Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
released on Jan 22, 2009
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
released on Jan 22, 2009
Fragile Dreams takes place after an apocalyptic event that wiped out most of mankind. Young Seto finds a note from his deceased grandfather urging him to travel to the red tower that lights up the night sky. Along the way he finds a young, silver haired girl Ren who drives him to journey through the ruined world in search of companionship. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is an action-adventure game with light RPG elements and a focus on exploring the often desolate surroundings. Players are tasked with navigating the empty environments while fighting ghosts and obtaining items such as sketches and short stories that reveal the last moments of the lives of those lost in the great catastrophe. Seto is guided through a third-person perspective and the flashlight is one of his most important aids. Controlled through the Wii Remote it illuminates dark surroundings to interact with the environment and is needed to solve many puzzles. It can also uncover hidden enemies and often a sound through the mini speaker provides a hint about their location. The Nunchuck is used to walk, sneak around, and crouch. It is possible to go into a first-person perspective to get a better view of the environment. Additional weapons that can be picked up during the course of the game are sticks, an iron pipe, a bow, a hammer, a bamboo sword, and a katana.
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This review contains spoilers
I picked this game up from a bargain bin back when I was something like 11-12 years old. The gloomy cover art stuck out to me amongst the sea of other Wii shovelware titles (and the occasional Just Dance), so I begged my mom to pay the 10-15 bucks I needed to buy it.
That afternoon, I popped the disk in and was immediately drawn in by the atmosphere. The quiet strings of the title theme started up and I remember just sitting there in front of the TV, listening to it for a while.
"At the very end of a summer that was all too short, the old man I was living with passed away. Even after all the years I spent together, I never knew his name. Later that evening, I dug a shallow grave in the front yard of our home and buried him there." This intro has a permanent spot in my brain. I can pretty much still quote it word for word. Seto's emotionally distant voice accompanied by the screeching cicadas and the sound of a shovel striking dirt establishes an incredible vibe. It has all you could ever want for an excellent intro.
And Fragile Dreams carries this atmosphere throughout the entire game. Little middle school me was absolutely enraptured. I spent my summer with Seto and his post-apocalyptic world, learning about the people who had vanished from it alongside him. Discovering the beauty (and sometimes the horror) of quiet, abandoned places. This game is so carefully crafted to elicit stirrings of melancholy and some undefined sadness from your soul. The story isn't perfect, in fact I'd argue that act three's pacing was pretty bad and there were some loose threads that really should've been picked up by the end, but the overall themes and excellent character driven storytelling really pulled me in. The set design and beautiful visuals accompanied by a sparsely used but incredibly moving OST really cements the experience in your brain. Godawful combat and some baffling gameplay design choices bogged down that experience plenty, but as a kid I was happy to slog through the next pack of random enemies (that would despawn and respawn if you backed out of their detection range) if it meant I could get another mystery item with more story.
That said, this is a game, not a movie. And revisiting it, the fact that my wonderful exploration experience going through this world was marred by having to suffer through terrible combat encounters (horrible movement, no dodging, physically attacking anything feels like moving through molasses) and bad gameplay design (punishingly small inventory that obviously took inspiration from Resident Evil's Tetris style storage, constant backtracking, straight line level design with load screens for every new room or hallway, etc.) brings this game's rating straight down. I wouldn't be surprised if the dev team was sorely strapped for time towards the tail end of development, or just didn't really know what to design to fill gameplay time, and thus defaulted to combat (that they obviously could not get right). It's not like this game is survival horror - it's got horror elements, but it's no Resident Evil, and it didn't need to be shoehorned into something similar to it. It's already a sub 10 hour game, the padding just made it worse.
2.5 is all I can give it, and that's with all the heavy lifting being done by the fantastic atmosphere and storytelling. Did I mention Fragile Dreams also has some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read in a game? God I wish this game could get a modern remake somehow, with the all the design flaws ironed out. Then I would actually be recommending people play it instead of just watching it on YouTube to skip the agony of combat.
That afternoon, I popped the disk in and was immediately drawn in by the atmosphere. The quiet strings of the title theme started up and I remember just sitting there in front of the TV, listening to it for a while.
