obstreperous adair: Review - Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone

Posted by Armand K. on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 ? Leave a Comment?

Playing as Little Girl: More Fun than Imagined

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone is a side-scrolling 2D action-JRPG recently localized for English speaking audiences by Carpe Fulgur. You play as a young swordsgirl named Arche Plumfield who has just moved to a new town and is starting classes at the local magic school. As the game progresses, Arche befriends classmates skilled in elemental magic who accompany her along various adventures. It?s an absolutely adorable game with a generally upbeat and positive attitude that seems rare in most modern western games. Whether core to the game itself, or thanks to the excellent translation work of Carpe Fulgur, the kid-friendly atmosphere and dialogue in the game work well for adults as well. As a thirty year-old male, I was often surprised at how much I shared in the little girls? excitement over? well, little girl stuff. Fortune Summoners is full of charm and personality from beginning to end, and rarely felt tedious or poorly paced.

Be it the cheerfully positive lead character, the shy best friend, the bratty rich girl, the class clown/minor bully, or the teachers, parents, villagers, and other people met along the way, it felt as though everyone had something to add to the game world and story (well, okay, Chiffon the wind elemental that tags along with Arche can be a bit annoying at times). Though Fortune Summoners shares many features with traditional JRPGs, it does so in refreshingly new or often expertly executed ways. For instance, though you often have to speak with every last person in a village to progress the plot, the conversations bare the wit and charm found throughout the game, and rarely feel like a chore. New powers and skills also come at a slower pace than modern western RPGs, but when you do get something new, it?s often a significant upgrade or shift in game style such as dynamic companions or powerful, game-changing abilities.

Middle-School Badass

Gameplay is fast, action-packed, and consistently fun. In my 30 or so hours with the game, I never got tired of delving into dungeons and bashing away at wave after wave of monsters. Well, not so much bashing as carefully executing precise, timed attacks and parries against a dangerous and intelligent AI. In fact, the game will punish you for button mashing, which will lock the characters into animations that will rarely hit their intended targets. To properly play the game, you need to approach most battles with caution, being careful to study your enemies? movements and attacks, and build counter strategies that will be key to your survival. In other words, despite the cute and kid-friendly front, this is a pretty hardcore game, especially for some of us western gamers who have been a bit spoiled by our generally easier and more forgiving games. The ?easy? difficulty will feel like most games? ?normal? setting, and ?normal? being more like ?pretty damned tough?!The sophisticated combat will vary depending on which character you control as well. Arche is the melee character, and most of her attacks are close-ranged sword-swing combos that utilize fighting game-like combat mechanics. Her two companions are far more magic-oriented though. Sana focuses on water-based spells, with a combination of offense, healing, and buffs. Stella uses flame magic, and is almost entirely used to deal massive damage to her foes. Though on a few occasions the game will have you controlling one of the magic users on their own, and force you to survive without Arche?s sword arm to protect you, once you get the party together they stay as a group. It?s an absolute treat to see all three girls fighting a group of monsters, with Arche flying around the screen with acrobatic grace and agility, and the two magic users flinging spells about with an almost reckless abandon. In fact, it can get so busy at times that you will lose sight of your character behind the dazzling display of (kid-friendly) violence and destruction. This can sometimes hinder progress since so much of the game is based around precise combat, but the smart and very effective companion AI often compensates for your human failings.

Well, It?s Not Quite Perfect

The game?s failings are few, but require mentioning. The biggest issue for me personally was not knowing what to do next to progress the plot at a number of points. Essentially, the game will ask you to speak to EVERYONE YOU EVER MET from time-to-time in order to trigger plot events. This can get even more frustrating when you have to speak to a series of people in a particular order, but aren?t given any strong clues to suggest where you might look. It could be that I?ve just had it easy with western RPGs that literally give you an in-game GPS system directing you to every quest point like a modern version of connect-the-dots, but at least two occasions in Fortune Summoners felt like they needed a bit more guidance to move the game along without causing frustration. I ended up resorting to a minimalist walkthrough to help on these occasions, just to avoid hours of point-and-click adventure game-style guesswork.Additionally, the game could have benefited from a map system. This is a pretty large open-world game (albeit in 2D!) with labyrinthine dungeons full of twisting passages and rooms, and without a basic map system, it gets pretty difficult to figure out exactly where you are or where you should be headed. Admittedly, the game world is also full of sign posts that will let you know if you?re on the right track for your destination. Enough time in any dungeon will teach you the layout of the area well enough, but that didn?t stop me from wanting some sort of basic map to help out occasionally.

Well Worth It!

In the end, Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone is a solid game, and one that can be enjoyed by a wide range of gamers. The plot and writing will appeal to fans of quality anime or anyone who likes a well written, kid-friendly story. The gameplay will appeal to fans of JRPs, fighting games, and complex side-scrollers with additional content such as a fighting game where you can set up matches between in-game characters included in the main menu. And anyone who wants a particularly challenging experience should try this on the harder settings. Just be ready for a beating.

Bonus Section

For those of you who have played Carpe Fulgur?s two previous localizations, a few comparisons might be useful. Oddly, all three games (Recettear: An Item Shop?s Tale, Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters, and Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone) feature young, female protagonists with small, flying companions. They all live in item shops (with Arche?s father being an item shop owner this time around) and regularly explore dungeons in search of loot and leveling. Fortune Summoners has all the charm of Recettear, but lacks the simulation element (which was awesome!). It shares the dungeon exploration and mild grind elements of both games, but is much more fun in that regard than either since the combat is the main focus here, and works particularly well in the 2D environment.

You can purchase Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone through either Steam or GamersGate. Check out Carpe Fulgur?s page here.

Mark of Excellence