Fragile: Goodbye ruins of the moon (JPN Wii)

[importaku]

Translated trailer


The lovely animated intro to the game


Well i managed to play for about 4 hours in total but it feels like i have been playing mere moments.

For those unaware of the game it takes place in japan after some unspecified disaster has wiped out humanity, the entire place is in ruin. You play as a young boy called Seto he has been alone most of his life after his grandfarther died. The story is about him searching for a mysterious silver haired girl called Ren who he meets only briefly before she runs off. He is happy to discover he is not the only person left alive after been alone for so long.

The story & characters i have met so far have been great the voice acting is spot on, although i can only understand bits of the story its been suprisingly easy to follow so far, theres some quite sad bits in the story so far.

->Open Spoiler<-

After discovering the personal frame & building a friendship up with it as it accompanies him on his journey, it's battery eventually dies & he is alone once more. Theres a scene where he holds it in his arms as he says his final goodbye, then it cuts to a scene where you can hear him burying it while he's crying his eyes out. Must admit it was pretty heart wrenching.

The game itself is meant to be an RPG but it only has light elements of an rpg nature but seeing as the game is mainly focused on the story & exploring i don't mind one bit. The combat is basic but i don't think the game suffers for it. The controls take a bit to get used to but after about half an hour they become natural, sometimes in a enclosed space the camera gets a bit flaky & the torch beam sometimes flickers but to be honest they don't really affect it that bad. You use the nunchuck to move & the remote to point the beam of your torch on the screen, you find other weapons as you go along, but weapons only last so long eventually they will break & you have to get new ones.

You carry items resident evil 4 style where you have a limited amount of storage & you can rotate & move items to make them fit in your bag, as you go along you get upgrades so you can carry more. Items are either bought at the shop or found in the game hidden around or obtained from killing enemies. The items remain unknown until you goto a bonfire & examine them, bonfires are where you restore your health & save, there seems to be a bonfire always where you need it. It seems like you cant walk ten yars without finding one but as you get further in you will be grateful of the regular save points but if you think it's making the game too easy you can just ignore them.

In the game you find items that when you examine them they give small stories about the owners of said item, they give you a glimpse into the world that you never got to know before it was destroyed.

Graphics are stunning theres been quite a few times where i have just stopped to marvel at how beautiful the areas are, the graphical style is like japan from the 50's/60's well the posters & items you find are as they have a very retro look to them.

One feature i love is that the speaker on the wii remote is used a hell of a lot, it will pick up sounds of animals nearby, or the voices of spirits which will guide you. Theres one bit on the game where you meet a little girl who wants to play hide & seek, she turns invisible & you have to find her by listening to her voice on the remote.

Another cool bit is when you find the personal frame, a little talking computer backpack that joins you on your journey after you rescue it from the station, when you find it you can lift the remote to your ear like a telephone which will activate it & it will talk to you giving you hints.

Well thats it so far, im really liking it it's a rather unique feeling game, it's not perfect & has a few little flaws but for the experience it's giving me i can forgive it. I feel compelled to play just to find out whats going to happen to everyone & find out just what happened that wiped out everybody.

[Morph]

Sounds sweet thanks for the impressions mate , really looking forwards to picking up an English release.

[briareos_kerensky]

Keep the impressions coming, I was very interested in the game when the first trailers came out but more gameplay videos I see the more I loose faith in the game...probably small clips don't fully convey the true feeling on how you play the game but right now my impression is that neither exploring nor combat are deep enough, as the developers didn't knew what to emphasize...I admit that seeing combat for the first time was a big letdown for me.

[importaku]

It's hard to convey exactly what it's like without spoiling it, because im a fan of the game theres things i can willingly let slide that other people might really hate. To be honest id call it more adventure than RPG. Although you do level up & get stronger it's not really the main focus of the game.

The enviroments are the main attraction of the game, it's a bit like resident evil where you placed into a ruined enviroment & then left to make sense of what happened. Hidden away all over the place is graffiti, remember how in portal there are little notes left hidden round the game written on walls & stuff, well it's the same in this. Hints and other tiny bits are dotted around everywhere as you find them each one tells a tiny bit of the story how about how people coped after the disaster, sometimes it's just a crudely drawn picture other times a sentance of text. Although the only people that are around are ghosts.