"At the very end of a summer that was all too short, the old man I was living with passed away. Even after all the years I spent together, I never knew his name. Later that evening, I dug a shallow grave in the front yard of our home and buried him there." This intro has a permanent spot in my brain. I can pretty much still quote it word for word. Seto's emotionally distant voice accompanied by the screeching cicadas and the sound of a shovel striking dirt establishes an incredible vibe. It has all you could ever want for an excellent intro.
And Fragile Dreams carries this atmosphere throughout the entire game. Little middle school me was absolutely enraptured. I spent my summer with Seto and his post-apocalyptic world, learning about the people who had vanished from it alongside him. Discovering the beauty (and sometimes the horror) of quiet, abandoned places. This game is so carefully crafted to elicit stirrings of melancholy and some undefined sadness from your soul. The story isn't perfect, in fact I'd argue that act three's pacing was pretty bad and there were some loose threads that really should've been picked up by the end, but the overall themes and excellent character driven storytelling really pulled me in. The set design and beautiful visuals accompanied by a sparsely used but incredibly moving OST really cements the experience in your brain. Godawful combat and some baffling gameplay design choices bogged down that experience plenty, but as a kid I was happy to slog through the next pack of random enemies (that would despawn and respawn if you backed out of their detection range) if it meant I could get another mystery item with more story.
That said, this is a game, not a movie. And revisiting it, the fact that my wonderful exploration experience going through this world was marred by having to suffer through terrible combat encounters (horrible movement, no dodging, physically attacking anything feels like moving through molasses) and bad gameplay design (punishingly small inventory that obviously took inspiration from Resident Evil's Tetris style storage, constant backtracking, straight line level design with load screens for every new room or hallway, etc.) brings this game's rating straight down. I wouldn't be surprised if the dev team was sorely strapped for time towards the tail end of development, or just didn't really know what to design to fill gameplay time, and thus defaulted to combat (that they obviously could not get right). It's not like this game is survival horror - it's got horror elements, but it's no Resident Evil, and it didn't need to be shoehorned into something similar to it. It's already a sub 10 hour game, the padding just made it worse.
2.5 is all I can give it, and that's with all the heavy lifting being done by the fantastic atmosphere and storytelling. Did I mention Fragile Dreams also has some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read in a game? God I wish this game could get a modern remake somehow, with the all the design flaws ironed out. Then I would actually be recommending people play it instead of just watching it on YouTube to skip the agony of combat.
wow. this game is boring!
too hand-holdey and stiff, very slow and controls could be a bit more precise but i won't shit on that since it's the damn wii. i've played about half an hour and don't play on continuing, but who knows.
too hand-holdey and stiff, very slow and controls could be a bit more precise but i won't shit on that since it's the damn wii. i've played about half an hour and don't play on continuing, but who knows.
Геймплей просто ужасен. История наивна, персонажи не интересны. Есть интересные истории в воспоминаниях через собираемые предметы. Для Wii неплохой графон, плюс стилистика помогает. В целом играть - нет. Посмотреть на ютубе - ну если очень сильно хочется.
I just remember being intrigued so I kept playing. Weird, sad, and unique.
Probably one of my first experiences with post-apocalyptic settings, the world is empty, and you can definitely feel that. You understand is meant to be like this as you find only what remains from a humanity once existed, spirits, final notes of despair, journals of loneliness, and regrets. In this empty world, each character is meaningful, even finding the curious merchant in the most emptiest of places can be disquieting at first but then comforting as the quiet parts go on and you feel lonelier, specially in the first half. Trying to explore an empty world feels redundant, but even trying to find answers when there's nothing to be done can be quite a motive to keep playing. Not a very complicated story, just an interesting unique experience.
Probably one of my first experiences with post-apocalyptic settings, the world is empty, and you can definitely feel that. You understand is meant to be like this as you find only what remains from a humanity once existed, spirits, final notes of despair, journals of loneliness, and regrets. In this empty world, each character is meaningful, even finding the curious merchant in the most emptiest of places can be disquieting at first but then comforting as the quiet parts go on and you feel lonelier, specially in the first half. Trying to explore an empty world feels redundant, but even trying to find answers when there's nothing to be done can be quite a motive to keep playing. Not a very complicated story, just an interesting unique experience.
Grass blades moved by a slight breeze tickle your cheeks, flowers around you cry their morning dew.
The metal of a lonely street lamp gave way to an ivy spiral, its broken bulb by moonlight.
Fireflies are still around but not for long, a brighter bulb will soon rise up and replace the last one.
