Chapter 1: Why Do You Play Games In The First Place?
The Evil God Gratonie, who captured and enslaved the spirit from around the world, falls dead to the ground.
A huge wave of light gets scattered all around the world as if set free by some kind of explosion. There is also a girl who looks at me with tears of joy running down her cheeks. She smiles at me.
「Ahh, the Spirits are being released… The colors are returning to the world… Thank you very much…!!」
Now that I think about it, it was surely a long journey. As various memories scroll through my mind and fill my chest with pleasant warmth, I leap into the air in the universal gesture of victory.
「Finally, I beat your sorry ass~!!!」
I use the Fighting Skill "Punishment Drop", a skill that for some strange reason (or a really specific setting) was mandatory to have if you wanted to defeat the true form of the Last Boss in this game, to hit the girl straight in the face... The girl, Fucking Bitch "Fairlia" (or the Heroine as some people would call her) is sent into the air while spinning magnificently.
However, since that was a story cutscene playing right now the girl suffered no damage whatsoever. The story progresses to its finale and the way it was doing that could only be described as the horror mixed with a nostalgia trip. There were some grand scenes unfolding accompanied by pompous BGM playing, a mixture that only total masochistic perverts would want to sit through until the very end.
「Why is it that the only weapon that's capable of damaging the Last Boss hits like a wet noodle!? It takes three times as long to do some decent damage using this thing! Even unarmed does more damage than that! Isn't that weird that such a joke weapon is required to kill the boss in the first place!? And Fairkus, where did you go, you useless support!? Why are you even here if you're not doing anything!? Begone from this house, evil spirits begone from this house!!! Or salt you shall get!!!」
「It surely was an arduous journey, but travelling with everyone was certainly fun...!!」
「You call this fun!? The whole scenario and the side quests were all centered around you!? Isn't that weird!?」
The game more often than not made me want to throw my controller against the wall, so I don't know about calling this "fun". But since I was a completionist and started the game, I wanted to see this through to the end.
"Fairlia Chronicles Online ~Prayer of the Spirit Princess ~" is the remake of the blockbuster RPG game that was released in the early days of VRRPG, and if I had to describe it in one sentence I would call it the epitome of a "Shitty Game".
This is by no means an exaggeration on my end. The NPCs are flat and their dialogues are boring. The Mobs are just your generic monsters and demons without any spin to them. Not to mention bugs like the party members who cast recovery magic on the enemies or use the elemental attacks against the enemies who embody said elements.
About ninety percent of the storyline can be described using the following formula: "The Heroine presents the Player with some sort of a problem. Heroine somehow manages to make the problem even worse than it was. Somebody important dies because of it. Players solves the problem. Somehow it all turns out to be the working of the Evil Gods. Defeat the Evil Gods and restore peace to the world." Of course, along the way you will also learn that the Heroine is somehow connected to the Last Boss and the True Evil it usually represents.
Then there are also your typical game clichés such as: traps that explode every single time you walk through a tile corresponding to it, pitfalls right before the Last Boss chamber, the Last Boss that has three additional phases and forms to his fight if the Heroine is in the party (without her there would be only one phase and a different, "Normal" ending to be seen) etc, etc. …So many bugs. It's kinda funny, because that's exactly how the offline era used to be.
If there was any redeeming quality this game had to it, it was the fact that in the span of three minutes in between beating the Last Boss and credits rolling, you could attack the Heroine however you like without any real consequences. It was sort of hidden gem like that. By the way, this secret scene called "The Most Rewarding Three Minutes Ever" was only available to you if you've defeated the boss with the favor meter maxed out for the Heroine, which was only possible if you've completed every single side quest that was in the game. Another oddly specific function that only the biggest of Massive Masochists could force themselves to accomplish.
Sudden difficulty spikes of encountered enemies. Shitty scenario. Bugs which sometimes could make gameplay unbearable. "Fairlia Chronicles Online" had all of the above elements of the unholy trinity of game development, which in turn earned it a completely new title in some circles: "Shit Chronicles Online". I managed to withstand ten whole days with it before eventually wanted to stop playing, but then I decided to suffer through the rest of it and eventually cleared it in the next twenty four hours. After that my mind was full of the strangest mixture of feelings, like exhilaration mixed with relief.
For example, it was like serving your sentence in jail and being able to leave after a few years, only to be able to see the vast blue sky stretching before your eyes without being surrounded by high walls.
It was like being able to find the long lost contact lenses that you dropped somewhere in the middle of the vast desert...
There is only one thing I can say with utmost certainty.
「I'm not playing such a shitty game ever again!」
I proclaim something like that while watching the end credits rolling in front of my eyes, all the while feeling a certain kind of accomplishment spreading through my chest.