Early on in the game you find a Origami crane & the story of its previous life is told, how it was made for a daughter by her mother, later on in the game you find the ghost of a girl, when you meet her she runs out hoping her mother has returned, finding that it's not her she starts to cry. She tells you how she has been waiting for a long time for her mother to find her. In the building she's hiding in the graffiti tells the story of her isolation. After playing a game with her to help cheer her up, You give her the origami crane & she tells you that it was the one her mother made for her, she is the person mentioned in the origami cranes story. You then get to watch a lovely cutscene where her mothers ghost returns to come get her so she can move on.

It's bit's of story like this that are really nice & i look forward to each new character i meet.

More later.....

[Yakumo]

I bought this last Thursday but have only played it 4 or so hours like Importaku due to being ill. I can say though that the game is a beautiful bit of work and something that really drawers you away from reality in to it's own little work. Graphically fantastic apart from a few glitches with the touch and the audio....... Well, just what you'd expect, perfect!

Yakumo

[Yakumo]

9 hours in to it now, just going down the dam. This game just gets better and better! All you Wii owners should defiantly check this one out.

Yakumo

[importaku]

Ah not gotten as far as the dam yet im currently in some massive underground train tunnel complex that i entered after leaving the hotel.

Still loving this game so much, the characters really are memorable. Everything has a very japanese feel to it, if they localize this they are going to have to be very careful everything from the scenery to the presentation screams japanese. Sadly bandai namco games have said they have no intention yet of releasing this outside japan but theres rumors that xseed are interested in localization so fingers crossed. The info came off gamefaqs so take it with a pinch of salt for the time been.

The abandoned amusement park was fun, i bumped into a boy called Kurou, he is curious to see a human & decides to toy with you as he steals the pendant that you got from your grandfather. He runs off with it & you have to go look for him, he leaves clues for you to find that you pick up via the speaker on the wii remote that lead you to the writing he has scrawled on various places, eventually after going all over the park you corner him on top of the ferris wheel but he falls & Seto thinks he's dead. Lol luckily he is already dead so the fall didn't kill him but he is touched the Seto was concerned for him, he ends up making friends. Apparently Kurou is looking for someone too the only clue he has is a photograph of him standing with someone who looks like a scientist. Kurou shows Seto a very odd way of showing friendship (Very Yaoi) it catches Seto totally off guard

He gives Seto a ring as a token of friendship & they part ways, hopefully you get to meet these characters later on in the game. It would be a shame if you only met them once, they are all animated very well i love the whole style.

[Yakumo]

Kurou shows Seto a very odd way of showing friendship (Very Yaoi) it catches Seto totally off guard

Took Seto off guard? YUCK! is all I could think of.

Yakumo

[importaku]

Finally completed this last night as i had a marathon session, The last battle against Shin i found rather hard, the ending is kind weird & i only understood a fraction of it but i did enjoy the game a lot.

You meet Kurou one more time before the end of the game & it's rather sad

->Open Spoiler<-

You find out he's actually a robot & like the personal frame he runs out of power so he eventually dies

Luckily someone is making a video walkthrough & adding english subtitles so i can eventually pick up all the bits of story i couldn't get. Going to go through a second time now & try to find all the objects that are hidden about that i missed the first time as my inventory is only half full so i know i missed loads.

[Yakumo]

You finished it? Man, must be short I guess. I'm going to have another go in a minute. How far is the end after climbing down the dam?

Yakumo

[Kaladron]

I assume that, with all the voice work, this is far from import-friendly?

[importaku]

You still have a bit to go but your pretty close to the end, my final play time was 14 hours. After the dam there just the weird hospital/science facility left.

If you do get to the end is there any chance of you posting a short breakdown on what the hell the ending is about? I still have no idea what happened to wipe out everyone on the planet, or what the glass cage actually does. I did get the love story bit though

[hush]

i really do hope this come's out oversea and is not a japan only game or even if they just add english subtitles to it

[oddment84]

This game does sound great. One of the few games I might buy a Wii for...

[importaku]

i really do hope this come's out oversea and is not a japan only game or even if they just add english subtitles to it

The problem is they can't just add subtitles as theres a lot of spoken japanese that comes out of the speaker on the wii remote they would most likely have to dub it, either that or remove the remote speaker functions thus ruining a big part of the game.