– The Game -
I think that the first thing that should be said about a game, is what kind of product it is, in order to solve the first question any buyer has when he is buying a new game.
The Awakened Fate is a typical dungeon crawler, which means that it is based on the exploration of a series of labyrinth where enemies and weapons became more powerful as the game progress.
– The Story -
The story is focused around the war between two opposite factions: angels and devils. In this context Shin Kamikaze, a human, get killed by some demons because he possess the right constitution to receive the power of the Fate Awakened Crystal, a gem that the angels want to use to turn a human into a powerful being that will fight for them in the war.
After being rescued by the angels, he joins them, and with the support of the two co-protagonists of the game: the angel Jupiel and the demon Ariel, he will start to fight.
I believe that the strong point of this game is the story, I warn you, that it follow a very “japanese” way of storytelling ( that you can like or dislike ), which blend together scenes from the daily routine of the different protagonists ( sometimes useless to the main story, but very interesting if you like to follow the development of the characters ) and serius/dramatic moments.
If you like this kind of stories I belive that you will appreciate very much this game.
From time to time, during the story, the protagonist will receive the task to choice how he want to change “fate”: in terms of gameplay it means that the player will have to select between two given choice, how he want to perform certain actions, in my opinion this is a great feature and even after finishing the game, it will be worthy to start again from the beginning just to see what would had happened if you had selected different choices.
Not always things will turn out the way we wanted, but I think that it should be obvious, since we are selecting just what “the protagonist want to do” and not what “will absolutely happen”. In a certain sense after sometimes you’ll really “feel” the pressure of the choice you are making ( it’s important to note that sometimes the game become very cruel out of the blue, and even if it is just in the form of textuals descripcions some outcomes are very unpleasant ).
– Graphic -
In my opinion there are some games that don’t need to push to the extreme the possibilities of a console, instead they just have to fit to style of the game.
This is one of those cases, the graphic isn’t very great, but it suit well with the story.
The exploration of the labyrinth uses a low poly 3D graphic with bright colours, simple but very unique.
When the story goes on, instead we have 2D drawing in japanese style of very good quality.
– Recap -
This is a very interesting game, with the right difficult to allow newcomers to enjoy it, and a storytelling able to satisfy many fans of j-rpg.
The post-game contents are few and somewhat easy, so after the ending there would not be very much things to do, but the feature of the “choices” definitely leave the appeal to try to start again one or two times the game just to see what would have happened in different situations.
However it’s important to keep in mind that the game is not a masterpiece ( and neither tries to be one ), but anyway it does well its job to entertain during the time you’ll need to finish it.
