could be an interesting adventure to explore loneliness and unusual companionship. The gameplay doesn’t quite do its job though, neither fading enough into the background that you can focus on the story nor providing something strong enough to do between story beats.

 

In the ruins of the world, ghostly apparitions of many shapes form from the lingering memories and emotions of those who died. Some of these are as simple as floating jellyfish creatures you can easily smack out of the air, others are lingering ghosts like the walls filled with arms that reach out to grab you or the lower halves of laughing children who try to kick you. Dark hallways may contain the lingering spirits of birds or monstrous dogs who drool hellfire, but there are also unfeeling automatons performing their defensive duties in absence of their masters. Almost every boss, whether it be a living tree or the recurring masked spirit, is a bit of a joke though, most going down without much of a fight, but the regular spirits and monsters can sometimes guard a hallway or restrict you from leaving a room until you’ve dealt with them. The way they’re likely to score hits is by being undetected, the player needing to aim their flashlight with the Wii remote to reveal the enemies, but the fights aren’t very involved. You might need to run around to avoid being swarmed, but a lot of the fights are simple hack and slash affairs that don’t do much to add excitement to the long periods of methodical travel.

 

The fights aren’t really bad so much as too basic for their own good, but the mechanics surrounding them can sometimes be annoying. You have a limited inventory in Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, the player needing to arrange the items in a menu and only able to fit whatever objects can be arranged into the rectangular space. Weapons often fill a lot of the space and you always need to devote a single square of the grid-based box to your flashlight of choice, but then you have little space left to carry extra items or pick up new ones. Luckily, the game is fairly easy for the most part, the bonfires that serve as save points common enough that you can get the free heals from them frequently and thus healing items are only needed for the few mildly strong bosses. Carrying a melee weapon, the flashlight, and a long range option like a bow is pretty much all that is required but even that fills a good amount of space, and while there are a variety of regular melee options, the different attack types only have niche uses like hammers knocking down foes instantly.

The real issue with the inventory is not determining what to take with you though, it’s how to handle picking things up. When you find an item in Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, it’s usually a mystery item, meaning you cannot immediately use it nor can you trash it until its identified. To find out what it is requires going to a bonfire, and only then can you store it for later, trash it, or perhaps sell it to the merchant if he’s dropped by. A random mystery item can end up being a huge burden on your inventory, and while these are usually new weapons or healing items, they can also be one of the game’s strengths: memory items. Memory items contain the thoughts of people before the end of the world, many people knowing their time was coming and musing on how they’ll specifically handle it. There are some interesting narratives to be found like a couple persisting in their wedding even though their demise is imminent and some unique perspectives like the voice of pets as they try to understand the behaviors of their masters really stand out as new ways to view an encroaching end. The mystery of the apocalypse hangs over much of the game even though the reveal doesn’t really seem like it was tied to these interesting personal narratives too well, but finding these memory items is a treat… and thus the problem of having to repeatedly revisit the bonfire to identify the latest items, scrap the ones you don’t want, and repeating the process if you don’t want to miss out on these lovely nuggets of lore.

 

Game flow certainly has its issues, and there’s one more complication to it when it comes to your weapons. Your attacking weapons all have durability problems, and you can never tell how close an item is to breaking. If it breaks in the middle of the action, it can’t be repaired, and if it is your only tool, you can only do sloppy swings to try and fight your way back, these battles slow and tedious with foes who are often mobile enough to basically assure your doom if there’s no way to escape. Carrying a back-up weapon can keep you prepared but causes the inventory issues, or you could keep turning over items, but the merchant appearing when you rest at a bonfire is not guaranteed and trying to trigger his somewhat random appearances can be tedious as well. Once you know of the issue you can work around it, but it feels like a needless complication that further taxes the inventory system.

 

Any investment in leveling up or buying better equipment is just raising stats to make the hack and slash combat go a little faster, but thankfully the battles don’t seem to drag either. There’s no thrill to increasing your power because of the simplicity of the combat, and when Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon dabbles in other gameplay types, it can often be rough as well. A moment where you need to hide and ambush someone at the amusement park has testy triggers and your target will run off without an obvious mistake on your part being apparent, and there’s a backtracking portion that doesn’t really make the revisited areas all too interesting. Most of the action and exploration is rather plain instead of annoying like these moments, and had there been a weaker narrative attached to all of this, it’s likely Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon would have ended up far too messy and uneven to enjoy. Luckily, the plot can carry the bulk of the experience on its back, but it is constantly assailed by the mechanical flaws that impede your ability to focus on the interesting and atmospheric story.

THE VERDICT: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon never quite does any of its gameplay mechanics well, but the characters and atmosphere help to balance it out so that you land somewhere in between a captivating game world and a tedious battle system. The arcs of the people Seto encounters are paced well and can tug on the heartstrings quite effectively, and in a world that nails its lonely tone and eerie emptiness, it’s easy to fall for the setting and story of the game. Unfortunately, the bothersome inventory system, bland combat, and half-baked bosses and gameplay shifts are underwhelming or outright a chore to interact with, so sadly, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon only barely scrapes by as something decent almost solely on the efficacy of its well-realized post-apocalyptic world.

 

And so, I give Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon for Wii…

An OKAY rating. While Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon teeters on the edge of being outright bad because of the nuisances incurred by way of a poorly conceived inventory system and combat that is ho-hum at the best of times, it’s hard to undersell what the atmosphere and characters do to redeem this almost awful action RPG. Not every character is a home run, but P.F. and Sai are quick to become endearing, the quirkiness of the merchant makes his mysterious nature all the more intriguing, and other briefly met spirits and strange non-humans add in moments of bonding and development in a game that can still deliver on themes of isolation and loneliness. Seto may not be the best hero because of how oblivious he is to the importance of his relationships with non-human characters, but they carry the slack and the game at least knows when to flip the switch to make him realize certain things key to their interaction. The world-building is done very well too, the mystery items that are memories always interesting to find as you start to wonder what could have wiped most of humanity out and see such a wide range of perspectives on what an impeding doom can do to people. There are some people you only know through these memory items that have an entire narrative arc to themselves, and it would be really nice to be able to enjoy this part of the game without having to retreat to the bonfire because you accidentally picked up some bulky unidentified item that pollutes your inventory.

 

Stronger combat would have done a lot to make the moments between plot and moody exploration worth engaging with, and removing a lot of the arbitrary limitations or strange diversions could have kept the game on a strong track to exploring its themes and characters. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon isn’t quite a masterpiece of storytelling buried beneath bad mechanics, but the ideas and artistic direction deserved a game that would allow you to enjoy them instead of frequently getting in the way of experiencing them.