The grass you lie into gently bends with a cracking, the silence around has been so loud for so long that even the most insignificant noises become deafening.
But the breeze never reaches you.
Where did this noise come from ?
Getting up in a panic, wondering what kind of wild boar could-
It grabbed your shoulders.
Firmly.
With two hands.
How ?
Didn't Grandpa die last week ?
You'd like to turn around, trading your fear to see that person's face, to know the comfort of there being anyone.
But you can't. The hands won't let you.
Something tickles your earlobes, it's a mouth you can't see, it whispers solemnly :
"Hey guys, I'm Kentarō Kawashima, are you ready to experience among the most unsubtle writing ever put to games ?"
I am a sucker for desolate and post-apocalyptic melancholia, quiet tales of loneliness in empty landscapes void of any danger, any other human being, nothing but wait.
In that sense, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon succeeds quite well at giving off an extremely tangible atmosphere, one barely ever seen in Wii games, one that gets utterly destroyed at every turn.
The writing in this is even more obnoxious than that review's preface, and that says something, drenched in an urge for exaggerated melodrama that can't ever feel like a payoff since there's barely anything previously built onto.
How are we supposed to fill in the blanks ourselves when characters always have to tell their feelings explicitly ? How am I supposed to care for the death of a character I met an hour ago that was built entirely out of expository dialogues ?
It's a writing that doesn't believe in its players and therefore lacks any kind of subtext. It takes so much unnecessary place in what seems to be designed as a contemplative game it simply brings everything down.
seems ?
Fragile Dreams tries to blend Action RPG elements with Silent Hill-esque level design, which, well, completely dismisses both as they are fundamentally opposed, and the game doesn't really manage to link them.
This leads to a complete dichotomy in substance and it never feels at least decent to play, not even once the game justifies this approach with any kind of creative moment, it's an actual chore.
Yet, it's completely impossible not to be charmed and transported by the bittersweetness of its world and perpetual sense of longing for human connection.
Fragile Dreams will probably stay as one of my biggest "what if ?" in my gaming experience, but it will also forever feel like a lost reflection.
The metal of a lonely street lamp gave way to an ivy spiral, its broken bulb by moonlight.
Fireflies are still around but not for long, a brighter bulb will soon rise up and replace the last one.
The grass you lie into gently bends with a cracking, the silence around has been so loud for so long that even the most insignificant noises become deafening.
But the breeze never reaches you.
Where did this noise come from ?
Getting up in a panic, wondering what kind of wild boar could-
It grabbed your shoulders.
Firmly.
With two hands.
How ?
Didn't Grandpa die last week ?
You'd like to turn around, trading your fear to see that person's face, to know the comfort of there being anyone.
But you can't. The hands won't let you.
Something tickles your earlobes, it's a mouth you can't see, it whispers solemnly :
"Hey guys, I'm Kentarō Kawashima, are you ready to experience among the most unsubtle writing ever put to games ?"
I am a sucker for desolate and post-apocalyptic melancholia, quiet tales of loneliness in empty landscapes void of any danger, any other human being, nothing but wait.
In that sense, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon succeeds quite well at giving off an extremely tangible atmosphere, one barely ever seen in Wii games, one that gets utterly destroyed at every turn.
The writing in this is even more obnoxious than that review's preface, and that says something, drenched in an urge for exaggerated melodrama that can't ever feel like a payoff since there's barely anything previously built onto.
How are we supposed to fill in the blanks ourselves when characters always have to tell their feelings explicitly ? How am I supposed to care for the death of a character I met an hour ago that was built entirely out of expository dialogues ?
It's a writing that doesn't believe in its players and therefore lacks any kind of subtext. It takes so much unnecessary place in what seems to be designed as a contemplative game it simply brings everything down.
seems ?
Fragile Dreams tries to blend Action RPG elements with Silent Hill-esque level design, which, well, completely dismisses both as they are fundamentally opposed, and the game doesn't really manage to link them.
This leads to a complete dichotomy in substance and it never feels at least decent to play, not even once the game justifies this approach with any kind of creative moment, it's an actual chore.
Yet, it's completely impossible not to be charmed and transported by the bittersweetness of its world and perpetual sense of longing for human connection.
Fragile Dreams will probably stay as one of my biggest "what if ?" in my gaming experience, but it will also forever feel like a lost reflection.
This game is weird you either like the story or don't like the game at all because there is little gameplay